We all experience stress in our daily lives from different sources: jobs, relationships, finances. And whether you’re dealing with a daily stressor, chronic stress, or a major life challenge like illness or divorce, stress can take a significant toll on you both physically and emotionally. How do you know when you’re dealing with a level of stress that’s unhealthy for you?
The answer to this question can be tricky for a few reasons:
- Stress affects the body in many different ways. Some of these are obvious, but others may not be as noticeable or easy to detect until they become more severe.
- Different people are affected more or less intensely, and in different ways.
- The effects of stress often look like symptoms of other illnesses (partially due to the fact that stress lowers immunity and makes us vulnerable to many things), sometimes people mistake symptoms of illness for stress and vice versa.
- People who thrive on stress tend to feel it as their natural state, making it more difficult to discern stress symptoms until after much of their stress is alleviated.
- When under high levels of stress, people often find it difficult to stop and notice their body’s responses.
While stress affects everyone in a unique way, there are certain factors that are common. If you are experiencing any of the following, it could be a sign that you’re being affected by stress:
- Headaches: Certain types of headaches can be related to stress. If you’re experiencing more headaches, especially tension headaches, stress could be the culprit.
- More Frequent Colds or Flu: There’s an inverse relationship between stress and immunity, so if you’re under too much stress, you may be getting sick more often.
- Sleep Problems: There are many ways that stress affects sleep. Too much stress can rob you of sleep and make the sleep you get less restorative.
- General Anxiety: Anxiety does serve an important function for survival, but if you’re feeling anxious much of the time, it could be because you have too many stressors in your life, or it may indicate a medical condition like generalized anxiety disorder. If you experience an increase in anxiety, you may want to to talk to your doctor.
- ‘Fuzzy Thinking’: Your body’s stress response pumps your body with hormones that make it possible for you to fight or flee quickly. When triggered in excess, this stress response can actually cause you to think less quickly.
- Feelings of Frustration: If you’re faced with many demands at once, the natural result for many people is increased frustration and irritability. The trick is to find ways to prevent frustration and calm down quickly.
- Lowered Libido: Stress can affect your libido in several ways. If you’re too tired for sex, or can’t seem find the time for your partner, this can be due to stress in your life as well.
These are just a few of the many ways that stress can affect your body and mind.
Financial Stress
Money problems can be a major source of stress and conflict.
Financial stress is a sadly widespread experience. This is pretty significant because financial stress is linked to health problems like depression and sleep problems. With the rising cost of gas and food, the mortgage crisis, and the new bank troubles we're seeing, many Americans are feeling the crunch of financial stress. Anxiety over money can negatively affect health in several ways:
- Unhealthy Coping Behaviors: People experiencing financial stress can be more likely to numb their anxiety by drinking, smoking, overeating and practicing other unhealthy coping behaviors. This in turn leads to more stress.
- Less Money For Self-Care: With less money in the budget, people who are already under financial stress tend to cut corners in areas like health care to pay for basic necessities like food. Small problems can go unchecked and turn into larger problems. This also leads to more stress.
- Lost Sleep: When under financial stress, people often experience trouble sleeping, which can add up to a sleep deficit, impairing immune functioning and cognitive abilities, causing additional moodiness, and more.
- Unhealthy Emotions: Credit card debt can cause unhealthy emotions that can take a toll on health. People can experience anxiety, frustration and a sense of hopelessness as the debt piles up and increasing amounts of money are needed just to pay the interest. This causes additional stress, which compounds with the stress from poor coping and self-neglect, to become a menacing amount of stress.
It’s no wonder financial stress is one of the leading causes of stress in Americans. Here are some resources to help you handle your financial situation and feel more in control of your life, reducing stress and helping you build toward a more secure future:
Find Out Where You Stand: Do you have a major money problem, or is your situation relatively under control? Ask yourself these questions and find out how much help you need to get on the right track.
Learn About Implementing Systems That Can Help: Find out why budgets are important to your financial success, and learn how to create one that will fit well with your lifestyle.
Work Toward Getting Out of Debt: Getting out from under credit card debt is much easier with a plan.
Learn How to Save Money and Cut Costs: Keeping a budget and working toward reducing what you owe is easier if you have more money.
As you work on improving your financial situation, you can reduce stress by practicing stress-reducing techniques and making other changes to create a low-stress lifestyle. By following the advice provided making lifestyle changes, the burden of financial stress can soon be a thing of the past!
How To Handle The Stress of a Financial Crisis
While money is a relatively common cause of stress and marital tension, the serious global economic downturn we’re currently seeing has many people concerned about losing their home or their savings -- or both! If you’re finding yourself stressed about money, the following steps can lead you to a greater sense of peace, and a brighter financial future.
Remain Calm
When we feel threatened, our fight or flight response — the body’s stress response — kicks in and makes changes in the body. The heart rate quickens, stress hormones like cortisol are released, and a host of other changes occur that allow the body a quick burst of energy to run away fast or stay and fight — strategies that have worked for thousands of years, but aren’t always practical now. While that jolt of energy and alertness can inspire you to act, if your body remains in this state for long periods of time (as in the case of chronic stress), it can be damaging to your health in many ways. That’s why it’s important to have some stress relief strategies that can be used in a variety of situations, to calm your body’s stress response so you can think clearly and stay healthier. Then you can work on solutions.
There are a few "all purpose" stress relief strategies that can work well here:
- Breathing Exercises
Breathing works well because it can be done anytime and anywhere. People don’t have to know you’re even doing it, but focusing on your breathing can help you calm your body and soothe tense emotions within a few short minutes. - PMR
Progressive muscle relaxation is another fast-acting stress reliever that I really love to recommend because it’s simple, free and can be done just about anywhere. Again, it can calm your body’s stress response so you don’t remain in a state of chronic stress. - Journaling
For those who are really stressed and need to feel that they’re doing something, journaling about stressful emotions can help get them out of your head so you don’t end up ruminating on what stresses you. Be sure to end your journaling session with some brainstorming on solutions, and you’ll get a better sense of control over the situation, and a more positive attitude.
If you feel that the stress of your financial situation is too much for you to handle, it’s important to ask for help. Often people are afraid or ashamed to ask for help from others, but asking for help is sometimes the wise and necessary thing to do. Help can take many forms:
- Friends and Family
The people who love you don’t want to see you suffer alone. If you need a wise ear or a shoulder to cry on, friends and family are usually very good at offering the type of comfort and support. In fact, that’s what they’re there for. - Financial Advisors
In financial crises, sometimes the type of professional help you need can come in the form of someone who understands money crises better than the rest of us. Often, getting a plan put together with the help of a professional can take much of the stress away — you may feel more in control, less alone, and more optimistic about your situation. - Mental Health Professionals
Don’t underestimate the importance of the other type of "professional help" when you’re experiencing a crisis. Sometimes the stress of financial crises can be more than one person can — or should — handle alone. If the stress relief techniques seem to be not nearly enough help for the type of stress you’re facing, it may be time to talk to your doctor. If you’re feeling an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, a lasting loss of interest in activities you usually enjoy, or a general feeling that you probably do need more help, for example, a professional can offer more in-depth options that can help you through these difficult times.