Posted by admin on Mar 18, 2012 in Counseling and Therapy | Comments Off on Stress and your Health
Many patients come to therapy because they are “stressed out”. In other words the problems that life has thrown at them are greater than the skills they have for dealing with problems. That difference creates the feeling of being overwhelmed by one’s circumstances or “stressed out”.
There are many events that are acknowledged universally as stressful such as natural disasters, life crises, unanticipated changes and daily hassles. However the meaning we assign to an event and the extent to which we interpret it as interfering with our ability to meet our goals, determines how stressful we will experience the event. If we are stuck in a traffic jam and have no particular place to go we will find it irritating, if we are stuck in traffic when we are on the way to an important appointment we will feel stressed.
Stress is a normal part of life; chronic heightened levels of stress however can cause health problems. Our brains interpret stress as a threat, therefore when we experience stress our brain sends out a signal preparing our bodies for the fight or flight response. In physiological terms this means that our heart rate increases, our breathing speeds up, muscles tense up, our adrenal gland releases adrenaline and norepinephrine into the blood stream as well specific hormones called corticosteroids which release fatty acids which give us energy. Thus our brain prepares our bodies to respond to the perceived threat which is triggering the stress response.
If the stress continues the biological processes on the body cause levels of epinephrine to decrease while levels of corticosteroid increase, levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine in the brain can decrease which results in depression. These biological processes can decrease our natural ability to fight off infections which in turn leads to an increased vulnerability to illnesses.
Therapy can be helpful in teaching effective stress management strategies which can increase an individual’s ability to fight off disease. With therapy an individual can learn coping skills that will enable her/him to feel more in control, become more optimistic about their ability to manage a particularly challenging set of circumstances and to more effectively indentify and use social support networks. All this adds up to improving the individual’s level of health.
For more information go to the following websites http://www.cfids.org/cfidslink/2006/stress1.pdf, http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=15639&cn=117, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt44uDsV8PE