Stress Management And The Effects on Wellness

Stress Management And The Effects on Wellness

The effects of change reach into every crevice of life putting people more and more under pressure. Human biological evolution is lagging behind developments in technology and lifestyle. Physiological and psychological stress emerges as a result of a growing deficit between daily demands and coping resources. Today it is virtually impossible to avoid stress. Many try but they find that the avoidance strategies frequently generate more stress rather than reducing it.

There are two types of stress that people have to deal with. Eustress, which is positive stress, and distress, which is negative stress. For the purposes of this paper I'm going to neglect eustress and focus on the damaging effects of distress. Negative stress is the stress of losing, failing, overworking, and not coping. Distress affects people in a negative often harmful manner. We all experience distress from time to time. It is a normal, unavoidable part of life.

Stress results from failure to adequately cope with stressors. Stressors could be loud noise, uncomfortable air-conditioning, debts, ringing telephones, broken relationships, unrealistic dead lines, discouragement, fear, pain, an unruly walk jog class, and thousands of other things that we come across in a normal day. It is impossible to avoid stressors. The only totally stress free state is death! Stressors will always be there because we live in an imperfect and unpredictable world.

A hazardous pattern develops when we fail to recognize the signals that the body sends seeking recovery actions. The continuing stress build up eventually leads to stress overload and physical or psychological breakdown results. We need to assist our bodies to cope with stress because our natural biological stress-adjustments are not ideally suited to the demands of modern living. We need to develop special skills to deal with special stressors.

There are several different ways to assist our bodies with dealing with today's stressors. Everyday people use rest flotation, visualization and imagery techniques, yoga, time management strategies, oiging, and several other methods too rid their bodies of stress. I am going to focus on three techniques that are a little more popular then the ones I mentioned above. Massage, meditation, and simply having fun are easy and readily available to everyone. We see people everyday using these methods at home, in the work place, and even in public. They are very effective ways to relax.

Massage affects the body as a whole. It is known to increase the circulation of blood and flow of lymph.