Managing Stress

Managing Stress

The high-paced western culture has brought with it a culture of stress, something many people have felt building as the new school year gets underway. Stress is a natural reaction that can range from useful to a dangerous health threat. As stress intrudes on people’s lives more and more it is important to look at and talk about where stress comes from, the myths and bad habits surrounding stress, and the small and large steps anyone can take to controlling their stress and its hold on their lives.

Feeling overwhelmed and stressed is both normal and acceptable. Canada is full of support systems of all kinds, so that nobody is ever alone in their stress and has the help that they need available to them.

 

What is stress?

Most people are very familiar with the sensations that accompany stress itself. When the body identifies something, a stimulus, that it thinks it will need an extra boost to deal with, the stress reaction is triggered. Stress is a very important part of the normal and natural workings of the body that uses the very sensitive and highly complex hormone and nervous systems. Stress reactions of all types use different hormones to communicate to the body quickly and trigger reactions to deal with the stimulus. Stress can be crucial at times, but if overused can turn into a problem itself.

A classic example of a stress response would be a “fight or flight” response to a perceived threat, but people can also experience stress as a response to pressures or deadlines at school or work, reacting to trauma, in response to family problems, or pressure related to meeting one’s basic needs.

Stress can be acute, occurring over a short period of time, or chronic. Stress can also be beneficial by helping the body to respond properly to a problem, or very damaging by overwhelming a person or accumulating damage over time.

 

Myths and Bad Habits

The distinction between useful and harmful stress is vital. Limiting the effects of unproductive or bad stress is like putting a leash on it and by doing so taking back more personal control over it. Productive stresses can help encourage high achievement, enhance performance in fitness and intellectual tests, or help with focus, while harmful stress is typically characterized as excessive stress that causes damage.

Stress isn’t just a temporary inconvenience. Many people when faced with intense challenges will stop paying attention to taking care of themselves as the first sacrifice in order to solve a problem. A lack of self-care or an increase in unnecessary stress don’t simply carry the immediate consequences felt as a direct result of such choices. An excess of stress actually damages the body, with both short and long term consequences to health and quality of life.

 

The Body Under Stress

There are quantifiable health risks associated with stress. The extra demands on the body during a stress response can cause immediate risks, as well as a growing body of evidence showing the many negative effects that chronic stress can have on the body.

Even under acute or immediate stress reactions, the body can be at much higher risk for cardiac problems ranging from arrhythmias, to heart attacks, and even to sudden death.

Chronic stress, where the body maintains a stress response over a much longer period of time, is associated with an entire host of health compromises. Many studies have been performed to try to analyze the results of chronic stress, and they have found strong connections between long-term stress and cardiovascular and coronary disease, as well as a tendency to interfere with the ability of the immune system and reproductive system to operate properly. Exacerbating these problems, chronic stress also has proven a tendency to encourage poor lifestyle choices like smoking or drinking in excess, which in turn are shown to themselves be connected with poor health. Stress has also been shown to strongly exacerbate already existing conditions.

The pressure that stress creates on the body can sometimes cause a bad loop where someone’s diminishing health prevents them from handling stress properly, which in turn only damages health more. Something as simple as losing sleep from stress can drastically affect a person’s performance, having an adverse effect on their stress levels.

Stress places pressures on the body that both cause bad health, but also have an intense psychological effect that has been shown to diminish people’s ability to cope with difficult situations and also make them more vulnerable to developing mental health conditions. Some people experience increased mental health distress as a result of stress, sometimes resulting in behaviour like suicidal tendencies.

 

Taking Back Control

Stress is an uncontrollable part of the world. People are experiencing stress at increasing levels, which sometimes isn’t easy to eliminate from daily life. Methods of coping with stress range from simple and individual approaches to taking steps to get help from others.

Personally, people can take their stress into their own hands by knowing their own limits and staying within them, identifying particularly stressful influences in their lives and limiting them, and shifting priorities to start considering their own health a top concern or changing their lifestyle. Even simple things like a regular bedtime and better diet can help equip the body to deal with stress better.

Once experiencing stress, small actions like practicing calming breathing, walking away from a situation, and organizing and planning ahead to tackle a problem in a prepared way can help manage a stress response. Creating a strong support system of healthy relationships is very important in approaching stress in a healthy way.

Sometimes stress takes over life in an unhealthy way and it can be hard to handle alone. There is medical help and counselling available for people of all backgrounds in Canada, and help is available in many varieties from professional advice, to crisis intervention, to counselling, to medical help. Contact a family physician at Medicentres if you need help when experiencing stress. Talking to a professional about problems is often a significant step towards a healthier life.

 

If You Need Help:

These resources are available to anyone, any hour of the day, any day of the year.

Call 9-1-1: Emergency Services should be contacted if you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis and they are a danger to themselves or others

Call 1-800-668-6868: Kid’s Help Phone, a service dedicated to confidential crisis intervention for children

 

Alberta:

Call 2-1-1: Alberta community and social services, where referrals to proper services and help can be obtained

Call 8-1-1: Alberta Health Link is a good resource for answering your medical questions and concerns

Call (403) 266-4357: Distress Centre Calgary if you or someone you know is in a crisis and need help or someone to talk to

Call 1-800-232-7288: Crisis Support Network Edmonton (toll free) if you or someone you know is in a crisis and need help or someone to talk to

Call (780) 482-HELP (780-482-4357): Crisis Support Network Edmonton, if you or someone you know is in a crisis and need help or someone to talk to

Call 1-877-303-2642: Alberta Mental Health HelpLine, a service for crisis intervention, confidential help, medical referral, and mental health information

 

Manitoba:

Call (204) 940-3633: Manitoba Central Distress Line

Call (204) 949-4777: Manitoba Mobile Youth Crisis Team:

Call (204) 940-1781: Manitoba Mobile Crisis Service

Call (204) 942-9276: Help line (7pm-11pm daily)

Call (204) 727-2555: Crisis Intervention Unit