Do you have a SICK feeling? Are you TENSE? RESTLESS? EDGY? Far too STRETCHED? STRUGGLING to make it through the day? Okay, I admit I’m attempting
to be clever. If you take the first letter of each capitalized word and string
them together, they spell STRESS.
Everyone experiences stress to varying degrees. It is an inevitable part of our
daily lives—and not all stress is necessarily bad.
However, when chronic and/or large doses of stress become unmanageable in your life, you are likely
to become sick. In this post, I want
to focus on recognizing when stress is making you sick and what you can do
about it.
It’s important to know the
symptoms of stress. Symptoms of stress are manifested emotionally, physically, cognitively and behaviorally. In short,
a person who is getting sick from stress may experience aches and pains, depression,
anxiety, insomnia, fatigue and other serious health concerns, including turning
to drugs or alcohol to self-medicate.
Let me emphasize serious. Clinical
depression is a serious mental
illness that can lead to suicidal thoughts—and attempts. Self-medicating often leads to addiction. Constant high levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) can cause many critical illnesses
such as heart disease, low immune functioning, high cholesterol and blood
pressure, to name a few.
I am not a physican,
psychologist or therapist, but I am someone who has experienced many of the
above-named health concerns resulting from chronic, debilitating stress. I had reached a
point when I knew I could not go on living that way. Finally, I had recognized
that stress was making me sick—and I got help.
If you are reading this blog
and clicking on the links, is it because you suspect that stress is making you
or someone you know sick? If so, please continue reading.
If chronic stress is damaging
your health, get professional help.
No excuses. It’s true, a therapist or doctor cannot eliminate the stress in
your life nor solve your problems for you, but a professional will be able to
diagnose what is wrong and help you to restore health, hope and stability in
your life. Once you gain some relief from your ongoing fight or flight response, you will be able to function better mentally,
emotionally and physically. When hope and clarity return, you can work on
taking the next steps toward getting yourself out of that terrible job,
relationship or other circumstance that is the source of your stress. A trained
professional will help you to see your way through.
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