But what is stress. I don't feel I'm 'stressed', though not entirely sure what it would feel like anyway :-/
These are my views alone, based on personal experience.
Stress is excessive anxiety and can manifest itself in various ways. The common symptoms include, headaches, tiredness, lack of interest, palpitations, panic attacks, churning stomach, sleeplessness, worry and so on. Essentially, what is happening is that the body becomes sensitized and produces too much adrenalin and other chemicals associated with the natural fear response.
Whilst exercise does of course help, it is not the cure, since one needs to rid the body of the excessive response to relatively small events which a non-stressed person would barely notice. A stressed person might for example become excessively angry with the "loud" noise of a neighbour's lawnmower, where others nearby might not even notice any noise at all.
There are some very popular self-help books (three, IIRC) by an Australian doctor, Claire Weekes, who explains that the way to overcome stress is to face it with acceptance and progressively reduce the cycle of fear. With practice, when one feels stressed, the reactions become far less pronounced, and the stress dissipates. In the absence of such "facing and accepting", however, the stress is exacerbated through the worry and fear of the symptoms themselves and a vicious cycle then ensues.
A friend of mine (a woman with a young family) suffered such enormous stress that, one day, she drove her car to a lane near Gatwick, took a taxi to the terminal, and calmly boarded a flight to Australia! She told no one, and caused widespread panic. When she was finally repatriated, she got the books (a set of three, IIRC) and the rest, as they say, is history. She and her family are just fine.
The root cause of the stress is relatively unimportant, although removing or reducing any known source of stress (such as financial or work worries) can, of course, be useful.
Essentially, though, no one can rid themselves of stress since living itself is stressful. Neither can you run away from it. However, once you understand it, it is no longer a bogeyman and you will be much healthier purely from being able to cope when symptoms of stress rear their ugly heads (which progressively becomes a far less frequent occurrence).
This link is to the author. Books are available through Amazon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_WeekesThese are purely my views. I hope, however, that they are of interest.
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Topic: What is stress? (Read 3730 times)