Win War Against Stress
How Stress Affects Your Mental Health
Mental health issues that are caused by stress can range from homicidal or other violent acts towards oneself or drive others to addictions. The range of mental health disorders that are stress related is so broad that it can be difficult to understand how two situations fall in the same category.
The days of shock therapy are gone, but it still is used for certain mental illnesses. Gone, too, is the routine procedure of frontal lobotomies to calm patients into total submissiveness.
A large key to dealing with stress related mental health issues is to know how to relieve stress. We now understand that men who are returning from wars endure thoughts and images that affect them in ways that we have only begun to be aware of.
Post-traumatic stress disorder which is caused by stress can affect victims of abuse and violence of all types. Only recently have we begun to understand how traumatic events can affect the people who survive them.
Despite the many types of mental health disorders that currently exist because of stress, some of them tend to be much more common than others. Mental health disorders are not discriminatory and affect everyone. They do not choose specific people or races to affect. Mental health disorders are equal opportunity problems. These disorders have been proven to be hereditary in some cases but that is the closest generalization that you can expect.
Tips On Managing Your Stress and Self-Esteem
Regardless of what some may think, everyone is plagued in some way by stress. Whether it be over arrangements for a major event or simply one’s inability to get that crucial check out when it is needed, everyone suffers from stress.
The trick, however, is finding and utilizing the stress relief technique that works for you as an individual. Fortunately, with the plethora of relaxation techniques that are guaranteed to relieve that agonizing stress, one is certainly bound to work for your needs.
If you are the kind of person who has a particular fondness towards animals, then one of the easiest ways to break that bubble of anxiety is to simply reap in the benefits of taking on a pet. If you do not have one already, then getting the animal of your choice for a pet is certainly in order.
Although any pet comes with a great deal of work and care, these same responsibilities also work in unison to grant the off-setting feelings of companionship that makes a pet one of the greatest ways to relieve stress.
Many studies have proven that in addition to elevating your mood, pets help to lower depression, and even help with blood pressure. If you have a particularly active animal, it also helps grant a justification to get off the couch and get a little exercise. But the adoration and companionship that comes with your pet helps ward off many of the prime causes of stress, including a feeling of abandonment, loneliness, and a lack of interaction.
In many cases however, a simple lifestyle change may be all that is necessary to break the bonds of stress. In many cases, some people set standards so high that they border on perfectionism, and when they consistently fall short of their goals, they feel this reflects poorly on themselves, rather than realizing that their standards are simply unrealistically high.
Therefore, this mindset has the dangerous potential of ruining anything you try to set your mind too, as any kind activity you may normally enjoy is hindered by your perfectionist attitude. Therefore, it is especially important to halt your practice of approaching everything you do overly critically. For example, instead of focusing on the cynical or pessimistic, you could spend your time assessing and appraising your positive points. This has the dual benefit of increasing your self-esteem while lowering your stress.
Finally, you can always just kick back, relax, and just abandon the stressful world of work altogether. Go on a nice, enjoyable vacation, abandoning your cell phone, your laptop, and any other vestiges of your responsibilities. You should use this chance to just unwind, have fun, and get a good measure of where you want to go with your life in a form of reconnection.
If you are in a relationship, this special time when you will not be occupied by work gives you a chance to rekindle your relationship – which is a major cause of some people’s stress. Even if you cannot afford a full-scale vacation, sometimes a simple day off, turning off all the electronics in the house, sealing off your room, and asking that you be left alone to sleep and relax could be all that is necessary to break your bout of stress.
Best Wishes, Coyalita
Behavioral Health Rehabilitative Specialist
See Tomorrow: “Effective Online Stress Relief Programs”
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