Stress is the feeling of being overburdened by mental or emotional pressure. Pressure in itself is not bad and it occurs in everybody’s life, but of a person feels unable to cope with it, it can turn into stress.
People have different capacities to handle stress and what can be stressful to one person could be easily handled by another. Stress can be experienced in relation to work, relationships, money or health problems. It can affect how you feel, think and behave and it is as much experienced on an emotional as on a physical level. The common symptoms of stress include:
When people experience stress they engage in activities which lead to reduction of the symptoms they experience. The maladaptive ways of coping with stress include drinking alcohol, smoking or overeating.Although this may lead to temporary reduction in the level of stress, the symptoms will always come back. In addition, such behaviours often lead to additional problems, which in turn contribute to an increase in the stress level.
Psychological therapy for stress is focused on helping people to learn adaptive ways of managing situations that cause stress as well as dealing directly with reduction of emotional distress and physiological hyperactivity.
