Common Signs and Indicators Of Stress
Stress can exhibit itself in several ways, be they emotional, physical, in our behaviours or thoughts. These can include:
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What Causes Stress
Stress is often thought of as a negative process but the ability to feel and react to stress is an essential protective mechanism, which in times of danger or harm, enables us to rapidly react. Stress becomes unhelpful when the body constantly reacts as if it were in danger triggered by daily life events such as:
- Work demands and pressures
- Relationship tensions, separation or divorce
- Money or debt concerns,
- Unemployment
- Sitting tests or exams
- Bereavement, loss or grief
- Moving home, homelessness
Some stress is good as it can be motivating and enable us to achieve things in a specified period. When stress continues for long periods it becomes ‘chronic’, straining the body’s immune system and can lead to health problems. Hence we need to monitor and manage our stress levels.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD occurs when we experience a single or recurring traumatic events beyond the everyday experiences of normal life. These can include a car accident, mugging, rape, sexual abuse and military combat. .
How Can Psychotherapy & Counselling Help?
Psychotherapy and Counselling can be effective by helping you to more clearly identify and articulate the stresses in your life, what may be contributing to them and sustaining them. Psychotherapy and counselling can facilitate deeper insight and awareness into your patterns of thought, feelings, and behavior that manifest from the stresses in your life.
For example, you may feel constantly stressed by work, are left feeling never being quite good enough and worrying about what is expected of you. In therapy, we may explore your experiences in the workplace currently and in the past, the expectations you have of yourself and where these may have developed from. We may also look at what it means to have expectations put on you by someone else and perhaps by an important person in authority. Talking in this way can help you to understand where anxieties may stem from, what fuels them, whether they accurately belong in the current situation and what if anything you want to do differently.