How stress can effect our lives

Stress can affect us in many ways

Stress can affect us in many areas of our lives. It can adversely affect our health to such a degree as to either cause death or be a major contributor to death. It can also affect us in many more ways such as

• Increase wear and tear on the heart and other internal organs
• Gradually wear down our immune system
• Can adversely affect our relationships and our other normal functioning
• Drain the person of their vital energies and lead to a worn out feeling
• Can affect our work

However we should also bear in mind that a little stress can be actually good for us. It can place a little pressure on us in order that we perform at a more peak level. It can also act as a challenge to us, and give us more focus, and ultimately be partly responsible for successful achievements in our lives, which may not have been accomplished without a small degree of stress.

So, stress can also

• Act as a motivator to us and can enable us to perform at higher levels of achievement
• Keep us motivated in our lives by offering us challenges
• Keep us more alert and motivated to adapt and grow in our lives

It's not so much that stress is always bad. What is more important is the level of stress that we experience in our daily lives. If stress (especially high levels of it) is frequently present in our daily lives, that in general is bad for us.

A little stress can be good for us

However, if stress is experienced only from time to time, and in such a way that we are able to relieve the stress by action, then this can actually be good for us.

The key is the frequency of the stress levels, the degree of stress experienced, and also whether we have some control over the causes in order to reduce the stress in a timely and effective manner.

Stress without action

When an external stressor causes stress in the body, the very act of physical exercise in either fight or flight, helps reduce or use up some of the reactions/hormones in the body.

However, in modern situations, often our external stressors do not lead to a fight or flight, or any physical activity, so the reactions which happen in the body are not let go off, nor are the hormones flushed out of the body quickly.

So our modern stress can be much more destructive than the age old fight or flight situations.

Health

The response to stress is activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which includes a release of adrenaline into the blood system, which in turn produces many changes to the body??s functioning and vital organs.

In general our bodies are well able to manage these changes when they happen infrequently and these changes can keep the body tuned up and give a good workout to the bodies response to stress.

However, if the body is subjected to long periods of stress, or if the person can do nothing to escape from the stressful situation, very often secondary stress reactions set in. It is this long term or chronic stress that causes damage to the body.

This can affect our immune system and weaken it, leaving ourselves open to attack by bugs, which we would otherwise have been able to fight off.

Symptoms of stress

The following is a list of common symptoms of stress.

• Headaches
• Insomnia
• Poor energy levels
• Stomach cramps associated with diarrhea and/or constipation
• Irritability
• Poor concentration
• Inability to relax
• Emotional outbursts
• Anxiety
• Depression

General wellbeing

How we feel each day is affected by whether we are constantly stressed or not.

When we feel stressed this can prevent us from enjoying life and experiencing the feel-good factors, which should be part of every day living.

This can make life appear meaningless and lead to depression. Or it can cause one to spend one??s time running here and there, not on top of things, having no time for oneself.

Relationships

Stress can be both caused within relationships and can also affect relationships greatly. If one partner is over stressed, they can react unreasonably to the other person and be quite difficult to deal with.

This can act like a chain reaction whereby the stress the person is under causes them to behave badly with their partner which can lead to more rows and arguments. These in turn can lead to more stress within the relationship for both parties.

Secondary reactions of being stressed

Sometimes people turn to alcohol or other drugs to help them deal with stress. This can develop into a problem in itself, and can increase the deterioration of the person and actually increase the amount of stress for that person in the long run.

Projecting our samskaras

Stress can affect our whole outlook on life and also affect the world around us, or at least affect the world which we perceive around us.

An example of this is when we may be reading a book and subliminally hear thunder in the distance. This distant sound may be too low for us to consciously perceive the sound and we may continue reading our book unaware of the approaching storm. However, our unconscious mind has registered the sound and produces an anxious feeling state inside us, in order to prepare the body for action.

This anxious state inside then begins to bubble towards the surface of our conscious awareness.

However, when it reaches the surface of awareness it may then attach itself to some other thoughts or samskaras which we carry with us.

We may have a tendency to have a fear about a certain area. This anxious feeling may then awaken that ??lightly sleeping?? fear, and accompany that fear into consciousness. This fear may then give rise to habitual thoughts relating to that fear. So our attention may be drawn from our reading to notice that a dog may be barking outside and we may wonder whether a wolf is approaching (if a fear of wolves happens to be one of our habitual fears).

The body begins to ready itself for action. The thoughts which we have experienced have been created from a combination of our habitual fears and also the feeling state which arose from the unconscious perception of the approaching storm.

In a similar way, if we experience stress in our daily lives, very often the feeling sensations which accompany the stressed state, can give rise to thoughts which are associated with these anxious feelings.

Thus we project even more ??doom and gloom?? and ??monsters in the dark?? onto our outside world.

In this way stress can involve letting oneself get worked up about something. If one can stay attentive to the feeling states and the thoughts, and also be aware of our habitual thoughts and fears, one can become aware of this mechanism in action. By becoming aware of this is the first step in learning how to drop this reaction.

Ways to learn to reduce and manage stress

One excellent way to learn how to reduce stress is to attend a week or week long course in a form of yoga which ideally suited to stress reduction, relaxation and inner awareness.

Satyananda Yoga

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