Anxiety is the much talked about issue these days. You will often see in your friend circle or when sitting in a family gathering, someone complaining about being stressed or suffering from anxiety. Stress is actually your body’s response to any external demand or threat.
As a result of high-intensity threat or expectation, whether it is real or your imagination, your body triggers a stress response. Anxiety is a reaction to stress. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) defines anxiety as a “persistent, excessive, and unrealistic worry about everyday things.”
While everyone experiences anxiety occasionally, it becomes a disorder when the problem occurs regularly and begins to interfere with your life, your work, and your relationships. The feeling of anxiety is directly related to your fight-or-flight response.
That is, you experience anxiety and its effects when you believe that you’re in danger. Your body may go through many sudden changes during an anxiety attack because it’s preparing to survive a perceived threat.
In small doses, it can help you cope with pressure and motivates you to achieve your goal. It helps you to stay focused and alert. The problem arises when you are continuously feeling exhausted and your body is always in emergency mode.
This situation affects both your body and mind in a negative way. The exact causes of anxiety disorders are unknown. Genes do play a part in developing an anxiety disorder, but stress, especially if long-term, is thought to be a common cause. This is why it’s so useful to learn how to manage stress to prevent or combat these conditions.
If you are stressed over an argument, to meet a work deadline, or you have financial issues, it triggers your stress system. Once this system is triggered, it becomes very difficult to shut it off. Stress can be due to overthinking, negative self-talk, life changes, financial issues, hectic daily routine, exposure to too much noise and pollution, etc. In the present demanding world, people get stressed out frequently.
This causes frustration all the time and can lead to serious health issues. Stress slows down normal bodily functions, such as the digestive and immune systems. Too much stress all the time makes you susceptible to heart attack and stroke. Stress is said to be the major cause of aging. Stress affects your brain making more vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and mental health issues.
Engaging yourself in activities like listening to music, taking a walk, exercise, writing, painting or gardening helps to divert your attention from worries and help to lift your mood.
Making good friends and having positive talks can trigger hormones that help in relieving stress. Kind words have great healing powers. A healthy balanced diet also helps in relieving stress.
If you want to get rid of stress, you need to adopt relaxation techniques like yoga, deep breathing and mediation, at once. They will help you to keep calm and boost your feelings of joy.
Feeling tired is one of the reasons for causing stress. Taking proper doses of sleep daily, helps you to stay fresh emotionally balanced and helps you to get rid of stress. Eating healthy food also helps. Yes! Take your fruits and veggies to stay stress-free.
by: Abeer Arashad
Tags: Stress Effects & How to Avoid Stress
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