Stress: Causes and Effect

Edited: Israr Hasan

Date:  Jan. 10, 2016

If you’re like most of us, you’re feeling stress from environ and its circumstances in your life.  Sometimes the stress we face feels unbearable.  But even daily stress can take a toll. Medical doctors warn us that stress is a killer.  It’s a risk factor for heart disease, strokes and many other diseases. With the impact stress can have on our lives, it’s important to have scientific as well as spiritual perspectives on how to cope with it.

Facing a Challenging World.

How would we describe the world we live in today?  Challenging, fast-paced, dangerous, unstable, corrupt and immoral. What are the results? Stress! We can find ourselves feeling anxious and apprehensive about how the challenges of the world will affect us personally, leaving us stressed out.

A number of people were asked to write down some of the things that cause stress in their lives.  Here are a few responses.

“The most stressful things for me are dealing with my health issues, paying bills and feeling worthless because I can no longer do what I used to do.”

“I tend to worry over a matter. What if this happens or what if that happens, or how can I solve this? So I worry over unending problems—real or not real—the job status, money, debts, anger that comes at times.”

“I take on things that I feel I can’t handle.  I don’t know how to say “No’ and say, ‘that’s too much for me right now.’ I stress over everything!”

“It is very hard for me not to be able to please everyone.  This causes stress in my life.”

So where do we turn first for help?

How to reduce stress?

Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are good, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—follow and do these.

When negative experiences and situations are coming at you and it seems overwhelming, stop for a moment, take a deep breath and focus on something lovely and good.  Overcoming stress starts with the ability to control our thoughts and feeling. We need to focus on the positive, uplifting things in life.

Every test that you have experienced is the kind that normally comes to people, and there is no stress that cannot be endured by human endurance.

Some Tips to Overcome Stress.

This list gives you some practical guidelines to appy in our own personal situation.  Some of these helpful tips are from ‘Helpguide.org.’

Look through this list, pick three tips you fee could help you this week and try them out.  Next week you might want to pick one or two more ideas to try.

·       Shorten your “to do” list by removing the “should” and keeping the “musts”.  Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the listor eliminate them entirely.

·       Learn what is really important in life and set those things as your priority.

·       Learn to delegate to others when you can. Read the story of the advice Moses received from his father-in-law Jethro in Exodus 18:13-24.

·       Do not say or do things that consistently irritate someone.  Know when to be tactful and respectful about certain subjects.

·       Express your feelings instead of bottling them up.  If something or someone is bothering you, communicate your concerns in an open and respectful way.

·       Be willing to compromise your wishes (not values) if compromise will help solve the problem.

·       Look at the big picture. Get things in perspective. How important will it be in the long run? Will it matter in a year? Is it reall worth getting upset about? If not, focus elsewhere.

·       Connect with other people, especially positive people.  A strong support system will help shield you from the effects of stress.

·       Set aside rest and relaxation time in your daily schedule. Don’t allow other thngs to get in the way.  This is your time to recharge your batteries.  Meditte on spiritual things. Listen to melodious  music. It’s amazing what ten minutes of that can do for you.

·       Make time every day for leisure activities that you enjoy.  Take a walk; smellthe roses; laugh. The act of laughing helps your body fight stress in a number of ways.

·       Exercise regularly and incorporate healthy practices into your lifestyle—eating well, getting adequate sleep and reducing caffeine or sugar intake.

·       Practice good time management.  Setting your priorities right includes, “making the most of your time”, especially making sure you make time for family and friends for building a good relationship.

·       Living by a budget. So many people struggle with financial problem. Develop a budget within your means and live by it.

Pick out several of these items to try this week and in the coming weeks.  You may be pleasantly surprised at how your stress level goes down!

Physicians and psycho-therapists have devised Stress Management system. It refers to the wide spectrum of techniques aimed at controlling a person's levels of stress especially chronic stress for improving everyday functioning.

Stress in the workplace is a common phenomenon throughout the world in every business. Managing that stress becomes vital in order to keep up job performance as well as relationship with co-workers and employers. For some workers, changing the work environment relieves work stress. Making the environment less competitive between employees decreases some amounts of stress. However, each person is different and some people like the pressure to perform better.

Salary can be an important concern of employees. Salary can affect the way people work because they can aim for promotion and in result, a higher salary. This can lead to chronic stress.

Cultural differences have also shown to have some major effects on stress coping problems. Eastern Asian employees may deal with certain work situations differently from how a Western North American or a European employee would.

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