Keeping up with work, paying the mortgage or rent and bills, dealing with family issues, seeing the 24 hour news cycle and taking care of yourself - these are just a few of the things that maybe swirling around in your head at any one given moment. It's also easy for your mind to be hijacked with everything else that might be going on too. Over time you can feel your energy, attention and emotional resources depleted.
Feeling overwhelmed and on the edge happens to us all at sometime and we can get to a point when we feel we just cannot take any more. We begin to feel completely out of control of our lives and everything that is going on within it - we become 'stressed'.
stress?
Stress is the feeling of being under too much emotional and mental pressure - that everything is out of control. Pressure turns into stress when you feel unable to cope. People have different ways of reacting to stress, so that a situation which feels stressful to one person may be motivating to someone else.
Many of life's demands can cause stress, particularly work, relationships and money problems. When you feel stressed it can get in the way of sorting out these demands and can affect every aspect of your life.
Stress can affect how you feel, think, behave and how your body works.
you might be stressed if you are experiencing...
- low self esteem - not believing you are capable
- anxiety
- continually worrying about things
- constantly going over things in your head
- racing thoughts
- losing your temper more easily
- irritable
- sleeping problems
- sweating
- loss of appetite
- headaches, muscle tension or pain
If this sounds familiar to you, you may benefit from seeing a counsellor or psychotherapist for an initial appointment to see if it could be helpful in understanding the origins of your reactions and feelings to life's pressures and demands.
Understanding your early experiences might help you to make sense as to why you feel you need to do everything and get everything right.
An alternative way of dealing with these feelings of not coping and to help us to avoid stress, could be to to learn some strategies which you can put into place when you feel you are becoming stressed - our CBT therapists can help with that.
