The effects of stress mirror how it affects our whole body. There are both physiological and mental issues associated with being stressed out.
Physical Effects of Stress
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The most common physical effect of stress is a headache possibly accompanied by a stiff neck. Your whole life just seems to be wrong when you are suffering from a headache. It's difficult to concentrate when you have a headache, and that makes it much easier for confusion to set in. |
In many cases, soothing music and guided imagery can play a role equal to over-the-counter medication. More information follows about the value of music therapy and guided imagery therapy; both are therapies you can do yourself.
Other physical effects mentioned briefly in the article, Stress Causes Physiological Changes, include increased heart rate, high blood pressure, impaired cognitive performance and increased body fat in the abdominal area. Any one of those four are reasons to seek good stress management techniques.
Of course, families dealing with brain injury go through a learning experience about impaired cognitive performance. In those cases, it's closely tied to memory problems. For those of you who haven't lived with brain injury, imagine your world turning upside down and nothing today being like it was yesterday. Do you think that would cause added stress in your life? You bet it does.
Mental Effects of Stress
Confusion is both a result of stress and also contributes to more stress. You sit and stare in wonderment at your computer screen not knowing what to do next. The project you have been working on for months now looks like something you've never seen before. |
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Stress causes mental fatigue. Those of you familiar with our book, Brain Injury Survivor's Guide, know that we devoted Chapter Six to what we called the Cycle of Response.
You can think of the Cycle as a ladder. The first rung is mental fatigue, followed by confusion, frustration, guilt and depression. Stress, by causing mental fatigue, puts you on the first rung of the ladder and, by causing impaired cognitive performance (confusion) moves you right up to the second rung.
You're tired, you're not thinking straight; that certainly makes it easy to move right up the ladder to frustration.
Stop the Cycle Right Now! When you feel yourself getting more and more frustrated, it's time to take action and back down the ladder. Why?
The next two rungs of the ladder, guilt and depression, will throw you into a serious funk. I recently took a health assessment for an insurance company. After answering the normal questions about allergies, diseases and family history there was a lengthy section about how I viewed life in general.
It was the insurance company's way of finding out where I was on the ladder. In fact, several questions related to being depressed now or in the past month, six months, year, or five years.
The insurance company offers about 50 or so newsletters that I could have subscribed to: one, of course, about dealing with stress. It's that important..
Let's take a look at some ways we can deal with it. The next article in this series is Dealing with Stress.
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