When you are faced with a highly stressful situation, you body reacts to the perceived threat with the "fight or flight" response. It either wants to stand and fight, or run for its life. Either way, adrenaline is released into your blood stream, and your heartbeat and respiration quicken.
Since you are physically unlikely to either fight or flee to reduce the stress, you may experience it in your body as irritability, an upset stomach, a headache, or a host of other symptoms. It weakens your defenses and may play a role in the development of high blood pressure, ulcers, heart disease, and possibly cancer.
When you are faced with a highly stressful situation, you body reacts to the perceived threat with the "fight or flight" response. It either wants to stand and fight, or run for its life. Either way, adrenaline is released into your blood stream, and
your heartbeat and respiration quicken.
Since you are physically unlikely to either fight or flee to reduce the stress, you may experience it in your body as irritability, an upset stomach, a headache, or a host of other symptoms. It weakens your defenses and may play a role in the development of high blood pressure, ulcers, heart disease, and possibly cancer.
It affects everyone. It's not a disease, it's a normal part of life and you can be sure that you will face many challenging situations in your life. In our fast paced society, you may find yourself in frequent fight or flight responses, due to work pressures, noise pollution, overcrowding, family obligations. You may react differently to these situations than your best friend depending on your ability to deal with the stressful emotions. If you have a strong emotional reaction to these stressors, you can turn little problems into major ones until life seems like a constant crisis.
You can't escape the stresses of life but with healthy coping mechanisms in place, demanding situations feel less threatening and the fight or flight reponse does not drive your reactions.
Psychotherapy can help you learn coping patterns to deal with stressful events. You cannot avoid the environmental factors that may trigger a stress reaction, but you can learn to adapt your lifestyle and behaviors, so that you reduce the number and frequency of stress inducing events, and respond differently to those that do occur. Having a better understanding of yourself and your emotional environment can preclude some of the harmful effects of stress.
Please give me a call and let me help you to establish new behaviors to counteract life's pressures and deal with them in a healthier, more balanced manner.
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