Understanding the Key Symptoms of Emotional Stress:
Let’s explore what Emotional Stress is, what factors play a role in identifying that you may be displaying overwhelmed emotions?
We’d like to hear from you, let us know your thoughts, have you experienced anything similar? Have you ever found yourself displaying any of the Symptoms of Emotional Stress highlighted?
Overcoming Stress is a journey and often as a result of trauma, life changing circumstances, or the feeling of being overwhelmed. So here we provide some insight into signs you may experience when going through stress and how that plays on your emotions. Emotional overload is common and usually comes as a result of conflicting feelings. There are healthy ways to handle the emotions surrounded by stress, the idea is to face stress head on, never ignore your feelings, let's deal with the contributing factors and find solutions that will make you feel like yourself again.
What is Emotional Stress?
Emotional Stress is something that we will all experience in life. Life forces us to change and can affect the way we see life. It is normal for us to walk through life not knowing what is affecting our moods, behaviors and the way we treat people and ourselves. The things you go through in life can cause overwhelmed emotions which leads to stress.
This type of stress is a call for action often driven by negative thoughts and feelings of anxiety. Usually leading to the feeling of control being lost which could come with overwhelmed emotions. You may experience changes in your hormones, heart and blood vessel responses.
Examples of this could be a significant life changing event. Work related, changes in your personal life, tragic events, financial changes, dynamic change between family and friends, etc. Whatever it is you can get through it, it may not feel like it right away though.
Give yourself grace, get to know you so when things change you are aware and can ask emotionally intelligent questions to get to the root. Working on yourself is the hardest thing to do. It is easy to go on social media and pick at others when we are deflecting.
Behavior Takes a Turn:
Behavioral changes are some of the Symptoms of emotional stress which may be confused with illness especially when we notice changes in our:
- Outbursts
- Irritation levels
- Patience is a thing of yesterday
- Lack of motivation
- Thoughts are more negative
- Overwhelming feeling of sadness and lack of achievement
- Shying away from people
Overwhelmed emotions can lead to emotional stress that can and tends to affect your day to day activity or lack of. Critical change in your life, a drastic event that changes the way you operate, see yourself, and the world.
What techniques have you previously used to combat these conflicts? Are they healthy? Do they increase the pressure felt or allow for healing in order to regain trust in your process?
Emotional Symptoms:
As adults we owe it to ourselves to do the work to get to the reward. Move your own Cheese, Take a moment, breath, step back, and take one step at a time. Emotional Stress can bring about various emotions;
- Anger
- Worry
- Nervousness
- Anxiety
- Lack of Humor
- Tension
- Uninterest
- Loneliness
This is normal, overwhelmed emotions are a normal reaction to the pressures of everyday life. The concern comes when this impedes your capacity to get on with your day, moving toward your goals, adding value in the workplace/business, and communicating with others. Have you set goals that you have now dropped or see as unimportant? These could be warning signs to take note of.
Among other things, take heed to how you treat yourself when stress starts to become a factor. Control your controllables, you can only do what you can.
Long term and short term stress can have an impact on your physical being. There are some clear signs that may become present.
Physical Symptoms of stress:
Emotional stress can affect you physically, it can have an impact on your energy levels and cause all types of strains to occur in the body:
- Changes in breathing pattern
- Panicking more
- Body pains - Chest, shoulders, back, head
- Rashes and/or Itchy skin
- Menstrual cycle changes
- Achy muscles
- Suddenly losing or gaining weight
- Sweat levels
- Tiredness and sleepiness
- Head feel light, fainting, general sickness
Pay attention to these changes and others, there are many ways to get help. Most importantly it's about taking the time to connect the dots and action the steps to get back to your best. Emotional Stress just means you are human, now let's get to the root and action the necessary changes.
Cognitive Symptoms of Emotional Stress, what does this mean?
Cognitive is the way we think. our mental process in coping with what we are going through. So when it comes to Emotional Stress there are cognitive ways in which we handle what's happening in our lives. It's the way we analyse and deal with what is going on. Make sense?
There are obstructive cognitive symptoms associated with stress that usually include feeling anxious, emotional overload which inflames the notion of worry. Usually about something that may be out of your control, or simply not having control in the first place. This can be concerning especially when they are surrounded by other factors such as:
- Lack of mental peace
- Impaired judgment
- Absent focus
- Constant pessimism
- Disorganisation
The sense of reality can seem distant, you can start to enhance those stressful insecurities and amplify other areas that you were not stressed about before. Everything rolls into one stressful event instead of concentrating on the very thing that is causing your emotions to be overwhelmed.
With emotional overload present it’s easy for the brain to become confused, as it’s used to you performing in a certain way so when symptoms of emotional stress appear the brain has a way of trying to encourage you to get back to yourself. Whether it’s getting back to your routine, pushing positive thoughts your way, repetitive voices pushing you towards recovery. This doesn't always help. Sometimes this itself can be overwhelming, and can increase pressure. In these instances you can lose self-control and make decisions you wouldn’t usually make.
It’s all a learning curve, our brains tend to be better at coping when it’s something it’s dealt with before. When you display symptoms of emotional stress the brain hasn’t experienced it can go into protective mode. In these times it may be worth reducing the amount of key decisions you make, instead asking questions, speaking to people you trust, and trusting that what you are going through is temporary.
Functions impaired by stress should be taken seriously, you are human and you can get through it. This may just take some time which you must be okay with. When we start to build from experience we’ll know how to deal with the effects of emotional stress in the future. The impact of stress plays a part in the cognitive behavior displayed.
Understand that all stress has cognitive origins, which means that the approach taken can make it difficult to detach stressful thoughts and emotions from reality. Positive cognitive assessments help manage stress vs negative development building resilient outcomes that makes dealing with stressors more achievable.
Coping with Emotional Stress:
There are various ways to cope with emotional stress, the first step is admission, once you’ve been able to admit that your stress levels are high you can begin to understand the best root for you. Emotional stress management is not a one shoe fits all scenario. We are all different and what works for one may not work for another.
We’ve listed a few things to try to help you start to reduce the emotional overload you may be experiencing.
- Breathing - Concentrate on taking deep breaths in and out until your mind feels more at ease.
- Exercise - Get active, exercise can be a meditative chance to relax, decompress and come up with solutions. This doesn't mean you have to lift heavy weights or run everyday. What do you consider active? It could be a long walk, yoga, or other sports. Find what works by trying things out.
- Mirror - The mirror is a great place to really see you, what questions come up when you steer at yourself in the mirror? Are you able to hold eye contact, if not why? Try positive affirmations, they really work. Reaffirm your goals, boost yourself up, what are you great at? Scream that ish in the mirror, the more you do the more you’ll start to believe it.
- Music - Music has a great way of helping us to feel happy and excited about now, relax, sing along, and dance. You may ease the tension.
- Self love - Take a bath, light a candle, meditate, go get your nails done, go for a spa treatment, get a massage.
Close your eyes and these things can help increase gratitude. When gratitude is considered we start to accept that life happens to everyone. Get to a place where you can begin to ask how to control your controllables.
- Goal setting - What are your short and long term plans? Start working through them but take it one step at a time. A step is a step in the right direction. Take the pressure off and use what you may be going through as fuel to activate your superpowers.
- Journal - Writing things down, your feelings, your approach, your goals, your trauma’s can be very therapeutic. At the end of each day/week write down your experiences and then leave a section for questions, answers and solutions, circle the things that are in your control and come up with tactics to help combat what you are going through.
Remember clouds don't last always. This too shall pass.
- Open up - Talk to the people you love, you never know who is going through the same thing, or who has gone through something similar in the past. The idea here is not to compare yourself to others, but to increase the level of compassion for yourself.
Allowing people to walk besides you. Feeling alone can increase the chances of making bad decisions. If there is no one you can turn to, maybe question why.
It could be:
- Guilt
- Shame
- Embarrassment
- Seek professional help - There are a number of resources out there that are free, or inexpensive. Your well-being is worth more than money.
The NHS is a good place to start, a simple Google search can point you in a good direction.
- Blog - Use your social platforms to start to open up, the risk here is that if you are sensitive to what people think then this may not be helpful. Using social media as a soundboard creates realism and realism can help to reduce the symptoms or emotional stress.
It’s important to note that you can’t always change things overnight, you can decrease the symptoms of emotional stress you may be feeling, and the tax this stress is taking on you.
Get Help for symptoms of emotional stress:
- Breathing exercises, this link provides access to breathing exercises you’ll find useful - Google has a good one
- Therapy, a chance to look at some therapy options recommended by the NHS - NHS
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy a little more insight into how you can take the next step and get help through cognitive therapy - NHS
Try not to do everything at once, in life and stress it should always be one step at a time even if that step feels minute.
Stress can actually be good if channeled in the right way. It can be used to motivate you, help you focus your energy on your goals and increase performance. Competitiveness can increase in a positive way. However, don’t combine with comparisons that lead to envy and jealousy. This type of stress is usually short term but can lead to other things like being selfish, and negative thoughts of those you love.
The key thing to take away is that you are not the only one who experiences stress, although that may not help please know you are not alone. Take note as this possibly won't be the last time you experience symptoms of emotional stress. The goal is to give yourself grace, and do the work required to start to feel like you again.
We now know that stress can rare it’s head;
- Physically
- Emotionally
- Mentally
- Behaviorally
Oftentimes we may not know we are in a state of stress, so if there are things happening that are unusual let's start to ask questions to better understand what is going on. From there we can action healthy responses that give us back the power. It’s one step at a time and what has helped others may not help you but it’s worth finding what will work to turn things around.
Control your controllables, is there a way to turn the stress you are experiencing into your superpower? A testimony of hope lies around the corner. Trauma is real and requires a response. Identifying the symptoms of emotional stress means you can start to work through things, after all we know what we know.
Have you dealt with Stress in another way? We’d love to hear what helped you get through, please get in touch.
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