How stress works. Positive stress can stretch us - but we can all get overstretched

Not all stress is bad. We need positive stress to excite us so we take action and drive ourselves forward. In nature animals produce a stress response as a short term reaction to immediate threat - the body shuts down non-essential activities such as digestion and releases a surge of chemicals such as adrenalin to enable the "prey" to engage in "fight or flight". The problem with humans is that unlike other mammals we produce a stress response for both real and imagined threats. We can end up on permanent stress alert because of the perceived sense of threat we create in our brains. As a result of this many of us may be chronically stressed or suffering from continuous low levels of stress - a bit like living with the house alarm on all the time!

Many of us factor in this constant sense of stress or anxiety as something we can live with or something that just comes with the territory of 21st century living.

Research suggests that ongoing stress is harmful for our minds and bodies and links it to many modern diseases such as high blood pressure and heart disease. Stress doesn't cause disease but it weakens our defences and puts much of our energy into being on high alert. No wonder anxiety and depression seem to be increasing.

We don't have to tolerate living with chronic stress. We can choose to control and use our stress responses to our advantage.

Relaxation and stress management techniques can help us learn to regulate and switch off this alarm system. But it takes practice! Fifteen minutes a day could make a big difference to our mental and physical wellbeing.

Stress Management

Stress is a normal physical, mental and emotional reaction to events which we percieve as threatening or overwhelming. It is an adaptive evolutionary response to our environment and can be both positive and negative. Recently almost two thirds of Americans surveyed by the American Psychological Society said that they expected to seek help for stress at some point in their lives.

Positive stress drives us to exert ourselves and push our boundaries.
Negative stress is when we tip over the other side. This sort of stress can be become chronic and has been linked to many of the most prevalent modern diseases such as heart disease and some cancers. Studies suggest that chronic ongoing stress releases hormones into the body that if not dispersed can weaken our immune systems.

The bad news is that much of the way we live today can contribute to raised levels of stress.
The good news is that we can do a great deal to avoid, minimize and manage our stress. There are clinically proven methods of stress reduction which are easy to implement and do not require any elaborate equipment, expense or training.

We just need to believe that being stressed is bad for us and that we can choose to do manage our stress.

First we need to understand just how our stress response works. Once you understand how our stress response gets switched on it becomes easier to see how we can start to learn to switch it off or at least control it