The MentalHealthGuys, both of us being 30+ with several young children, and having bought property during the boom times only to realise negative equity in more recent year, we’ve had our fair share of stress. With everything that life throws at you with a new young family, bills, payments, work issues and relationship issues stress is inevitable. And that’s where we would like to start with our blog series – what exactly is stress?? – often nowadays all too often stress is mistaken as anxiety, mental illness, weakness or a disorder – in fact, stress is not considered as a mental disorder at all; merely it’s a fact of life that we will all have stress at some point. It was once said by a psychology consultant whom we know that stress is the weight on an imaginary lentil – the more stress you put on a human brain/body the more the lentil bends and deepens – it is the weight of this stress and the amount we can take that eventually if not managed correctly may cause that lentil to break and thus lead to a mental disorder such as panic attacks, depression, anxiety, or even commonly referred to as ‘nervous breakdown’, which by the way, as a phrase we don’t even feel appropriate.
According to Mental Health Ireland stress can be defined as the way we feel when we are under abnormal pressure – and this can be caused by work, financial, or relationship. Stress can be caused by a major change/event or built up by several minor issues. Sometimes when we realise that we are under stress it can often be too far gone.
Physically stress can cause short or long term affects – we can sweat more, breather faster, have more minor aches and pains; long term we can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke. According to the American institute of Stress there are over 50 signs of stress including, frequent headaches, trouble learning new info (which we’ve experienced ourselves and often discuss it), overreaction to seemingly petty instances, to more serious signs such as excessive gambling or increased drug use.
Stress, although a fact of life, when in excess it can harm us in lots of ways. The important piece here is to understand how we can reduce the effects of stress on our body’s/minds and how to reduce the instances of stress every day. Unfortunately we have all had that 3 o’clock slump, that urge to grab a coffee and a bar of chocolate or sugary sweets to get us through certain parts of our day or week. Again this sort of activity can actually increase our stress instances and drive us in deeper rather than reduce our stress levels.
According to an article on INC.COM there are a number of ways to reduce stress everyday and live more mentally healthier lives which at MentalHealthGuys we are trying out going forward – here are INC.COM’s top five:
1 – Get off social media – our smartphones have our attention so much during the day that apparently, we check our phones ‘56’ times a day – 56!! If we said we looked at our phones for at least a minute every time – this is almost an hour not to mention the endless time we spend on it on the buses/trains, even in our cars or just on our commutes – at MentalHealthGuys we’re actually convinced that during the next evolutionary process humans will have slight humps on the back of their necks from looking down at the little tiny screens we now watch movies/t.v. shows and write novels on.
2 – Take a break – just reading an article in the Irish times earlier in July that eating at our desks is bad for our health. 2/3rds of us do it and we’re putting both exercise and good posture on the back burner here. Presentism in these cases is a common reason for doing it – to show others that we are there – but remember the old saying – you won’t ever get the thanks you think you’ll get for sitting at your desk when you are ill in hospital or even worse dead. Moving away from your desk even for 10 minutes every 2 hours or so can help reduce your stress levels and bring an element of calmness; it also allows your mind to take in previous learned information and make room for more. Breaks are important.
3 – Take a walk / workout – It is proven across multiple studies that healthy bodies can help with healthier minds. In a recent article by the Mayo clinic exercise increases your overall health and wellbeing. Exercise pumps endorphins, creates a calming meditation in motions and can increase your mood in the positive sense – which all sound good.
4 – Talking – one of the most therapeutic relievers of stress is to talk through your problems – confide in a friend, speak to a relative or ask for help. Most people who ask for help usually get a response quite quickly; it’s a natural human reaction to help when asked – it’s also natural to feel we can do it on our own; sometimes it’s a bigger person who asks for help. If you were stuck with a query in work, couldn’t find your way on a street or ran into a problem you’d ask a friend or maybe even a stranger to help (in the case of directions – I do it all the time) so why not ask for help when we have seemed to go a little off direction when navigating everyday life.
5 – Write – this was no. 6 but we took it as our number 5 as it hits home for one of us. Writing stuff down at night or in the evening before heading to bed allows your brain to rest, review and regenerate. Do you ever get that you can’t sleep because stuff is racing in your mind. Well, get yourself a little notebook, and in the evening, write all of the info on your mind down. What this does is tell your brain – ‘’hey that info is in the book/over there so no need to try to think of it all tonight’’ – I can read it again in the morning – try it; one of our MentalHealthGuys swear by it and it may even allow you to have new improved thoughts about those which you wrote down.
In Conclusion:
Stress is a fact of life; we can have lots of instances and causes of stress. The key consideration here is that we do not allow ourselves to be overcome by stress so much so that it causes a downward spiral to mental health issues. It is important to address it early, talk about it and certainly not be in fear of speaking to people who may be able to alleviate some of the stress factors for us or just help us see a different perspective of the ‘stressful’ situation. And please don’t forget – if you feel you can’t get away from it, do talk to someone, reach out, there’s may be a solution you haven’t considered.
Till next time, look after each other and yourselves;
The MentalHealthGuys.