Its stress awareness month and whether you’re sitting in traffic or struggling to manage your work/life balance, everyday has its stresses. Have you ever thought about the ways that stress can effect your health? There are both mental and physical ways stress can present its self. With some help from some well known charities and websites I will explain the effects of stress and some initial steps in dealing with it, or at least minimising it.
When Feeling stressed or being put in a stressful situations your body releases a hormone, Cortisol. This is the same hormone triggered in the bodies fight or flight response. Its initial response it to protect the body in emergency situations triggering things like rise in heart rate, quickened breathing and tense muscles. Stress can be a good thing as these reactions are necessary for our survival. However, if this happens day after day it can have some serious risks to our health.
Here is a list of some of the issues chronic stress can cause to us both mentally and physically:
- Headaches
- Depression or anxiety
- Heartburn
- Insomnia
- Breathing/ respiratory problems
- weakened immune system
- Increase risk of heart attack
- High blood pressure and high blood sugar
- Fertility issues
- Stomach and bowel problems such as IBS
- Menstruation issues
- Tense Muscles
- Irritability
- Eating disorders.
(Healthline.com)
If you suffer from stress or any of the symptoms listed, Then there are some steps you can take to cope with the pressure. According to the Charity ,*Mind, you can follow some of the following steps to eliminate some of the stressful situations. Remember to only do what you are comfortable with to avoid causing further stress.
Identify your triggers:
If you know the causes of your stress or can anticipate the problems arising you may be in a good position to adapt. in doing so you will be one step closer to eliminating possible stressors. A couple of examples are:
- Worrying about bills and money. If you are able to set up direct debits for around pay day, this task will be completed in a shorter space of time, eliminating the stress for the rest of the month.
- Traffic is making you late. you could look into better routes or leaving 5 or 10 minutes earlier in the mornings. you could also discuss with your manager about adjusting your work hours.
- One off events like buying a house or new car can create financial burden and cause stress, in these cases it can be good to use the power of positive thinking, it is not something you can change but think about the positive impact that this event will have on your life in the future.
Organise your time:
Organising your time better means putting tasks that need to be completed into the right part of your day. Identify if you have a ‘best time of day’. If you are a morning person, night person o have a happy hour in the middle of the day, schedule to do your important task of the say in that time.
you could also make a list of all of your tasks to complete. put them in order of importance and complete the ones with the higher priority first. If these are work related you could ask your colleagues or boss to help you with prioritisation.
Another good way to think about the things is to set your self small goals. it doesn’t matter how small. This way you will be able to achieve more smaller tasks and avoid the disappointment of not fulfilling one large one, one small task achieved will leave you to the next and keep you feeling positive.
Keep activities varied out attention span can be quite short and short sharp bursts of different activities can be more productive. It is also good to remember to take breaks, not to do too much at once and to ask for help when you need it!
Address the Causes:
You will likely know the causes of your stress, although we can sometimes take them out on other things in our life, it is important to get to the route of the issue. There is a solution out there for most problems:
- Housing or financial
- Health and wellbeing
- Family or personal
- Work or student life
As part of the Motor industry there are charities that can help in any of these cases. BEN is there to help whether its is someone to talk to, advice or financial help you can find more information about the help you are entitles to here: https://ben.org.uk/
Accept that you cant fix everything:
There are some thing you cant change and you may have to accept that. Be willing to accept it can give you a sense of relief and if it is something that you are unable to accept it could be something you have to walk away from. Again these situations can be difficult but always remember there are people to speak to.
( Mind.org.uk)
We hope that you have found this information useful. If you have an idea of a blog topic you would like to see in the future please email us careers@theimi.org.uk.