Stress Management

Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. Stress can make you feel frightened, angry or even sick.

Symptoms of stress

You may be under stress if you have headaches, stomachaches, dizziness, rapid heart bits, anger, forgetfulness, inability to make decisions and sweating.

Excessive drinking and smoking and drug use, it can also cause yelling, depression, throwing of things around, sleepless nights. Stress affects all aspects of the mind and body i.e. physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

CAUSES OF STRESS

• Growth and development – change and adjust to change are major sources of stress, physical changes mean that you have to develop a new self image. This puts stress on the emotions as well as all the body. It is stressful when you don’t like what is in the mirror.
• Stress in the home – stress can begin at home with conflicts between parents interacting with the family can also be a source of stress e.g. fighting with siblings, stress can also be put on parents putting excessive pressure on you to succeed. You may also cope with money problems, divorce, death or illness of a family member, single parenting or parents who abuse drugs or alcohol, victims of sexual emotional or verbal abuse should seek professional help for example from a counselor.
• Pressure to perform – you may get pressure by both yourself and your parents to do more better i.e. in academics.
• Your self image – how you view yourself will influence how you view stress and how you cope with it. If you have low self esteem or you fear failure you are adding to your stress when you are confident to deal better with stress and may not even think of certain situations as stressful.
• Need to belong – struggling with the desire to be independent you may even consider joining a gang to feel accepted by your viewers.
• Poor pressure – it creates a lot of stress friends mat encourage you to try alcohol or drugs which you know is wrong.
• Goals – you probably have goals and standards of achievement if you don’t reach those goals you create stress for yourself.
• Academic performance – the most frequent cause of stress is constant with academic performance there is pressure to get high grades in order to succeed in the profession of your choice.
• Social problems – dealing with tribalism and racism can be a source of stress you may be rejected because of a mental or physical disability, your age, your race or personal characteristics.
• Stress on the job – you are afraid of losing your job or your job takes too much time or there is too much pressure put on you by your employer or parents to succeed on your job.
• Conflicts, arguments, relationships and conflicts on a job can be a source of stress to many people.
• Lack of positive time management – it can cause stress because one is always late and not able to meet targets.