Stress, anxiety, symptom collection and psychotherapeutic alternatives

Stress is a physical and emotional reaction that we all experience when faced with any change in our lives. These reactions can have both positive and negative effects. Therefore, stress is the automatic and natural response of our body to situations that, in principle, they are anxious, threatening, challenging or that we interpret and perceive them as if were.

Both our life and our environment, in constant change, require continuous adaptations; therefore, a certain amount of stress (arousal) is not only good but is also totally necessary. In this Psychology-Online article we are going to talk about the stress and anxiety offering a compilation of symptoms and psychotherapeutic alternatives.

Index

1. Stress and the most common signs
2. People with stress: most common characteristics
3. Family pressures also create stress
4. Problems at work and stress
5. Environmental pressures

In general we tend to believe that stress is a consequence of external circumstances

Stress has positive effects when it leads us to handle everyday problems in a constructive way, facing challenges in an appropriate and adaptive way. But when the stress response is prolonged or intensified inordinately over time generating great anxiety and constantly, our health, our personal, academic or professional development, our interpersonal, family or partner relationships... can be greatly affected.

A stressful situation is experienced when a person perceives that she does not control, that the demands of her environment and the challenges that are imposed on her or that she has self-imposed far exceed their ability to deal with them successfully, perceiving as the only alternative that such a situation will endanger their physical stability or psychological.

Typical stress situations

The comments that we often hear about stress are, among others:

• Stress is preoccupation with money, work, schoolwork, the pressures of daily life, by the continuous confrontations with the environment, by traffic jams in cities.
• Stress is living in dangerous environments, with great emission of noise and / or unhealthy.
• Stress is getting sick, getting old, feeling unable to respond to different needs.
• Stress is having too much work, not arriving on time, feeling overwhelmed and not being able to cover what we perceive as essential to carry out.
• Stress is having financial, family, personal and interpersonal problems.
• Stress is not having a job or, as we mentioned earlier, having too much, with few opportunities to enjoy or relax.
• Stress is having to work with difficult or emotionally demanding people.
• Stress is having a lot of arguments with members of the family or the environment.
• Stress is having to work outside the home and also share it with housework without anyone valuing it, or collaborating ...

After many investigations it has been proven that our personal characteristics in continuous interaction with environmental requirements (in addition to many other factors) predispose us to being stressed and suffering from diseases related. One of these diseases is the famous coronary attacks.

Through numerous studies carried out with people who have suffered heart attacks, it has been possible to establish a personality profile whose Personal characteristics predispose to suffer from this disease to a greater or lesser extent and the same occurs with certain family, work or environmental problems. Through them we have been able to highlight the following aspects:

A personality profile that tells us that they are people who:

• They go to great lengths to achieve everything they can in the shortest possible time.
• They are in constant motion, they talk a lot and very quickly.
• They show great impatience, always in a hurry, they want to be in everything but they do not arrive.
• They behave very aggressively if they are not listened to or taken into account when they consider it justified.
• They try to do several things at the same time.
• They are very competitive (they have to be the best, control everything and obtain consistent results).
• They have difficulty relaxing (with feelings of guilt when they only relax and put aside their obligations because they consider that they are wasting time).
• They need to have more and more money, friends, possessions (everything seems little to them).
• Great tendency to plan busy schedules or multiple activities for a normal day.
• Urgent need to solve (both at work and in any other situation).
• They undertake multiple projects and activities both in the short and long term, their minds do not stop.
• They are the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. There is no time for vacations or relaxation and if you do your mind keeps working.
• Persistent desires for recognition, continual anticipation of multiple problems to be solved and if one complicated the other more.
• Neither his mind nor his body rests ...

This type of personality results from a learning process that takes shape throughout his life (many times influenced by culturally by the society in which we live) and as such learning can be altered or modified towards a more beneficial and healthy.

For most of us, what happens in our family can bring us great happiness but also the most intense forms of stress and anxiety. The conflicts in the couple, the school aspects of the children, the arguments with adolescent children, with our parents or with our siblings, our illness or that of a relative, the death of a relative, a separation, etc.

All this can generate a stress difficult to solve. Family pressures inevitably and logically affect both our lives and our work. Sometimes we cannot say which started first, if it was stress at work or family pressures, but what we can say is that the two are interrelated.

Tension within the family represents a very important factor of anxiety and stress for many people and if are not controlled or we learn to control them, this risk factor can undermine one's physical health and psychological.

Even without great environmental pressures, most jobs involve some kind of stress. The small, but continuous, frustrations of our work have more power to burn us at work than the dramatic stresses produced in the short term. Many setbacks at work involve small doses of stress, which if not alleviated and we do not know how to deal with them, can accumulate and produce a toxic effect on our body.

If we are in a job where stress and anxiety occur over and over again throughout the day, a single escape valve such as "the spending time with friends ”or“ sleeping longer ”may not be enough to cover our physiological needs or psychological. This risk factor is very important so it is essential that we have many Exhaust valves to face day to day and thus relieve stress or anxiety that may be stored throughout the work day.

In addition to personal aspects, family and work, we are all connected and immersed in a broad physical, emotional and social environment. The government increases taxes and we suffer the squeeze, wages are insufficient or unemployment threatens us or those around us, everything goes up and we We can do nothing to avoid it, we have to wait for long waiting lists or long queues such as the caravans that form in the cities, we are going to take the walk that so much we have wished and the rain annoys it, we buy an apartment and we are unemployed or we do not get the salary to pay the mortgage, the excessive noises that prevent us from sleeping ...

We all found stressful moments that come from the wide environment in which we move, situations that in many occasions are beyond our control and can invade our lives and impose themselves and create stress that is not easily relieved. Environmental demands are often going to influence us and generate stress that we will not always know how to deal with.

The best way to prevent and, therefore, to cope with stress is to recognize when our levels of tension or anxiety increase and to what stimuli or situations they occur.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Stress, anxiety, symptom collection and psychotherapeutic alternatives, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.