When does stress become a problem?
Stress is part of life. Most of us get stressed when we have to: sit an exam, make a speech, start a new job, move house. But we would expect the stress to die down as soon as we have sat the exam, made the speech, and so on.
We would see this as normal. It should not cause us much concern. Most of us find that our stress levels change from day to day, week to week. Sometimes we cope better than at other times. So a fit of the blues or feeling stressed out may just be part of life and nothing much to worry about. But if the stress gets too high and starts to affect your everyday life, you should tackle it.
So stress should cause concern when:
- you can't get rid of it even though you try
- it affects your day-to-day life
- it comes and goes for no reason
- there does not seem to be a good reason for it to be there
Once stress gets this kind of grip, you might feel your mind is taken over by it. You can't relax. You feel tense most of the time. You can't sleep. You feel down a lot. The future seems bleak. You might drink too much. You avoid going places or doing things you could have coped with in the past. You feel your back is to the wall. You might feel you are cracking up. You feel you are losing control over your life. You feel you can't cope with things that others can deal with.
This raises three points:
We don't all cope
You may think others cope much better than they really do. At the same time, you may put yourself down too much. Bear in mind how well you can hide your stress from others. They may well be hiding their stress from you too.
Stress affects all sorts
Stress can affect all of us - young and old, outgoing and shy, clever or not, male and female, rich and poor. You are not strange, mad or stupid because you have stress.
Insight
As a rough rule of thumb, the more you think you are cracking up, the less you are. You can see that you should not worry about the things you do or, at least, that you worry too much about things. This is called Insight.
