How stressful is your life right now?
Do you feel stress is overwhelming and negatively impacting your life?
What’s your relationship like with stress?
Stress can manifest in different ways for different people but experiencing too much for too long can certainly be damaging for your body.
Did you know…
Stress has some benefits:
It can help you adapt and grow, both mentally and physically.
It can give you energy, focus and strength.
It can help prepare you to meet a challenge.
It can help you perform better.
How you think about stress can influence how your body handles it.
A study looked at peoples' perceptions around stress.
It concluded that people who believed stress is harmful had poorer health outcomes.
The people who had stress in their life, but believed it was ok and that they could handle it, had better health outcomes than the people who had low stress.
This shows us that the meaning we give to our experiences and emotions make a big difference to how we cope.
It shows us that by changing our views and perceptions we can change how stress affects us.
Stress is a complex and multifaceted subject that goes far beyond this blog. We are all individual so will cope with stress and respond in different ways.
Too much of a good thing will often have negative outcomes in the long term.
But the take home is, that stress can build resilience, both psychologically and physically.
A life without stress can create a vulnerable body and mind.
It can cause you to feel flat and lack energy and purpose.
Stress can build up your capacity to cope with future stress, so you can cope with life’s inevitable challenges, struggles and upsets more effectively.
Believing you have the ability to cope will positively help you.
If you’re struggling to cope with stress right now, one of the best things you can do is talk.
Finding help and support will improve how you cope and respond to stress.
It can allow you to reflect and understand what’s driving your stress and what you can do to manage it more effectively.
