Are you stressed out?

Tweet

Despite decades of studies on stress management, tension and burnout are still major problems for modern urban dwellers, both mentally and physically. Though there is wide consensus among professionals that stress causes illness, it is much less clear how much damage it does us. Part of the problem is that stress levels affect people differently. A few have learned how to shrug off stress with little thought – or much more than they realize – but for others even minor frustrations cause them to go to pieces. Nevertheless, some aspects of the illness seem clear. As with most health-related issues, a good diet and low alcohol and tobacco intake make it easier to manage stress; intense exercise is particularly helpful. Being able to concentrate on some project, perhaps a hobby such as painting or playing a musical instrument, is also very useful, if it is unrelated to the stress-causing activity. But, most valuable of all is developing the ability to step outside oneself, put everything in proper perspective, and have a good hearty laugh! javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$cphMainContent$lbStart','') start discussion It doesn’t make any difference about a person’s job, or what the particular cause of the stress is – the one who suffers the most stress is the one who doesn’t realize how much stress he is under. The strong, silent type – the doggedly stubborn – the robot on autopilot? – these are the ones who are most apt to break down. Many times, they engage in obsessive behavior as an unconscious means of stress relief, but such behavior merely exacerbates the problem. The ones who deal with the problem most successfully are, first, the ones who realize there is a problem and, second, actively take steps to manage the stress effectively. In “the good old days” many problems probably existed that were either taken for granted of for which no adequate vocabulary existed in order to discuss them. I’m sure that just as many people suffered from stress – due to family situations, economics, death and illness, and so forth – but thought that it was “just life.” It wasn’t until professionals began to consider stress to be an illness, not just an ordinary condition, that they began to learn how to control it.