What Makes Stress Unhealthy

What makes stress unhealthy?

Stress becomes unhealthy when it causes us to feel anxious or nervous, irritable, angry, and fatigued. This is different than the nervousness one feels when thinking about going on a date with a new person or that first day at a new job.  These are examples of acute time-limited stressors.  Afterwards, two organs of your body, the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland release Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ATCH) to turn off the stress response.  Stress becomes unhealthy when three types of stressors occur:

• Stressful event sequences.  These are longer term like the death of someone close to you.
• Chronic stressors.  Life-changing events without a clear end in sight.  Good examples are living in poverty, taking care of an elderly parent, or being severely injured in an accident.
• Distant stressors.  Events that happened in the distant past like abuse or wartime service.

If you are interested in assessing your lifetime stress exposure, the considering taking the STRAIN, or Stress and Adversity Inventory .

What Are the Health Challenges Related to Stress

The increased levels of cortisol can contribute to several health issues:

• Increased risk of osteoporosis.
• Increased insulin resistance that contributes to type 2 diabetes.
• Gastrointestinal issues like irritable bowel syndrome.  
• Weight gain.  
• Memory impairment.

                    This list covers many health concerns. 

Other effects are:

• Cardiovascular dysfunction.
• Altered emotions.
• Reproductive problems.
• Headaches

The increased fatigue becomes a serious barrier to engaging in the activities that help relieve stress.  Many of us don’t feel like we have the energy to help ourselves so we continue to feel worse.

How can your coach help?

A visit with your physician is where most of us would start.  Antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications may be needed in some cases and your doctor can help.  Therapy may also help so seek out a skilled professional.

A health coach may help improve your ability to self-regulate.  Self regulation is your ability to monitor and manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.  Starting with deep breathing exercises may be a good place to start.   This article,  Emma Seppälä, Christina Bradley, and Michael R. Goldstein, (2020, September 29). Research: Why Breathing Is So Effective at Reducing Stress. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/09/research-why-breathing-is-so-effective-at-reducing-stress, explains that in a study at the University of Arizona people taught a breathing exercise reported feeling more relaxed when presented with a stressful test.  

Becoming more mindful through the practice of meditation will help you increase your ability to monitor you emotions and responses.  Only five minutes of meditation state studies have shown to reduce the tendency to automatically react to a situation and reduce hypercritical thoughts.  Many of us wish we could stop feeling down on ourselves.  Perhaps this could help you.

Changing your mindset to a growth model where you are more persistent in the face of setbacks and embrace challenges could become a longer term objective.  Also you may benefit from cognitive restructuring.  The Stoics believe that harm is created by your own opinion.

“It isn’t the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgements that they form about them.” –

Epictetus