How is Stress Affecting your Quality of Life?

Stress is a recognized cause of 80% of today’s illnesses – so what are you doing to mitigate the risk of chronic stress in your life? 

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” Marcus Aurelius
The choices we make, how we define success and how we relate to stressful situations affect our physical, mental and emotional health. 

Stress Response

We each have a particular carrying capacity – or load we can bear without straining our reserves. That carrying capacity is affected by a complex set of factors and conditions that change over the course of our lives, increasing or decreasing our risk. When our carrying capacity is exceeded, our body’s physical and mental alarm bells go off.

Life and workplace stressors affect different people in different ways. Short term stressors boost the immune system, while chronic, long-term stress suppresses the immune system – a depleted immune function leads to illness and disease. 

So, What is stress?

Our experience of our body’s fight, flight or freeze response to stimuli whether internal (feelings, perceptions, beliefs) or external (temperature, sound, aggression) is how we understand stress.

Primary stress mobilizes the body’s energies and you experience an instantaneous surge in heart rate, blood pressure, sweating, breathing, metabolism and a tensing of muscles. 

Secondary stress can be experienced as good and is often experienced in response to a situation you’ve chosen like a performance, sales presentation, wedding or an important job interview. While healthy and producing some anxiety, good stress can energize, motivate, invigorate and challenge us

If bad stressors persist over time your body will release and consume sugars and fats, negatively affecting your immune system which can compromise your physical, emotional and mental well-being. 

Psychologically, you may experience anxiety, irritability, frustration, anger, depression, feelings of powerlessness and lack of control, a sense of being driven and pressure, depletion and exhaustion. 

Physical symptoms may include headaches (tension and migraines), eating disorders and digestive problems including over and under eating, diarrhea and constipation, sleep disturbances, mild fatigue, skin rashes, teeth grinding, muscular tics, aches and pains, chronic mild illnesses and sexual dysfunction. 

Positive Change starts with Choice

There is pain – the actual experience and then there is suffering – the story you tell yourself about the pain. While pain simply ‘is”, suffering is something we can learn to shift and reframe and in the process gain insight into our situation, patterns of response and make better choices. Coaching helps! 

Clearly, people need help with drawing boundaries, setting terms and conditions and defining themselves by their values (what matters to them), rather than by their workload, professional role or social status.

The capacity to innovate is a function of effective thinking. The right coaching relationship offers you the extra resources and support you need to see clearly and take inspired action to avoid and/or manage stressors as they arise. Schedule a complimentary discovery session and discover what coaching can do for you.