Recognising Stress and Identifying its causes

Medical scientists are beginning to realize that stress may be the underlying cause ofmany disease of the body. While our “gut feeling” had always suggested that , recent observations on disaster-survivors who lost loved ones and had to undergo great hardships to rebuild their lives, provide more compelling evidence. They develop diseases and succumb earlier than those who were spared such misfortune.

With overwork, ambition, insecurity and frustration being so integral to our lives, stress, an old survival response, is turning out to be a modern day killer. While positive stress is indeed necessary to fight and succeed in life, our inability to switch it off when its requirement is over, is burning and exhausting us.

The reason why stress has eluded us so long is because there is no test to detect it. You could, for instance, measure a person’s heart rate or blood pressure, both of which may go up due to stress, but not be able to measure stress itself.

Recognizing Stress

Stress may show itself in different ways. It can manifest physically as headaches, fatigue, weight change, tremors or sexual disturbances, or mentally, as lack ofconcentration, confusion, diminished creativity or impaired judgement. It ofen reveals itself through distrurbances of mood such as irritability, anger, anxiety or depression. Sometimes it emerges as an underlying cause for diseases like high BP, diabetes, peptic ulcer or heart disease.

Women usually recognize stress better and seek help for increasing frequency of migraine attacks or altered moods. Men, usually conditioned from childhood to appear brave, cover up stress or deny it, and often come to medical attention rather late with diseases that result from prolonged stress.

What is Causing Stress?

 The causes are many and vary according to age and sex. The main causes in students usually stem from examinations (the gap between their performance and their parents’ expectations), insecurituy of future, and failed romance. The most common source of stress in women is home and children, while for men it is work and office.

The first step towards overcoming stress is to recognize its symptoms and identify the source that is generating it. Here is a list of common causes from which you can tick the ones that best apply to you:

1.     Office, college or school politics

2.     A feeling of little to no control

3.     Tight deadlines and other time pressures

4.     Job or future insecurity

5.     Insecure or turbulent romantic life

6.     Change in the workplace, college or home

7.     Lack of appreciation from seniors, colleagues or family

8.     Promotional or career hurdles

9.     Seeing others go ahead in life by means you did not adopt

10.  Family stress

1. Children’s performance
2. Spouse’s attitude or habits
3. Parents’s attitude or expectations

If you have been able to recognize stress and identify its causes, you are already half way through to overcoming it.

As published in HT City( Hindustan Times) dated 28 August, 2011.