The Truth about Stress and Anxiety

Even though beheading and duels have long expired its use as a means of effectively ending an argument, today’s supposedly more civilized generation seem to experience more stress and anxiety compared to their predecessors.

Stress Defined

The word stress can be used to refer to a number of situations and emotions. It can be a range of emotions or behavioral-body reactions like high blood pressure and sweating that are caused by a particular stimulus. The cause can be either positive or negative. A job promotion, for instance, is generally something to celebrate but it may cause a person to stress about his future responsibilities. And of course, pressing financial demands will always cause people to stress about ways to come up with more money. Stress is used often with the word strain as well; in such cases, stress refers to the problem or situation at hand while strain is used to describe the various mental, emotional and physical reactions one has towards the situation.

Causes of Stress

There are three possible causes for stress. First, it can be caused by external sources like the need to relocate to a new state or devising new strategies for the latest product of your company. The second cause deals with frustrations, threats, conflicts and any other situation that causes inner turmoil. Lastly, stress can simply result from having to experience a traumatic event in your life.

Signs of Stress

People with stress are often found to display the following reactions or indications: nervous tics appearing in their eyelids, restlessness, becoming easily startled, talking faster or almost babbling, having poor memory, lacking energy to move or do something simple like eating or watching TV or becoming either excessively preoccupied or vigilant about a particular object, person or situation.

Stress and Anxiety: Anxiety Defined

Anxiety on the other hand is a medical condition that it is often linked with stress. When a person is diagnosed to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD, this means he tends to worry uncontrollably about anything and everything. GAD can impair an individual’s ability to make decisions and lead a relatively normal life. The effect of GAD on a person’s life varies, depending on the individual’s psychological makeup and the issues he is concerned with. Common symptoms include but are not limited to muscle tension, jumpiness, sweating, cold clammy hands, nausea and at the very worst, even diarrhea.

Understanding the Numbers behind Anxiety

Due to the hectic pace of life nowadays, it’s no wonder that anxiety disorders are considered the most common form of mental illness, being suffered by 18% of the adult population of the United States. Statistics further show that women are more probable to suffer anxiety attacks rather than men.

Small but Terrible

A study conducted at the University of California revealed that it’s mostly the little things of life instead of the big bad ones that truly cause people to feel stressed or anxious. Although people should feel worry about retaining their calm and their ability to think clearly during emergency situations, they should also be equally worried about maintaining their cool when they feel stressed about something as little – and as irritating – as heavy traffic congestion.

Although stress and anxiety are part of mostly everyone’s lives, they do not have to enjoy permanent resident status in your bodies. Know that just by finding more reasons to smile everyday, you’re already able to reduce the stress and anxiety levels in your body.

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