Why We Become Victim of Stress? How to Control Stress for Mental Health ?

Jim Carrey is one of the most influential comedians in the world. He Had already achieved the highest peak of fame, glory, and success in his life. But in an interview with 60 Minutes, the ace comedian shocked the world when he accepted that he spent a major part of his life dealing with depression. Soon after the failure of his second marriage, Carrey resorted to psychiatric help, who prescribed him Prozac. Though Carrey admits the antidepressant helped him initially. But, he also realized the ill effects for him to be on those antidepressants for a longer period. "I had to get off [Prozac] at a positive point," stated Carrey. "You want to get out of bed each day and say that life is good. That's what I did, although at times it became very hard for me. Carrey credit a healthy weight-reduction plan and natural dietary supplements for his progressed intellectual health.

"Stress" is playing a damaging role in our life during present times. For sure, life is not a bed of roses. Hence, it is quite obvious to have some kind of tension and anxiety in our life while fulfilling our personal, social responsibilities and while aspiring for materialistic gains in life. Isn't that right? 

So, it's quite obvious to have a certain level of tension and pressure. 

But, during this journey, if you start feeling emotional stress then definitely it is not a healthy sign.  An excess of stress can be an important reason for mental illness too. 

Problems related to mental health soon convert into mental illness when its symptoms start creating stress, affecting your ability to take correct decisions and take cognizable action.

The excess stress on your mind starts adversely affecting your physical health as well by way of blood sugar, blood pressure, and cardiac disease.

Reasons or Factors Causing stress : 

• Unhealthy diet: Foods can help tame stress in several ways. An unhealthy diet can reduce the levels of cortisol and adrenaline, the two key stress hormones,  that take a toll on the body over time. A healthy diet only can help you control stress by boosting up the immune system and subsequently lowering blood pressure.   

• Lifestyle Issues:  
  
  Yes..they are badly affecting the physical and mental health both. The modern urbane lifestyle clubbed with the digitization of the world has made us over-dependent on gadgets and now its totally impossible for us to live without them even for a single day. This creates irregularities in our daily routine.

• Sleep deprivation: The irregularities in lifestyle have completely damaged our daily routines and making us socially isolated. We have gone a step ahead by isolating us into the digital world. We are spending more time with Netflix, Hotstar, Youtube than in the social circle of friends and relatives. All these things have a direct impact on sleep deprivation.

• Financial problems:  Americans are increasingly anxious about money. Money is the no. 1 cause of stress among Americans, claims a study conducted by States Northwestern Mutual's 2018 Planning & Progress Study. Financial stress is a situation that occurs on account of financial or economic issues leading to anxiety, worry, or a sense of scarcity, and is accompanied by a physiological stress response.

• Loss of losing the social status on account of the failures in professional life: Needles to say people feel defeated in life if they lose jobs, fail to pay their bills on time.  This is mainly because of the society we live in, which measures the success of a person by the size of the house he lives in or the car he drives. All these things create a hidden fear in their mind.      

• Loss of loved ones:  Needless to mention, unexpected and sudden loss of loved ones is yet another reason creating emotional stress.
  
  
• Stress caused by environmental factors like excess of pollution, excess rain, tsunami, flood, pandemic also affects stress as these have a direct impact on personal, social, and financial aspects of life.  Failure to manage this and the adverse impact arising out of this results in emotional stress.    

• Bad relation among the family members: Many failed relationships in the family is yet another reason for stress. Conflicts in relationship and stress go hand in hand. A conflict in a relationship has an adverse impact on health in terms of blood sugar, cardiac issues initially, and then taking a toll on emotional stress. 

• Lack of best friends: Needless to mention that TRUE friends in social life are way more important than those on  Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. The element of social life or social circle plays a crucial in every aspect of human health.  Research shows that a strong social support system or stronger community bonds fetch us good quality of emotional and physical health and that is an important part of adult life.

Silent Symptoms of stress :

Stress affects you in more ways than one. Definitely, it starts affecting your mind, first. Then,  it interferes in your life and adversely affects your routine.

• Lack of concentration, lack of memory, changes in your eating habits is important among the symptoms of stress. 
• Makes you feel low on energy, tensed, and gives rise to bipolar disorder.
• Unpredictable behavior, getting too much emotional. It may make you cry, and sometimes in general for no specific reason.
• Geeting too much emotional or unpredictable aggressive.
• It creates irregularities on your work front. One will reduce the work quantum or totally stop it if undergoing a high level of stress.
• You get distracted easily and frequently. You try to leave under a hidden fear. The low energy level and lack of confidence can adversely affect your relationship.
• One starts isolating himself or herself. Slowly even starts thinking of suicide.
• Low immunity, headache, breathing problems, problems related to heartbeats, obesity along with hair fall, and skin disorders are some other important stress symptoms.
• Stress makes your life highly difficult and also adversely impacts your health.

How to manage & get rid of stress?   

To cure stress, we first need to understand this problem in depth. In today's competitive world, it is impossible to think of a person who does not experience stress in day to day life. This stress may be on account of personal, social, and financial factors. 

Most people have to undergo stress while dealing with the problems associated with these factors. Mental tension or emotional stress can hurt the mental and physical health of a person, leading to multiple mental and physical disorders. Hence, experts suggest the following actions as STRESS RELIEVERs to cure stress :

• Regular exercise: Exercise is the best medicine to manage stress.  This does not necessarily mean heavy workouts in the gym. If you are already pretty consistent in your exercise, then there isn't a better thing than this. But, otherwise, routined brisk walk, running, skipping, aerobics, sun salutations, and other fat burning and cardio exercise is a must to control your physical and mental health as well.

• Strictly avoid addictions towards alcohol, drugs, and caffeine:  A person needs to know his / her limits in everything. Alcohol may seem to give a quick sleep, but rather it is an obstacle in quality of the sleep especially the second half of the sleep. Thus, it makes you more drowsy the next day affecting your ability to concentrate on things.

• Healthy and balanced diet:  A healthy, balanced, and nutritious diet helps in boosting your immune system normalizing your blood pressure.  It quickly controls the stress-causing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that make an adverse impact on stress levels.

• Prioritize your day: Following a routine to perform your daily task is the most important factor to control stress. When you follow a routine and complete your tasks accordingly,  it creates positive vibes in your body and mind. It sends victory signals to your brain that further create positivity and feel-good factor in you.

• Try finding some opportunities in life's challenges you are facing. The law of attraction does play a crucial role when you are low on emotions. You need to think positive and need to do logical planning to find out the opportunities from among the challenges.

• Find ME TIME: Take a break from your routine and spend time with your inner self.

• Meditation or Breathing Exercise for mental peace: Deep breathing can help powerful negative emotions feel a little less intense, and even help some people resist the urge to speak to themselves negatively. By fully expanding your lungs and slowing things down, you activate parts of your brain and nervous system that calm your body and mind.

• Be vocal and speak out on things that trouble you emotionally: Recollect those days when a friend or a relative was low on emotions and came to you to seek help from you. Do you recollect how you supported them?  How did you feel when your advice helped them beat stress or depression? Think about how it might have felt for them to receive your kind words. The next time you feel discouraged or bad about yourself, try talking to yourself in the same way you’d talk to your family or friends. See if you can feel the difference. Usually, it’s easier to show understanding and kindness to others. If you speak to yourself with that same compassion, it might start to change the way you think about yourself and the world around you.

• Accept the emotional symptoms and get consultation through experts: When you’re sad, anxious, or angry, it’s normal to want to feel happier as soon as possible. But taking the time to recognize your emotions—even the negative ones—can help you understand and manage your feelings. Practice accepting your emotions as temporary, and see if that makes your feelings easier to handle.

• Identify distressers like reading, walking, listening to music, spending time with a friend, playing with pets, rhyming, gardening, cooking, interior decoration. Do practice things that give you relaxation when you feel stressed. Rather make it a habit to imbibe them in your routine. 

• Massage for stress: Studies conducted revealed that massage is the best therapy to control stress, anxiety, muscle tension, and pain. It is always recommended to treat yourself with a massage at regular intervals, especially when you are stressed.

Conclusion : 

Stress Management is a continuous and ongoing activity. As a result, the stress relievers discussed above need to be practiced 24/7. In fact, we need to make them a part of our life as these are mainly related to our lifestyle modification. It's Okey, if you had a cheat day, skipped meditation sometimes, had picnics, and parties for a couple days. But, soon after that pull up the socks and get back in action. Life is beautiful and makes the most of it. Do not waste it under stress. Be cheerful and say hello to life. What say?

Please comment below. Will be happy to hear your thoughts on ways to live a de-stressed life all throughout.