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Healthy Life /
Beautiful Mind /
Stress Management /
How to Fight Back When Stress Mounts
By Gay L. Goss, PhD, WHNP
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I’m totally stressed out. It’s the most common complaint I hear in the exam room. And it usually comes tucked between a tick list of symptoms I’m being asked to treat that day. Did you know that 90% of all healthcare provider visits are somehow related to high stress levels?
As you go about your day, things happen. The kids miss the school bus. You forget the notes for an important meeting. Traffic makes you late getting back home. You forget to defrost something for dinner. You catch a cold at the grocery store that sidelines you for a few days. What woman doesn’t typically have experiences like this from time to time?
Stress is what we feel when our body responds to physical, emotional or social challenges. And inside your body it goes something like this: Stress happens and a signal is sent to the brain—she’s stressed!
The sympathetic nervous system responds by releasing adrenaline, which increases the blood pressure and heart rate. This activates your fight or flight response. The pituitary gland then stimulates the hormone ACTH, and the adrenal gland releases cortisol. These hormones cause blood sugar, glucose, to divert from your muscles to the brain. Cortisol raises your blood sugar levels. And if this happens often enough, you experience the effects of what’s called chronic stress.
Initially, the effects of chronic stress seem manageable: headaches and decreased immunity that can lead to cold or flu-like symptoms. But left untreated, ongoing chronic stress can cause depression, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and even cancer in some cases.
Stress can also mask an underlying health condition, like diabetes, depression, arthritis, ulcers or high blood pressure, so it’s important to see your healthcare provider to make sure you don’t have a serious medical condition being complicated by stress.
While you will never be able to eliminate stress completely, there are three broad ways to change how you experience stress: Change your thinking, change your behavior and change your lifestyle. Sounds like a tall order, but your last frayed nerve may need it.
You can change your thinking by practicing responding to every situation with a positive outlook. It may feel odd at first, but with practice it can develop into a habitual response. Learn to enjoy the moment. Focus on your strengths and seek the positive. Try to learn from the stressful events. Take the lessons-learned approach to stressful encounters. Keep a stress journal for reflection. And don’t forget to adopt a little humor for stressful moments.
Change your behavior by setting goals. For most women, it’s really important to learn to say no. Prioritize what you want to accomplish in both small tasks and bigger life goals. Identify which part of home life and work life you enjoy most and dislike the most; then delegate what you can to others or outside help.
Change your lifestyle by seeking out the changes you want to see happen. Although change itself is stressful, taking the initiative to live healthfully will ultimately reduce your stress. Start with a complete annual exam. Be frank with your healthcare provider about the level of stress in your life and whether it seems to be increasing or decreasing. Ask for a referral to a mental health professional. It’s impossible to control stress, but we can watch for signs of increased stress and take steps to change its effects on our body and our health.
Am I living with ongoing stress?
How you experience stress is different from your relatives and friends. Each woman has her own threshold for what would constitute ongoing chronic stress. To determine whether you’re living with high levels of stress, ask yourself the following questions. The more yes answers, the higher the stress you’re living with:
