Stress is a complex condition, that impacts everyone at every age in life. The interesting thing is, we all experience it in different ways. Through increased awareness we can better understand our level of stress and determine how best to manage on a daily basis.
Stress is often “invisible” because there are no external indicators or red flags to say “I have stress.” And when you do have stress, there is no meter to measure the level of stress. Stress impacts people from many different walks of life in a variety of ways – some physical, some mental, and some emotional.
Stress is often mental and emotional, rather than physical. stress can be caused by many different things, but its not always obvious what those things are. Stress can build up over time (layers), and it can be hard to know when your at your limit. Stress can impact people in different ways, but its not always clear how or why. Stress can be a normal part of life, but it can also be a sign of something more serious. If you’re feeling stressed, its important to talk to someone about it. Stress isnt always bad, but it can be if you don’t take care of yourself.
The Ghost Body
You could see stress as a ghost that lives in your body, not for anything spiritual, but more to help explain how it exists but not visible. You could consider it with different degrees of complexity impacting how you operate, taking control of your life as it becomes more severe. Often, all without you knowing, the build up can be gradual and over an extended period.
The ghost body stress, continues to impact your life. You once felt well, but as time (years) goes on this, underlying load that you can not see begins to take hold. You will find yourself looking for answers, trying to determine what is causing your life to change, but due to the ghost nature of stress nothing is seen.
Right tools for the job
While I am not going to write too much about stress layers in this post, I will highlight the fact that you will never see stress unless you get the write tools for the job.
Like ghost busters, without the right vacuum to suck up the ghosts, you have no change of winning. The ghosts will continue to haunt you forever.
You need to find an approach that works for you, where you can identify what stress means to you in your life. And for most, it will be found best when you start to unwind things. Return your world to a more simplified state of living. We discuss this topic in great detail on this site so, please read many articles detailing how to identify what stress means in life.
You will find, that you might search for a very long time, and never easily know how and why you are stressed, its not until you begin to make changes, and really big changes in your life, the problems begin to appear.
Stressful Events
Stressful events don’t strike at random, as our own individual traits and circumstances can play a significant part in determining our levels of risk. Embedded within this is the notion that certain areas, or individuals with certain personal qualities, are more susceptible to certain forms of stress than others.
For example, those living in disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are at greater risk of experiencing violence, death of a child or divorce. While personality features such as neuroticism, unconscientiousness and disagreeableness also contribute to an increased chance of divorce for some reason.
Moreover, if a person experiences one form of particularly stressful event such as job loss then this could quite quickly lead on to other serious and worrying events such as loss of income or even moving away from home. In all cases it’s important to remember that we may be susceptible in different ways based on our own individual characteristics and backgrounds but there are still ways to prepare for and mitigate some forms of stress before they take hold.
Stress and Health
We all know that stress can negatively impact our health, but it may surprise you to learn just how serious the effects of unhealthy stress can be. Stress-related illnesses can range from common colds to major depression to fatal heart attacks. It’s not simply life stressors like getting married or losing a job that can increase our risk of getting sick; smaller everyday annoyances add up and have a collective, potentially dangerous effect on our physical and mental well-being.
Unfortunately, knowing about the potentially deadly consequences of high levels of chronic stress may just add even more stress to your life. However, it’s important to remember that some levels of positive stress are healthy and necessary for growth. Learning how to identify and manage your own harmful psychologically derived stress is key to protecting your health in the long run.
The Stress Meter
You can not go down to your local hardware store and pick up a stress meter, it would be great, but they don’t exist. Interestingly, its possible to build your own. It will take time, and you don’t need to purchase anything. It becomes a matter of understanding our mind and being able to read it from a different lens. I know this sounds crazy, but hang in there, continue reading through the site, and it will make sense.
Hang in there, as I say, you will be able to build the internal capability soon enough to know how and where you might be stressed. You will gain enough knowledge typically through unwinding your life to detect stress and understand how severe it is.
For now, remember, the force exists and its real in everyone. Its invisible, but can be found.