Stress Management Counseling

Learn How To Deal With Stress with Healthy Coping Skills.

Stress can be crippling. It hits you right when you need to toughen up and get things done. Your brain starts panicking, and your fight or flight response gets activated. What do you do? The logical answer is to get up and get going. To face the challenge and the demands and just push through it. You’ll feel better once it’s all over, so you better start acting on it, so it’s all over soon. But the brain is a complex system. Instead of taking action, you freeze instead and can’t do anything. You just wait till it all falls apart and face the consequences of your action later. Or not. Sometimes, you develop poor coping mechanisms and start drinking too much alcohol or doing drugs to forget about it all. 

We all have learn how to deal with stress at some point in our lives. Stress is natural. It happens. In fact, it is an integral part of evolution. It is stress that drives us to do, to get out of dire situations, and to create solutions. But sometimes, in the face of all these stressors, we crumble. When stress starts to affect your mental, emotional, and physical health significantly, it’s time to get help. 

Symptoms of Stress 

You will know when you’re stressed. The symptoms include physical, emotional, and behavioral manifestations such as:

• Migraine headaches
• Insomnia
• Acne and Breakouts
• Hairfall
• Irritability
• Sadness
• Feelings of overwhelm
• Nausea
• Stomach problems
• Nervous twitches
• Chest Pains
• Weight Gain
• High blood pressure
• Cramps
• Nausea
• Forgetfulness
• Restlessness
• Binge eating
• Drug abuse
  

According to the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America Survey for 2019, more than three-quarters of adults report physical or emotional symptoms of stress.  

Stress can be caused by both external and internal pressures such as loss of a job, divorce, work problems, financial problems, relationship issues, or the death of a loved one. How we react to these stressors defines our stress limits. We all respond to stress differently. Some respond better than others. Some develop better coping mechanisms; others don’t. These harmful coping mechanisms include excessive drinking of alcohol, emotional eating, stress shopping, drug use, and self-harm. These unhealthy coping mechanisms can further lead to other mental health issues such as addiction, anxiety, depression and sleep disorders, and even physiological issues such as hypertension, heart attacks, and sexual problems. 

How to healthily cope with stress?

There are plenty of ways to relieve stress naturally and healthily. When choosing a way on how to manage stress, it is crucial to find healthy and long term solutions instead of temporary band-aids. For example, going shopping may help alleviate your symptoms and make you feel better, but this can become a problem if you start spending too much and drain your bank account or get into debt. This can only lead to further stress! Click here to get more stress relief tips.

 Therapy and counseling are great ways to manage stress. Our therapists and counselors at ThoughtWise can create a tailored treatment plan to address the root cause of your stress, manage the symptoms, and develop better coping mechanisms. 

 Get in touch with our therapists and schedule an appointment for online or in-person counseling.