It’s Stress Awareness Month and here’s why being awareness of your stress is essential to your wellbeing.
Many of us have very busy lives where we fulfil some brilliant roles as a partner, parent, son/daughter, sibling as well as our professional and work roles. Life can be busy and although we seek to build our lives and lie well, things can easily get on top of us. Not only the busyness of life can affect us, but managing our mood and insecurities takes time and energy.
So, as a human living in our society, we’re all likely to have experienced stress. Also, as a human in our society, we have the ability to suppress, deny and ignore our stressors. The ‘keep calm and carry on’ mantra often rings true as we do not allow ourselves time or space to deal with our stressors or even acknowledge their existence. We may not want to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and or be seen as not coping.
It’s easy to see why we’d keep on going as we all have our pressures. The pressure to perform at work, to provide for ourselves and family and to care or look after others are just a few examples which dictates that we haven’t got the time to stop.
This can cause us significant issues as we head towards burnout. Burnout is where we are exhausted and our mind and body debilitates us meaning we often need to stop for weeks or even months to recover.
Our mind and body continually communicates with us and it’s so important we listen. If we do not, the signals get stronger and stronger. From generally feeling overwhelmed for a few hours, this can extend to feeling this over days or weeks. Feelings of situational dread such as when we’re travelling to work is a strong message that something isn’t right.
A progression from low level stress is where symptoms become physical. Feeling muscle tension, headaches, stomach and digestive issues, disturbed sleep, short term memory issues and inability to focus are all common symptoms.
It is essential to be aware of how your stressors affect you and to notice when stress is building up within you. With this awareness, you can do something and often this can take less time and energy than you think.
The following article can help manage your stress but it starts with awareness – Managing Stress – What works for You. Suppression, denial and carrying on going while your mind and body are screaming at you, is not going to be helpful.