The Causes Of Stress

• Stress helps to focus your attention on something.
• Too much stress can overwhelm you.
• Learn the major causes of situational stress.

In today’s busy world, stress has become an unavoidable part of life for many people.

This stress may be caused by unsatisfied primary feelings (internal stress), the environment you are in (external stress) and/or learned patterns of stress that you have picked up from people around you (such as family or friends).

Listening to your body when you are feeling stress is therefore very important, because by ignoring it, you will only cause yourself more stress later on. 

When you begin to experience more stress you may then turn to a distracter (such as drugs, alcohol, entertainment etc…) in an attempt to escape the painful feelings you are feeling. This of course, will lead to even more stress.

Since we have already discussed some of the ways you can reduce or eliminate your stress that comes from your unsatisfied primary feelings (internal stress), in this article we are going to look at how stress can be caused by your situational environment.

This simply means the things that happen to you in your life. For example, your situational stress may be related to your job, because at times you feel overwhelmed with the amount of work you have to do.

Or perhaps you feel stress because you have a family to look after, but at the same time have other commitments you must attend to?

Whatever your stress is caused by, your feelings of stress can be greatly reduced by listening to the way you feel, and then responding appropriately to it.

Note : To read more about how stress can come from unsatisfied primary feelings, see the “Understanding Your Feelings” section here.

The Meaning Of Stress

Stress is your body’s way of telling you that if you don’t get something done, something bad might happen to you.

Stress therefore provides you with motivational energy so that you can do what needs to be done, and avoid the negative consequences of not doing it.

In this way stress can actually be very beneficial, because it focuses your mind on something thereby increasing the likelihood you will take action upon it.

The trouble however is that stress also has many harmful effects on the body, and whilst it can motivate you into taking action, too much stress can have the opposite effect.

Therefore one of the most effective ways to manage your stress, is to prevent yourself from experiencing it in the first place. As with all our feelings, this is done by first examining your perspective of the situation.

Note : To read more about how stress affects your body, see the following article :

“Effects Of Stress On The Body“

Examining Your Perspective

Let’s have a look at a few examples to demonstrate this. If you are feeling stressed because you feel like you have more things to do than you have time, ask yourself, “Do I really have as much to do as I think?”

You may discover that you actually don’t have that much to do, and so will immediately reduce your level of stress.

You might then discover that your stress came as a result of poor time management or a lack of organisation, which if you were to remedy, could get rid of your stress.

Or perhaps your stress came as a result of you over-reacting to a situation, by imagining things to be worse than they actually were?

Alternatively you may discover that your stress genuinely comes from a heavy workload, and therefore you would benefit by prioritising your work starting with the most important tasks.

Whatever you discover as a result of examining your perspective on the situation, the important point to remember is that by carrying out this step, you are giving yourself the best chance of reducing or eliminating your stress because you are going directly to the cause of it.

Without addressing the root cause your feelings of stress will become increasingly more painful, which may then cause you to seek out a distracter to distract yourself from those feelings.

Whilst this may appear to provide some short term relief, in the long run, it will only may your stress worse.

The Power Of No!

One of the things which can make situational stress worse, is the inability to say “no” when someone asks you to do something.

Sometimes this is because we want to feel useful or needed, and helping other people allows us to fulfil those needs.

Whilst other times, it may be because an authority figure (such as a manager) asks us to do something, which we fear if we don’t do will result in a negative consequence.

In both cases, the inability to say no often comes as a result of low self esteem, a fear of rejection or a fear of conflict.

For example, you may feel that if you don’t do something someone asks of you, then they won’t like you. Or alternatively, you may think that the more things you do for someone, the more they will like you.

However the reality is that the more you do for people, the less likely they are to like you. This sounds like a strange thing to say, but it’s true.

If you continually do everything someone asks of you, eventually they will take you for granted.

And if they do like you, it will be for what you do for them, rather than for who you are. As soon as you stop doing things for them, your illusion of friendship will quickly disappear.

Fear Of Conflict

When it comes to a fear of conflict, again this tends to be rooted in low self esteem and a fear of rejection.

Since most people desire to be approved and accepted by those around them, we will go to great lengths to avoid conflict. However many times, this comes at the expense of your own needs, wants and desires.

In order to learn to start saying no, you need to work on improving your self of self esteem and self acceptance. This will not only make you feel better, but allow you to live a better life.

Habitual Stress

So far we have looked at several different types of situational stress; your perspective on a situation, poor time management / organisation skills and not being able to say no.

However sometimes the stress we experience has little to do with what’s going on around us, and we just seem to feel stressed all the time.

This type of stress is known as habitual stress, and is what we shall explore in the next article.