What to Do When People Are Your Primary Source of Stress
Stress comes from a variety of issues – including from people. Knowing how to deal with people who cause your stress can help you avoid the physical ramifications of having toxic individuals in your life.
These physical issues happen because of the emotional stress you deal with every time you encounter someone who makes you feel angry, sad, frustrated and more. Emotional stress is just as bad for speeding up the aging process as physical stress is.
It can cause diseases, immune system deterioration and more. You might have to deal with a friend or family member who causes you stress. It might be a coworker or someone you encounter regularly, like a neighbor.
Whoever it is, you need to learn how to deal with it to mitigate the effect on your health.
Start by identifying who the people are in your life who cause you stress. The way to tell if someone causes you stress is every time you think about being around them or you actually are around them, you have a visceral reaction.
Your stomach gets tied up in knots or you have an emotional reaction. You feel anxious or angry. People who cause stress often look at the negative in everything around them, including in you.
They always leave you feeling worn out. These people complain about how bad their life is or they compare their life to yours and tell you how lucky you are. They often tear down other people and can be subconsciously or even deliberately cruel in their comments or actions.
They don’t accept blame for anything going on in their life, but blame their friends, family, coworkers or even you. These people are always where the drama is or they’re the cause of whatever drama is going on.
They want you to be their shoulder to lean on and every time you spend time with them, you leave feeling a lot worse than when you arrived. You can put a stop to the drama that comes from other people.
Begin by going on the offensive. You already know this person or those people are going to cause you stress. Know your course of action before meeting up with them. Determine ahead of time how you’re going to handle it when the stress kicks in from being with them.
Don’t let someone else have the emotional reins in your life. People will say and do things that cause stress, but they can’t be in charge of how you respond to that stress. Only you can do that.
You can feel empathy toward someone without letting them emotionally wreck you. This usually comes from a friend who gets angry about something and leads you toward anger as well.
When someone does stress you out, don’t carry it with you. Deal with it immediately and then let go. When the topic of conversation or their actions trigger stress, either change the subject or address the actions directly. Keep your distance emotionally as much as possible and if that’s not possible, then keep a physical distance if you have to.
When You’re Stressed for Too Long, Your Immune System Suffers
Stress can make it rather difficult to operate at your full potential. Obviously, it has its share of mental effects, causing you to work less efficiently, but it also has many physical effects.
One physical effect of stress that you might end up encountering is that it lowers your immune system, leaving you more prone to getting sick. If you’ve noticed yourself getting frequently sick recently, it might not just be due to allergies or a bug going around.
It could be that you’re so stressed out that your body has started give up on its own immune system, which can be extremely bad in some circumstances. Now, for your immune system to be lowered, it takes more than just one bad day.
You need to be stressed out for an extended period of time. This can be hard to identify, though. If you go long enough being stressed out, eventually you’re going to be used to that as the norm.
You might be stressed out for awhile and not even realize it after a point. By lowering your immune system, your body is open to more harmful diseases. It could be something minor like a cold or a cough, but it could get a lot worse.
Some people experience rashes or airborne diseases that require a visit to the doctor to fix, leading to more costs, which can become stressful in its own right. Getting sick can put a serious damper on your work performance.
If it’s bad enough, you might not even be able to come into work, but if you do go, you’re definitely not going to be operating at your best levels. You’ll be worried about getting other people sick if it’s contagious, and you’re going to end up getting even more stressed out.
You need to keep your stress managed so that you can avoid getting sick. What might seem harmless can turn into nausea, headaches, viruses, and more. You need to treat your body right so that you can stay healthy and happy.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have your bad days. It’s fine to have a day where you’re feeling stressed – that’s normal. However, you need to pull it together and figure out what to do next so that this feeling doesn’t continue on and take over your life.
That means regularly engaging in stress relief that’s tailored to your personal preferences. Switch it up and make sure that it’s something that soothes your mind and calms your nerves.
Yoga Is the Best anti aging Stress Alleviating Exercise
Yoga is an exercise that’s not only helpful for achieving all over body relaxation, but it can also be useful in alleviating stress. It works well in this area because of the mind body connection it taps into.
When the mind is relaxed, the stress diminishes and when the stress is gone, the body also relaxes. But along with that, yoga stops the biological internal clock from ticking away and cutting years off of your life.
During the various poses of yoga, meditation is often involved. This meditation triggers a boost in the making of anti-aging hormones, DHEAS and the growth hormone also known as somatotropin.
This hormone is the one that boosts the birth of new cells, which is needed to fight aging. There are many different types of yoga to choose from. It’s perfect for any age because the level of difficulty can range from gentle to advanced.
The pace of yoga can also vary. The movements found in various yoga routines are known to improve muscle strength as well as ease stiffness and tension found in those muscles.
Another reason to choose yoga is found in the breathing that’s done in conjunction with the exercise. Studies have shown that deep breathing can help to relax the effects felt in the body caused by stress.
When you’re stressed, your emotions flare and you breath faster. Deep breathing can calm emotions, restore even, relaxed breathing, and help the mental clutter that’s often part of dealing with stress.
This is a huge pro benefit of learning yoga. When stress hits, the first thing that often happens is the mind immediately delves into chaotic thinking. This is then transferred to the body in some sort of physical manifestation.
Yoga is known to release anxiety as well as other moods often triggered by stress. Going through the poses acts as a pause, stop and release on the brain and the body. This is why health issues that go along with having stress are benefited from practicing yoga.
Stress often causes ongoing, life shortening health problems, such as inflammation or insomnia. Yoga offers relief from those conditions. When you practice yoga, it goes deep into the body, relaxing one to the core.
As the calm from the poses descends, it causes an immediate reduction in stress and tension. But more than that, it eases the demand on the adrenal glands by disrupting the demand for cortisol that stress can cause.
There’s a lot of negativity linked with stress. It causes negative thinking, negative emotions and negative physical reactions. And it keeps all of that locked up within your body when you don’t let go of stress. Yoga helps you let go of pent up emotional stress that harms your body and restores peace.
Your Body Continually Tries to Recover from Stress
When it comes to stress and how it relates to aging, many people are afraid that just a little bit of stress can cause them to develop signs of aging and health problems. In reality, that’s not quite the case.
As an adaptation from our prehistoric days, humans have developed means of physically handling stress, but that’s only meant for short term bursts. If you have ongoing stress, then your body will always be trying to catch up, which can then lead to faster aging.
Some parts of this natural defense might be things you already recognize as signs of stress. For one, your heart rate will go up. This is because your body assumes it’s about to have to either fight or run, so it gets you all amped up and prepared.
For this same reason, you might also notice that your muscles tense up and you might even start to get twitches in your eye or muscles. These natural defenses are great for short term stress.
It gets you prepared to take on a challenge, and you’re able to do what you need to do. However, your body needs rest after that to recognize that you’re no longer stressed out and don’t need those defenses anymore.
With long term stress, you never get to that point. When you’re stressed out over a prolonged period of time, your body will be in a constant state of trying to repair itself and help you out, which ends up doing more harm than good.
Some of the defensive measures that your body puts in place can, if they don’t stop, give you signs of aging and even afflict you with physical health problems. Take, for example, the increased heart rate.
While it’s beneficial for a short burst of energy, if you have a high heart rate for awhile, you’re bound to eventually suffer from some heart complications. In some cases, this can even end up being fatal.
Another example would be the tensed up muscles. While it’s great for the fight or flight response, constant tension in your body can lead to so many physical problems normally reserved for senior citizens.
Your face will start to develop wrinkles over time from always looking worried, and your body will experience soreness and cramps more often than before. You need to take time to relax and let your body take a break from always trying to recover.
As You Age, Financial Stress Can Take a Heavy Toll on Your Health
One of the biggest sources of stress in anyone’s life is often finances. Chances are, you’re heavily reliant on your own income for things like rent, food, utilities, and more. These are the essentials that we need, and if at any time you feel as though you don’t quite have enough to meet this level, you’re naturally going to be stressed out, which might end up costing you even more in the long run.
Stress of any kind has a number of adverse physical effects. It can cause hair loss, weight fluctuation, blood pressure spikes, and more. It also comes with its fair share of mental effects, such as depression.
These problems can pile on top of one another and actually cause you to have further worries about your finances, stressing you out even more than you already were. If you have to get medical help for something like blood pressure, that may end up being costly.
If you were already stressed out about finances before, a trip to the doctor isn’t going to make it any better once you get that bill. In order to prevent yourself from spiraling down that kind of path, you need to make sure you have a good grip on your financial situation.
Obviously, it won’t be the same for everyone, because everyone has different levels of income and different bills to pay and so on. However, there are a few commonalities that can apply to almost anyone, regardless of how much they make or how much their rent is, so at least you’ll be able to rely on those.
For example, everyone should have a budget or financial plan. You should know exactly how much you’re paying each month for the basics: food, gas, rent, or anything else you might need.
You should then see how much you’re making, so that you can figure out what extra spending money you actually have, if any. Another common piece of advice is to set away an emergency fund.
Emergencies can strike at any time, and they can be a huge worry financially. In order to avoid stressing out about things like that, have some sort of backup fund. This can be built over time, even if it’s just five dollars a month.
Over time, once it’s a sizeable amount, you won’t have to worry about all of these “what-if” situations, because you’ll have something to cover it.
Past and Future Thinking Could Be Aging You Rapidly
Thinking about the past with the intention of learning from life experiences to forge a better path or become a better person is a good idea. But most people don’t think back on their past with that mindset.
Instead, they dwell on the past and all the mistakes that they made. Or they think about how their life used to be and they compare it to now and feel like they’ve been short-changed.
Either way, it’s a way to cause stress. Thinking about the past can cause you to age rapidly. Living in the past leads to recriminations, self-doubt and blame. That causes emotional turmoil such as anxiety.
You end up shortening your lifespan because the emotional stress affects the DNA that determines the length of your life. People who dwell on the past end up stuck in a cycle of negative thoughts.
Along with that, they’re recalling negative emotions and they’re reliving how they felt about those past situations or the people in their past. It can become a cycle that keeps you stuck and when you’re stuck, you don’t heal and you aren’t able to move on and let go to embrace peace.
You shouldn’t ignore emotional pain. But viewing things that bothered you just to think about them without taking action, such as seeking therapy or forgiving yourself or someone else, just causes a lot of stress.
It’s not beneficial at all. Studies show that dwelling on the past and ignoring the wounded emotions from the past have the same effect on your aging process. Control your thoughts about the past and when a negative emotion connected to the past arises that causes you stress, deal with it and let it go.
It’s the same thing with future thinking. You might not have a problem dwelling on the past but instead, you think about the future. You might feel anxiety about what’s going to happen to you physically.
As you grow older, you may worry about your health and whether or not you’ll get a disease. You might worry about death. This type of thinking only causes stress. You might worry about your future job, your relationships or you might fear the unknown.
While it’s normal to have thoughts about the future, allowing your thoughts to live there is unhealthy emotionally and physically because it causes mental stress and that ages you.
To stop the rapid aging, you need to learn to stay in the present. You can do this by being mindful. Don’t let thoughts of the past have dominance in your mind and don’t spend your days worrying about what hasn’t happened yet. Live for today, welcoming and being aware of each moment. Let your thoughts and emotions concentrate on what your life is now rather than what it was or what it will be.
You Can’t Eliminate All Stress, But You Can Keep It from Aging You
Stress can make a serious impact on your life. Chances are you’ve found yourself afflicted by it, and may have even suffered from some of its aging effects, like thinning hair or high blood pressure.
Stress that’s left unchecked can definitely have these kinds of effects on people, but that doesn’t always have to be the case. You might think the best way to keep stress from aging you is to eliminate all of your sources of stress.
Sure, that would definitely work, but it’s not necessarily realistic. You can’t just stop working or reset your life if you have responsibilities. Instead, if you want to stop the aging effects of stress, you need to learn how to manage it in such a way that you won’t be as stressed out.
Instead of tirelessly working towards getting rid of all the stress factors in your life, figure out how to manage your time and energy. A majority of the stress factors in your life aren’t inherently stressful, but they become stressful when you don’t have the time or energy to tackle them.
If you were to just have more time, you’d be able to get these things done and you wouldn’t be stressed out by them. Start by figuring out how much time you’re spending on each thing in your life per day.
If your schedule is filled to the brim, try to cut out a few things so that you have more time to just decompress. You can’t spend your whole life working – you’ll just burn out and start accelerating the aging process.
Use your time wisely, because each day, you only have so much. If you’re stressed out about a situation that you’re in, don’t try to just tackle it full force all at once. For example, if you’re stressed out about your weight, you don’t need to suddenly cram in a ton of extra time each day working out.
Instead, slowly and calmly work at it, with carefully planned exercise regimens. Not only will you last longer doing it this way, but you’ll also reduce the amount of stress you’re putting on yourself.
Problems don’t just disappear. You might have to just live with something stressful, but that doesn’t mean you have to live a stressful life. As long as you’re taking on your challenges with confidence and good planning, you’re going to avoid excess stress that would put you in a worse place than you already are.