Why are we so stressed today?
The body’s stress mechanism is built to naturally generate a fight or flight response (and the third – freeze response) to any perceived threat, in order to aid survival and to protect us from danger to life. But if you’re pretty stressed on a daily basis, imagine the number of times your brain is processing D-A-N-G-E-R so frequently! A primitive body response which is built to protect us from harm to life as the body’s natural mechanism simply gets over-used in a person with high stress. As a result pretty much like any overused machine, your body is likely to experience fatigue, memory loss, disorientation and emotionally also see effects from stressful cognitions.
A number of growing clients especially from Corporate offices have come to us reporting sudden blankness or disorientation in memory with regular rehearsed tasks, thereby seeing impact to memory with long term stress, besides other symptoms like high frustration levels, decreased tolerance to different frustrations, increased agitation and “crankiness”, increased dislike for people or situations perceived as threatening to mental peace, increased avoidance behaviours to situations at work or in daily life, and increased anger problems.
A few questions you can run as your Checklist for stress indication include:
- Do you seek control often in your workplace or other trigger situations?
- Have you learned to stay “busy” failing to de-clutter, reorganize, re-prioritize and simplify tasks?
- Is your mind too preoccupied with tasks or trigger situations most of the times?
- Do you look for perfection in things you do?
- Do you fail at giving time to yourself doing nothing for a bit and not evaluating each and everything coming your way for a change?
- Do you fail trying to be ‘still’ for a moment?
If your responses were ‘YES’ to most of these questions, you may be experiencing stress!
Try to identify your rigid beliefs behind the questions you just answered. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Mindfulness Based De-Stress Techniques have been evidenced to work very well in reducing levels of stress and frustration and we at AltMindShift have been bringing this to many work groups across different set-ups with our ‘De-Stress Wellness Program’ designed for Corporate houses that see huge stress levels today. Life in general is hectic in the cities! And most of the Corporate giants in the West including Apple and Google have already implemented multiple Wellness & Mindfulness based EAP (Employee Assistance Program) systems to ensure employee stress management is set in place.
Here’s a simple few questions you can ask yourself to assess if your thoughts and stress beliefs are rational or irrational, owing to what you answered to the check list above and how high your subjective level of stress is:
- If I believe rigidly for example: ‘Yes, I need to be in control/ Yes, I look for perfection’ to be true, will it help me remain alive and de-stressed?
- Is this belief objectively true, and upon what evidence can I form this opinion? (It may very well be my own arbitrary rule I subscribe to!)
- Is my belief producing feelings I want to have?
- Is this belief helping me reach a chosen goal?
- Is my belief likely to minimize conflict with others or increase it?
For sessions on stress management and our Corporate De-Stress Employee Wellness Programs, you can contact us!