General Wellness

Stress Management

Basic Stress Management Information
Comprehensive Stress Management
Services and Tools

What is Stress?

According to Greenberg (1999), it’s the “combination of a stressor and stress reactivity”.

What is a stressor? A stimulus or something that can lead to a body reaction (i.e. tense muscles, headaches, apathy, etc.). This can be anything from misplacing keys, financial issues, relationships, an assignment, work, friends, moving away from home, being transferred to different offices, etc.

What is stress reactivity? This is the fight or flight response you may have heard about before. Typically there’s an increase in muscle tension, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. and a decrease in saliva production and changes in brain waves. Due to all the quick bodily changes, you would be able to react quickly. Because some stressors may not lead to an actual quick action (i.e. needing to physically run from something dangerous) then our body can accumulate “stress products”, which can become an issue.

Is all stress bad? Not all stress is bad. There are really 2 types of stress: Eustress and Distress. Some stress is an inevitable part of life.

Eustress: typically motivates you to take action.
Distress: typically leads to more negative effects like headaches, muscles tension, etc. Persistent or repeated increases in stress hormones can lead to serious consequences throughout the body such as chronic diseases.

Stress can affect health-behavior decisions; when one is distressed, you may engage in unhealthy or dangerous behaviors that you might otherwise avoid.

**Before you can learn to manage your stress, you must learn to become aware of how your body reacts to stress so you can know what stressors affect you.

“Ideally, the level of stress in our lives should be just high enough to motivate us to satisfy our needs and not so high that it interferes with our ability to reach our fullest potential” (Hale, 2003). Different people function optimally at different levels of stress. It is important for individuals to “identify the stress level at which they can best function as productive, contributing, and healthy people” (Payne & Hahn, 2002).

Signs and symptoms of stress:

• Physical – headaches, fatigue, muscle aches, etc.
• Spiritual – Emptiness, loss of direction, apathy, etc.
• Mental – forgetfulness, low productivity, poor concentration, etc.
• Emotional – depression, “no one cares”, anger, frustration, irritability, loss of concentration, anxiety, little joy, etc.
• Relational – isolation, lashing out, intolerance, loneliness, lowered sex drive, nagging, distrust, fewer contacts with friends, etc.

Everyone is different, you may have headaches, but your friend may become irritable due to a stressor. Knowing how you react is a good starting point to managing stress.