Adding Up Stress

[ Awakenings Home ] [ Stress Main Page ]  [ Back ] [ Next ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your body will try to tell you that something is wrong.

 What happens to you when your day begins with stress ( the mad dash to get the kids to school and yourself to work ) and then the stress only increases from that point? The first stressor you encounter gets the muscles tense, the blood pressure up and the stress cycle going. From this point the stress just builds up. The next stressor tightens the muscles more as heart rate and blood pressure continue to rise. After a series of stressors you begin to feel the effects. The headache, neck ache, or backache may come. Your energy drops and the level of irritability goes up. It becomes hard to concentrate on tasks.

By the time you arrive back at home in the evening a full-blown stress reaction may exist. You are irritable and cranky with an assortment of aches and pains. It takes you only a short time to say something very nasty alienating everyone with whom you live. The evening becomes stressful too. Now it is bedtime and you can not sleep. You replay the events of the day as your head pounds and your stomach churns. After a night of fitful sleep you awake in a bad mood and think, "Oh no, I have got to do it all again."

By the time you wait through a traffic jam you arrive at work more stressed that when you left - and this is just the beginning.

If this pattern goes on day after day, week after week, and month after month then you are headed for problems. As you continue to adapt to the stress reaction, your body will try to get your attention to tell you that something is wrong. The body's message of distress comes through physical symptoms like those just mentioned. You more frequently have complaints of headaches, neck aches, and backaches; other muscle and joint pain; chest tightness, shortness of breath, dizzy spells and problems with the belly such as pain, cramping, spasms, or diarrhea.

You decide to visit your doctor.

 

 

[ Awakenings Home ] [ Stress Main Page ]  [ Back ] [ Next ]