Stress, good and bad, affect us all. Chronic stress can drain your body physically and emotionally, which can have horrible effects on your body. The body physically reacts to stress. In a way, the fight or flight response shuts down everything you don’t need at that moment. You retain your bladder, you stop digesting, you stop salivating.
Remember in high school right before a big test, and you can think about nothing but that test? When you wouldn’t eat, drink or sleep, this is when your body is in sensory overdrive.
People need to learn ways to help cope with and adjust to the differences in life. A decent support system at home with friends and family is a good start. Be sure to have the right kind of people around you. If iron sharpens iron, then hanging with people who cope in a negative fashion, i.e., drugs and alcohol, could push one to do the same. The maintenance of health is very important, and many feel better every time they exercise; it clears their thoughts. These are the primary prevention to stop anxiety before it even begins.
Everyone has attacks though, where we go into a frenzy about work, projects, our social life, and our home lives where it all just becomes too much, and we break out into an abnormal stress response. At this moment, either you consider it an isolated incident, or if this is recurring, find help at your local doctor’s office to help you find the medicine needed to keep a level head.
Seeking help early can help one stay away from a plethora of problems. Asthma, heart disease and even cancer are all a result of chronic stress.
Compassion stress for any professional where they must care for another is very real. Many people going to work start out wanting to make a difference in people’s lives and make people happy, but it gets exhausting as time goes on. Being around all that pain and suffering and people’s problems all the time just gets to you, and many times you eventually stopped taking care of yourself. People became grouchy with all the stress, and before you know it, they don’t care anymore. In these moments, it is important to step back, remember why you started, and even take a day or two off if you have to get your mind right.
With all the problems of modern-day life, it is important to care for one’s self first and foremost. Like a car, if you commit to daily and weekly upkeep now, it can save loads of health problems in the future.
Jonathan Frederick RN, BSN
Blanchard Valley Hospital
Medical, Oncology
