1. Identify Your Stress Type
Unless you live
in a cave without a television (actually, not a bad way to eliminate
stress in your life), you’ve probably heard quite a bit about stress in
the media, around the coffee machine at work, or in the magazines and
newspapers you read. So, what exactly is stress? Stress comes in several
guises, some more obvious than others. Some stress is acute, some is
episodic, and some is chronic. Acute stress is the result of change.
Episodic stress is the result of lots of acute stress—one change after
another after another. Chronic stress, on the other hand, has nothing to
do with change. Chronic stress is long-term, constant, unrelenting
stress on the body, mind, or spirit.
“Stress comes in several guises, some more obvious than others.”
2. If Your Stress Is Acute, Identify the Cause
Acute
stress is something that disturbs your body’s equilibrium. You get used
to things being a certain way—physically, mentally, emotionally, even
chemically. Your body clock is set to sleep at certain times, your
energy rises and falls at certain times, and your blood sugar changes in
response to the meals you eat at certain times each day. But when
something happens to change your
existence, whether that something is a physical change (like a cold or a
sprained ankle), a chemical change (like the side effects of a
medication or the hormonal fluctuations following childbirth), or an
emotional change (like a marriage or the death of a loved one), your
equilibrium is altered. You’ve experienced change, and with that
upheaval comes stress.
3. An Acute Stress Example
Acute
stress is hard on our bodies and our minds because people tend to be
creatures of habit. And habits don’t just mean that morning cup of
coffee or a favorite side of the bed. They include minute, complex,
intricate inner workings of physical, chemical, and emotional factors on
our bodies. Say you get up and go to work five days each week, rising
at 6:00 a.m., downing a bagel and a cup of coffee, then hopping on the
subway. Once a year, you go on vacation, and, for two weeks, you sleep
until 11:00 a.m., then wake up and eat a staggering brunch. That’s
stressful, too, because you’ve changed your habits. You probably enjoy
it, but if you are suddenly sleeping different hours and eating
different things, your body clock and blood chemistry will have to
readjust.
4. See What Works for You
Humans
desire and need a certain degree of change. It makes life exciting and
memorable. So here’s the big question: How much change can you stand
before the changes start to have a negative effect on you? This is a
completely individual issue. No single formula will calculate what is
“too much stress” for anyone because the level of acute stress you can
stand is likely to be completely different than the level of stress your
friends and relatives can tolerate. Essentially, this is a “see what
works for you” kind of scenario. If staying out late on both Friday and
Saturday night every weekend leaves you feeling depleted on Monday
morning, you’re upsetting your routine too much, thus causing stress.
Dial it back to just one night out per weekend and see if that suits you
better.
5. If Your Stress Is Episodic, Identify the Cause
People
who suffer from episodic stress always seem to be in the throes of some
tragedy. You’ve likely known people who are episodic-stress poster
children. They tend to be overwrought, sometimes intense, often
irritable, angry, or anxious. If you’ve ever been through a week, a
month, or even a year when you seemed to suffer personal disaster after
personal disaster, you know what it’s like to deal with episodic stress.
6. An Episodic Stress Example
Imagine
this scenario: First, your furnace breaks down, then you bounce a
check, then you get a speeding ticket, then your entire extended family
decides to stay with you for four weeks, then your sister-in-law smashes
into your garage with her car, and then you get the flu. Just one
stressful episode after another!
But
episodic stress, like acute stress, can also come in more positive
forms. For example, a whirlwind courtship, a huge wedding, a honeymoon
in Bali, and finally a new home with your new spouse, all in the same
year, is an incredibly stressful sequence of events. Fun, sure.
Romantic, yes. But it’s still an excellent example of episodic stress in
its sunnier, though no less taxing, manifestation.
7.Don’t Worry!
Sometimes,
episodic stress comes in a subtler form: worry. When you worry about
things, you invent stress, or change, before it happens. Excessive worry
could be linked to an anxiety disorder, but even when worry is less
chronic than that, it saps the body’s energy, usually for no good
reason. Worry is usually just the contemplation of horrible things that
are unlikely to happen. Worry and the anxiety it can produce can cause
specific physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms, such as heart
palpitations, dry mouth, hyperventilation, muscle pain, and fatigue,
leading to fear, panic, anger, and depression.
8. Are You a Worrywart?
Ask yourself how many of the following statements describe you?
• You
find yourself worrying about things that are extremely unlikely, such as
suffering from a freak accident or developing an illness you have no
reason to believe you would develop.
• You have trouble falling asleep because you can’t slow down your frantic worrying process as you lie still in bed at night.
• When the phone rings or the mail arrives, you immediately imagine what kind of bad news you are about to receive.
• You feel compelled to control the behaviors of others because you worry that they can’t take care of themselves.
• You are
overly cautious about engaging in any behavior that could possibly
result in harm or hurt to you or to those around you, even if the risk
is small (such as driving a car or visiting a big city).
If
even just one of these characteristics describes you, perhaps you worry
more than you have to. If most or all of these statements apply to you,
worry is probably having a distinctly negative effect on you.
