Why am I always so stressed? Understanding Stress

Stress

A word that we hear a lot nowadays. We know that it can have a significant impact on our health, our relationships, our work, and our well-being. We all deal with stress. Same as our parents and families before that. Even if we are all dealing with different circumstances, never let anyone say that you shouldn’t be stressed over something “so small.” Everyone deals with stressful situations; what may be stressful for me may not be for you. But it’s like working with children, just because a child lost an easily replicable teddy bear, it had value for the child, and it makes sense that it would be difficult. Your experiences, your beliefs, your values will determine your stressors as well as the best methods of coping and dealing with them.

Stress, we know it’s terrible and that it can cause real visible physical symptoms, emotional symptoms and cognitive symptoms including; unhappiness, changes in mood, loss of sleep, not eating, headaches, soreness, difficulty concentrating, and worrying. Therefore, if you have a stressful career that causes these symptoms, go for that career change. You don’t need your job to be responsible for current and future health problems. It’s not worth it. We should all try to reach our ideal jobs, a position that makes you happy when you wake up that you feel challenged yet excited. The type of job that is worth being exhausted at the end of the day or a job that barely feels like a job.

Stressors

There are two different types of stressors known as internal stressors (thoughts, worries) and external stressors (events, trauma’s). Both can have significant impacts on our general wellbeing. 

Internal stressors are potentially preventable depending on the severity and the situation. But if it’s based on a lack of self-confidence or self-love, that with a lot of work is something that can be improved. To learn more about ways to improve self-confidence and self-love read these posts, Build Your Self Confidence and Self-love.

External stressors, however, we have little control over them since most times it’s out of our control, (unless it’s a result of a poor decision.) This lack of control is also a frequent stressor for many. Deadlines, for example, is a major source of stress for many.

Stress: Understanding it.

1. List your stressors.
2. Think about at home/work/health/school/family.
3. Go through, ask yourself if each of the stressors are internal or external.
4. Finally, are they a stressor that you have control over? Is it something that you can change? Remove?

These are the first steps to reducing your stress, to learn more read kick stress to the curb!