What is a bad relationship with stress?
There are many different sources of stress in our lives.
Sometimes we can deal with stress in one area quite well while allowing stress
in other areas to impact us negatively. It’s important, if stress becomes a big
factor in your life, to evaluate the stress in each area and see how you can
improve your relationship with stress in that area.
What does it mean to have a good relationship with stress?
This doesn’t just mean that you get rid of stress completely, since it’s
impossible to get rid of all of the stress in your life. But it does mean that
you reevaluate the stress that you are feeling and try to remember what its
function is, and then find a way to use that stress to make you more productive
instead of feeling overwhelmed.
Work stress is often the most common and the easiest to
recognize for most of us. One way you might experience work stress is through
tumultuous or strained interpersonal relationships in the work environment. You
might have conflicts with colleagues or superiors that cause the work
environment to be uncomfortable, leading you to feel threatened and triggering
your stress response. These people might cause you to feel negative feelings of
annoyance, anger, extreme competitiveness, inferiority, exhaustion or even
jealousy. For that reason, you take on a lot of stress since you have to live
through the unpleasant environment.
Your workload might also be too much to deal with and this
could cause you stress as well. You might be afraid of doing your job poorly or
not getting everything done in time. Often, if you have a job that is very
demanding or where you have tasks that aren’t always neatly defined or finished
by five ‘o clock, you could carry a lot of this stress home with you. For a
writer or researcher, you hardly ever complete all of your work at a set time
each day.
Family and relationships can also be very stressful. You
might worry about your romantic relationship or feel insecure in it. You might
have kids who have problems of their own that you wish you could solve for
them, who you might feel unable to satisfy, or who are making choices that you
don’t agree with. You might have friendships with people who don’t treat you
well, and even being around them causes you stress.
You might also just be experiencing the momentary stress you
feel when you go through a rough time. If there is a major life event, like
moving house, getting a divorce, suffering a loss or having a career failure,
you could have a lot of stress as a result.
If there is a big possibility that something could go wrong,
and if you feel out of control, it will cause you a lot of stress. In order to
manage this stress effectively, you need to change the way you see the stress
itself, and also change how you think about the factors that are outside of
your control. You need to begin to see stress as a natural, helpful part of
your life. It’s something that is there to help you through the difficult
times. But it’s also something that is there to warn you when you are pushing
yourself too far. If you have an especially high level of stress, it is a sign
that you are not taking care of yourself enough and you are overextending
yourself. You are headed for burnout. If you constantly resent your stress and
see it as something negative and terrible, you are actually creating a mindset
that could hold you back in those difficult times. You might be more prone to
try to numb the stress through things like alcohol instead of actually dealing
with it. Stress is inevitable and useful, but it should only be there to help
you when you have to deal with an immediate problem, and not become something
overwhelming in your life.
Some people stubbornly hold on to their stress because they
think it’s noble to do so, or because they think that they are right and
someone else is wrong, and being right to them is worth all of the stress that
goes along with unresolved conflict. They think that if they take on more and
more stress, this makes them a better person somehow: if they do the most
challenging job without asking for help, have the most activities even when
they don’t enjoy them, or resent and compete with other people the most, they
imagine this makes them more admirable or respectable. In fact, all of these
things are linked to heightened levels of chronic stress and can actually be
dangerous in the long run.
Holding on to stress and having a bad relationship with it
can be very bad for your wellbeing. Kelly McGonigal, through her years of
research into stress, has found that having a
positive relationship with stress can improve your health and your quality
of life dramatically. Additionally, a bad relationship with stress and chronically
high stress levels have been linked to many health problems, from heart
disease, asthma, diabetes, and even depression and anxiety. If you continue to
have high levels of stress or to deal with your everyday stress poorly, you are
putting yourself at risk.
There is a point of diminishing returns with stress. It is
good and useful up until a certain point. If you are a bit stressed, it can
help you to stay alert when you are giving a speech at work and you are able to
think on your feet when you’re given a question that you hadn’t considered
before. But if you reach a certain level of stress, and if you carry it for too
long, it actually becomes detrimental to your productivity. You will be less
able to deal with the challenges of your day if your stress becomes too much.
You will be more likely to feel burnout or to have negative mental states
because of the stress. You will feel more tired because your body is constantly
tense since it anticipates a threat. All of these things make chronic stress a
very unproductive way to live your life.
You need to find a balance between appreciating your useful
stress response and using it wisely, and cutting back on any excess stress that
you might have or finding ways to counteract the negative effects of stress in
your life. Only by changing your relationship with stress can you use it
effectively to make your life better, instead of allowing it to drag you down.
If you don't think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress
impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger
chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened
immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days.