Learn 10 Important Steps to Rising Above Chronic Stress

Understanding Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is quite different from everyday stress and could be destroying your quality of life. Many times everyday stress is not all that bad, without it you or I wouldn’t necessarily be motivated to learn new things, take action or protect ourselves. Chronic stress is the response to emotional pressure suffered for a prolonged period of time in which an individual perceives they have little or no control. It involves an endocrine system response in which corticosteroids are released.

While the immediate effects of stress hormones are beneficial in a particular short-term situation, long-term exposure to stress creates a high level of these hormones. This may lead to high blood pressure (and subsequently heart disease), damage to muscle tissue, inhibition of growth, and damage to mental health. Certain levels of stress are beneficial in helping us to adapt to our environment and fuel our motivation to succeed. The stress that is a great concern is chronic stress, and if not properly understood with coping mechanisms in place will have detrimental effects on both your quality of life and your health.

Examples of chronic stress:

• Death of a loved one, close friend, or relative
• Physical, mental, or emotional abuse
• Trauma of an attack or witnessing a truly horrible experience
• Extreme change in lifestyle or physical abilities
• Toxic, unhealthy habits, activities, and experiences that have a detrimental effect on your life and your health
• Work environments such as emergency services

How Getting Professional Support will Help

If left unaddressed without counseling and recognition of how these events can affect you, left hidden and not communicated about with a trusted person. These events will wreak havoc on your emotional and physical health. With the help of counseling or life coaching, this will enable you to release these emotions, allowing your mind and emotions to heal, finding balance so that you can move past these events to continue building your life once again with purpose, health, and happiness.

Steps to Cope & Find Balance

Begins with understanding the brain, emotions, and body connection. Your body is hard-wired to react to stress in ways meant to protect you against threats from predators and other aggressors. Such threats are rare today, but that doesn’t mean that life is free of stress. You undoubtedly face multiple demands each day, such as:

• Dealing with daily workloads
• Finances
• Family
• Friends
• Previous programming and events

Your body treats these so-called minor hassles as threats. As a result, you may feel as if you’re constantly under pressure. But you can take charge and learn processes to help not only deal with these stresses but help to minimize the harmful effect on your body. You don’t have to let stress control your life.

Understanding Your Body’s Natural Stress Response

When you encounter a perceived threat — a large dog barks at you during your morning walk, for instance — your hypothalamus, a tiny region at the base of your brain, sets off an alarm system in your body. Through a combination of nerve and hormonal signals, this system prompts your adrenal glands, located atop your kidneys, to release a surge of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol.

Adrenaline increases your heart rate, elevates your blood pressure, and boosts energy supplies. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose, and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues.

Cortisol also curbs functions that would be nonessential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation. It alters immune system responses and suppresses the digestive system, reproductive system, and growth processes. This complex natural alarm system also communicates with regions of your brain that control mood, motivation, and fear.

When the Natural Stress Response Goes Haywire

The body’s stress-response system is usually self-limiting. Once a perceived threat has passed, hormone levels return to normal. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline levels, and other systems resume their regular activities. But when stressors are always present and you constantly feel under attack, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on.

The long-term activation of the stress-response system — and the subsequent overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones — can disrupt almost all your body’s processes. This puts you at increased risk of numerous health problems, including:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Digestive problems
• Heart disease
• Sleep problems
• Weight gain
• Memory and concentration impairment

Healthy Ways to Cope with the Stressors in Your Life

Why you react to life stressors the way you do is that your reaction to a potentially stressful event is different from anyone else’s. How you react to stressors in your life is affected by such factors as:

• Genetics: The genes that control the stress response keep most people on a fairly even keel, only occasionally priming the body for fight or flight. Overactive or underactive stress responses may stem from slight differences in these genes.
• Life experiences: Strong stress reactions sometimes can be traced to traumatic events.
• Neglect or Abuse: People who suffered neglect or abuse as children tend to be particularly vulnerable to stress.
• Exposure to violence & crime: The same is true of victims of violent crime, airplane crash survivors, military personnel, police officers, and firefighters.

You may well find that some of your friends seem laid-back about almost everything and others react strongly to the slightest stress. In many cases, this is due to how the stressful situations experienced have been dealt with. Learning to react to life stressors in a healthy way can allow you to have a positive response to the stressor.

Whereas if these stressful events are handled either by the use of drugs, not paying attention to eating whole foods, instead of eating a high consumption of processed, packaged or junk foods, 0r overconsumption of alcohol being reactive to an event, rather than stepping back and acting upon it when you are feeling less anxious. Stressful events are a fact of life. And you may not be able to change your current situation. But you can take steps to manage the impact these events have on you.

Click here for affirmations that will help you to develop a healthy mind & body.

10 Ways to Rising Above to Bring Balance & Harmony Back into Your Life

1. Eating a well-balanced diet — Eliminate baked, packaged, processed, and fast foods replacing these with fresh fruit, vegetables, lean meat, chicken, and fish.
2. Getting enough sleep — 6–8 hours per night. There is more to a good night's sleep than you can imagine.
   Developing positive habits, learning relaxation techniques and meditation techniques
3. Choosing healthy, positive friendships. Friendships that support you in a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Negative habits are easier to change when you have positive friends.
4. Develop a sense of humor, seeing the funny side — There is always a funny side, most of the time unless it is a terrible tragedy.
   Do not compare or measure yourself or your life to others; by all means, find mentors who are living a healthy balanced life to engage their techniques in your life.
5. Embrace your own individuality and find pleasure in what you have managed to achieve, no matter how small. Develop happiness within you, without relying on external sources of happiness.
6. Action: Be prepared to do whatever it takes that is honest, ethical, and reliable that will do no harm to you or others to achieve your life goals.
7. Set goals: Setting goals is a very important thing to do when it comes to making the changes that we want to make, no matter how small the goal is.
8. Understanding: By understanding why you are feeling angry, anxious, and stressed will help you to solve the problem.
9. Empathy: Remembering we may not be the only ones having a bad day. Plus we are not the only ones who have ever gone through this.
10. Forgiveness: A great mind balancer is “forgiveness” forgiving others for wrongdoing and also forgiveness of yourself. It doesn’t mean that you condone or accept the behavior. It gives each person the chance to change in a positive direction.

Chronic/Significant Traumatic Experiences

As mentioned earlier in this article, these experiences need to be spoken about and shared with people who are not going to feel sorry for them but have empathy. Allowing you to work your way through these emotional events to find peace and happiness within you, in positive and constructive ways that will bring balance back into your life. Some of these experiences as mentioned are:

• Loss of a loved one
• Physical or emotional abuse
• Moving away from family or friends
• Physical or environmental tragedies
• Injury or violent attack
• Accident or physical injury
• Major surgery

Childhood Traumas 

• An unstable or unsafe environment
• Separation from a parent
• Serious illness
• Intrusive medical procedures
• Sexual, physical, or verbal abuse
• Domestic violence
• Neglect

It is in your strength of wisdom & character to seek professional support. That will guide and empower you to — live your life in positive and constructive ways to bring happiness, health, healing, and vitality back to your life.

Read next: How valuing your self-worth will help you to move away from drama, toxic habits & people. Join our Founding Membership.