Is Stress Contagious?
When people think about all the possible causes of their stress, they usually think about things like work, money, relationships, and things of that nature. These are good starting places, but they’re not always the answer.
A commonly overlooked cause of stress is the stress that other people are experiencing. Much like a disease, stress is contagious and can spread fairly easily. Humans naturally feel for one another and understand one another’s emotions, and therefore are prone to sharing a lot of emotions.
For example, if someone’s friend or family member is stressed out about their job, they can then become stressed out as well thinking about whether or not that person is going to be okay.
One of the ways that stress becomes contagious is by the changes in people’s personalities when they’re stressed out. When someone gets stressed, they may become more irritable, snapping at people for small or insignificant things.
In turn, the people on the receiving end of the irritability will become upset and stressed out themselves, and it just continues from there. For some, this can be motivation to start addressing the sources of their stress, so that their friends will stop having to stress out as well.
However, for others, this can only add onto their existing stress, having to worry that their friend is worrying about them. The only way to break this back and forth cycle is to have good communication with your friends and loved ones about why you’re stressed out and to get down to it and solve your problems at their roots.
You should never be afraid to talk to your friends and family about why you’re stressed out as long as you do it in the right manner. As long as you remain calm about it while you’re talking, you shouldn’t cause too much extra stress.
And if your friends and family fail, you can usually find a therapist to talk to instead. You should also be able to tell someone when they’re stressing you out. Sometimes it can be a wakeup call for them, which can be a major relief for you.
Other times, they may continue to stay stressed out. In this case, do what you can to help them, and if that doesn’t work, you could always distance yourself a bit from them. There’s no use in continuing to stress yourself out over someone else’s problems – especially when you’ve done all you can to help them.
Recognize When Social Networks Are Causing You Stress
We live in a world where our phones follow us everywhere and many people pay more attention than they should to their social media. People are constantly checking their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more.
Sometimes, it can be nice to be able to keep in touch with your friends and see how they’re doing – especially if you don’t live close to one another. However, it can also become pretty stressful after awhile.
One aspect of social media that can stress you out is that you might feel obliged to keep checking it constantly so that you don’t miss something. Social media can move pretty fast, and you might miss your friends’ vacation photos or something that you might consider to be important.
You have to be okay with not seeing every single thing that every friend of yours posts. This can lead to another major issue that accompanies social media: time consumption. Before you know it, you may have spent hours scrolling through Instagram or Twitter.
This time could’ve been used so much better on so many other things, and that can lead to a lot of stress involving feeling like you’re falling behind. You might’ve been able to use that time to clean up your house or get some important work done.
One common stress factor of social media is referred to as FOMO, which is an acronym for “Fear Of Missing Out”. This is that feeling you get when you see a lot of your friends posting pictures of them hanging out or doing interesting things and thinking about how you weren’t invited or wishing you were doing fun things, too.
Social media tends to make people’s lives look a lot better than they really are, since people only post the best things that happen with them on social media. Nonetheless, you may still become worried and anxious about the status of your friendships when you experience FOMO.
Something that people have been doing more often lately to alleviate the stress that comes with social media is simply “unplugging.” They might shut down a few of their social media accounts or delete some of the apps, so there’s nothing for them to be distracted or stressed out by.
Many people praise this choice, claiming that it’s made them feel a lot better about everything and has made them more active and productive. Learning to manage your investment in social media can help control much of the stress you feel throughout the day.
Revise Your Language to Eliminate Stress
While there are almost always real world causes for stress, stress is something that can be managed by your mental abilities. People who never seem to get stressed out may be facing the same hardships as you are, but they’ve been able to change their mindsets about it – controlling how much they get stressed out.
One of the most important factors in how you approach stressful situations mentally is the type of language that you’re used to using. Thinking and talking in derogatory forms of language can result in you getting more stressed out about things than you should ever be.
For example, you may find that you use absolutes a lot. Absolutes are words like never, always, must, or can’t. While it may seem appropriate to use these sometimes, it’s usually better to use more open or flexible words.
Absolutes are rigid, and thinking in a mindset with absolutes doesn’t work well for anyone. Think of it this way: if you plan out an event or something of that nature and it doesn’t go exactly to plan, you can react in one of a few ways.
You could adapt and be flexible, adjusting your plans as you go to work with the new circumstances, or you could start stressing out because you had things set up a certain way that they had to be and you start focusing on how things “never” work out well.
It can also put a lot of stress on the people around you when you start to use absolutes as exaggeration terms. If you’re upset with the way someone is acting, don’t tell them that they’re “always” doing something to upset you.
It makes them feel worse than they should and makes you look immature by using hyperbole. Instead, talk to them about specific instances in which their behavior annoyed you and why it made you feel that way.
Absolutes can also make you change your mindset to give up on things. If you’ve been working towards a goal for awhile and it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress, you shouldn’t think to yourself that you’ll “never” achieve that goal.
By thinking that, you’re subconsciously giving up, convincing yourself that it’s too difficult for you, and that it’s best to just give up now. Instead, think more positive thoughts, such as how your perseverance will be rewarded.
You can even think about how long it’s taking without using absolutes, you just have to be able to change up the wording in your head. Most of the time, absolutes are used as a way of beating ourselves up – and that can tack on a lot of unneeded stress in your life.
Signs You’re Stressed and You Don’t Even Know It
For many people, stress is a common occurrence, arising from various events that happen each day. At some point, stress becomes something that we’re almost used to. However, whether you’re used to being stressed out or not, stress can have the same negative physical and mental effects on you.
Stress affects everyone differently. Different things can cause stress more than others depending on the person. However, there are some common signs of stress that you have to watch out for.
While you may not be able to realize that you’re stressed out right away, you’ll likely be able to notice these signs easily enough. First, you might find it to be easier to identify the physical signs of stress.
Strangely, stress can cause a variety of negative physical effects, including increased heartrate, headaches or migraines, lowered immune system, and even feelings of nausea.
These can all lead to further stress or worsened physical effects if they’re left unchecked. Next, you’ll notice the emotional signs. The most common one among people is that they start to become irritable and easily angered.
The smallest things can provoke them and set them off. On the inside, you might feel panicked, as if you’re losing all control and your life is in some kind of tailspin right now. Similarly, you might find it really difficult to focus.
With so many thoughts running through your head, your brain won’t be operating at its best, so you’ll find it a lot harder to sit down and focus on doing the things that you need to do.
Procrastination is often used as a means to relieve stress, but only tends to make the stress worse. Dangerously, you might notice in some people or in yourself that they begin to drink more or start to abuse drugs.
This can create a whole world of horrible issues, but is often used as a means of helping their stress initially. It’s important to pay attention to these signs if you really want to resolve your stress.
One of the most important things about stress relief is being able to seek out the sources of your stress and deal with them directly, but you won’t be able to do that if you don’t realize that you’re stressed out in the first place.
After you’re able to understand that you’re stressed out and you figure out what signs point to it, you’ll then be able to move on and start dealing with each issue on an individual basis.
Stress Is Causing Some People to Lose Their Hearing
Along with the typical psychological issues, stress can bring on a dangerous amount of physical health problems as well. Some of these include things like high blood pressure, headaches and migraines, fatigue, and now, some people are discovering that stress can lead to hearing loss.
As strange as it may sound, high levels of stress can inadvertently lead to temporary or permanent deafness. Essentially, due to the changes in blood pressure, certain parts of your ear that rely heavily on the proper flow of blood can stop working if the flow of the blood isn’t correct.
This leads to a variety of hearing-related complications and may ultimately result in deafness. If you catch the hearing loss early enough, it can easily be undone. However, after a certain point, doctors won’t be able to undo the damage, and your hearing will be stuck in a particular way forever.
Therefore, it’s important that you take the time to try to recognize the primary symptoms of hearing loss as early as you can. One of the main symptoms you might notice is that you have a sharp pain in one of your ears.
Once you notice something like this you should contact a doctor immediately, because you won’t be entirely sure if it’s stress-based hearing loss or any other number of complications with your ear.
Another complication you might face, as silly and obvious as it may seem, is that you won’t be able to hear things quite as well. Much like vision, hearing often deteriorates slowly, and by the time you actually notice something is wrong, it’s already a bit too late.
If someone has to repeat phrases for you more than a few times while you’re just talking to them, then you might need to try to get in touch with a doctor. The most important part of all of this is understanding that you shouldn’t stress out over potentially losing your hearing.
Hearing loss can sometimes be permanent, but it’s not always complete hearing loss. You can lose 10% of your hearing for the rest of your life, but still be perfectly normal and functioning. Losing hearing for good doesn’t always mean you’re going totally deaf.
Additionally, stressing out about it will only make it worse. If you don’t stress out over the potential loss of your hearing, then you’ll already be less likely to lose any of it in the first place.
Swearing Helps People Let Off Stress Steam
Many of us try to control ourselves when we get upset or stressed out, trying our best to avoid swearing or getting out of control – especially if there are kids around. However, as it turns out, swearing can be pretty good for stress relief.
Recent studies have shown that having some time to curse and throw around swears every now and again can help you relieve a lot of stress at once, bringing you back to a normal mood where you can operate efficiently.
One of the most surprising side effects of swearing that was found in some studies was that it made you less likely to feel physical pain. For example, when you stub a toe, your initial reaction may be to let out a few swears, and somehow, it starts to feel better.
This works the same way with stress and any internal conflicts you might be having. Something you do need to watch out for is that you do it in appropriate times and places only.
You might be feeling pretty stressed out at work, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to suddenly start throwing curses around loudly. Another situation you might want to avoid might even be at home, in front of people like children who might be sensitive to outbursts like that.
While it can help you, you need to make sure you don’t do it in such a way that it stresses someone else out in turn. This also doesn’t mean that you should swear at every minor inconvenience.
Physical pain and high stress can be helped with swearing, but if you’re getting mad over some traffic every day, then you’re probably going to find that the positive effect that swearing has on you will begin to wear off.
Instead, save it for when you really feel as though you need it. It’s also best if you pick and choose your swear words somewhat carefully. Some are a lot more inoffensive than others, so choose wisely, especially if there are other people around.
The last thing you’d want is to get into a whole argument with someone over a swear you used, which would only cause more stress. In most facets of life though, swearing is an amazing coping mechanism.
It can help us feel less pain and stress, which allows us the time we need to struggle through things and make the best decisions we can to deal with it. See if you can use it strategically to help, rather than increase your stress load.
Teaching Kids to Learn Stress Management Early
One of the most important skills you can learn in life is how to manage stress effectively. Stress can cause so much damage to your physical and emotional health – especially if it’s left unchecked.
Typically, we find that it’s usually things like work, money issues, or other similar things that cause us a lot of stress – things that are usually attributed to adulthood. However, it’s important that children learn how to manage their own stresses as early as possible, so that they’re more adept at stress management later in life.
One great way to start your kids off right when it comes to managing stress is to make them feel comfortable talking about their feelings. Nothing causes stress quite like bottling up emotions.
Make sure your kids know that they can always come to you with any problems or emotional issues they might be going through, and that you’ll always be there to listen and help if need be.
To get them used to this, be sure to talk to them when they’re younger about how they’re feeling regularly. Don’t ever make them uncomfortable when they talk about how they’re feeling and if it feels forced, don’t try to force it.
This will only diminish trust and they won’t feel like they can come to you. It’s very important that you teach your kids how to properly let out their frustrations early on. Some undisciplined kids take out their frustrations in school through violence and acting out, but you can teach your kid how to let it out properly through talking with people who will listen and solving the problems in a well thought out manner.
The most important thing you can do if you’re trying to teach kids how to manage stress correctly is to exemplify it. Kids look up to their parents a great deal and learn most of what they do through them.
If you can’t manage your own stress properly, then chances are your kids won’t be able to pick up on it very well – especially if they see you struggling with it. One of the best ways you can be that example that they need is by handling situations properly when it involves the kids themselves.
If one of your kids did something that upset you, don’t yell at them. Manage it accordingly by being firm, yet kind and fair, showing them the best way to act when stress does hit.
The Best Scents to Reduce Stress
When people think of things that can help relieve stress, it usually has something to do with sight, touch, or sound – like a massage or hearing the rain fall during a light storm. While it may seem unlikely, your sense of smell can actually have a dramatic effect on your stress levels.
The idea of using certain scents to relax and relieve stress is referred to as aromatherapy, and it’s been shown to work fairly well. There are a wide variety of oils with different scents that you can use in aromatherapy, all with different unique effects.
Some are good for helping you relax, while others might invigorate you and help you get more work done. All of these can help you relieve stress in different ways. For example, if you’re stressed out because you’ve had a long day and you just need to unwind, then lavender might be a good option for you.
It makes you feel less stressed out, but also helps you sleep better, so don’t use lavender if you still have a long day ahead of you, because it may end up making you a bit sleepy.
On the other hand, if you’re in the middle of your day and it’s just not going well, then you can use rosemary instead. Rosemary also helps lower your levels of cortisol, but doesn’t have quite the same effect of making you tired.
Instead, it just boosts you up so that you can get the rest of your day accomplished. Similarly, lemon can have just about the same effects. Perhaps you’re a bit stressed because you’re not working as efficiently as you know you can.
In that case, a peppermint scent might help a lot. Peppermint has been shown to make you more alert and productive, which can help a lot of you’re just dragging through the day not getting much work done.
Cinnamon can also have this kind of effect. Different scents can have different effects depending on the person, so it may take some trial and error time to figure out which scents work best for you.
You might really not like the smell of cinnamon, so it wouldn’t have the same stress relieving effects on you that it would have on someone else. Try to sample a few different common scents and figure out what works well for you and what kind of effect it has and then use it throughout your day to combat stress and get a pick-me-up whenever you need it.
The Most Prominent Stress Factors for Each Age Group
While many of us think of stress as being something that adults tend to face, it really affects all ages in its own way. While the causes may not seem as severe for some when compared to others, it’s still very real to the people experiencing the stress.
Being able to understand these different sources of stress for different age groups can help you better comfort and help those around you, whether it be your kids, younger siblings, parents, older siblings, or friends.
Young kids tend to get most of their stress from school. This can stem from academic problems, social problems, home life problems, or a combination of any of those. Social problems tend to be the most common, usually resulting from being bullied or feeling like an outcast, which is an issue with many young children today.
Teenagers seem to experience more stress than young kids do. At this stage, the biggest worry is that most teenagers are undergoing puberty, and their hormones are all thrown off balance.
This can lead to mood swings, short fuses, and a lot of stress. Coupled with the fact that school gets harder and bullying can become more intense, the teenage years are quite the breeding ground for stress.
Young adults face fairly different factors of stress. At this point, the realization sets in that they need to begin to find their place in the world and figure out just how they’re going to do it.
Some will face troubles with college, and those who choose not to go to college will face troubles with reliable sources of income. Many young adults today feel unprepared for the lives that they’re about to have to live, making ambiguity about the future their primary source of stress.
Middle aged adults have typically settled into a career, sometimes have gotten married and had children, and are starting to struggle with financial burdens or what they’re going to do next.
Often times they’ve become bored of the lives they’ve been living for the past decade or two and are trying to find ways to make their lives a bit more interesting just to break up the monotony.
Senior citizens are often concerned with whether or not they’ll be able to get to retire as the years go on and are also concerned greatly with whether or not they’ve made a proper impact on the world.
As they grow older, they’ll also begin to experience minor and major health issues and concerns with how well they can function physically, which can be frustrating and stressful.
Too Much Stimulation Is a Breeding Ground for Stress
These days, it’s very easy to get carried away and be paying attention to or worried about too many things at one time. In a single day, you might be checking the news, various forms of social media, work related information, and more.
Additionally, many people are always doing something at some point throughout the day, whether they’re playing games on their phones or talking to someone or getting work done.
Eventually, it all piles up and becomes difficult to keep up with, often times leading to a lot of stress. One of the main dangers of excessive stimulation is that you might end up losing sight of your priorities.
By letting other menial things distract you, you start to fall behind on things that you need to do. In turn, you’ll feel stressed out because you’re not getting the things you need to do done.
To avoid letting yourself get overstimulated and stressed out, you just need to place some guidelines for you to live by. One that can help you a lot is to set aside a certain amount of time each day for “me time.”
This could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on what you feel is appropriate. During this time, don’t talk with other people and don’t use your phone, just take some time to relax and do nothing for a bit.
Another common method of avoiding overstimulation is to cut out social media, or at the very least, limit yourself to certain times when you can check it. Instead of refreshing Twitter constantly, check it maybe twice a day at times when you’re not working or doing something important.
If you wanted to cut out the stimulation even more, you could delete non-essential social media apps and games from your phone. It doesn’t even just have to be social media. Anything that you find distracting you throughout the day too much is something that you may consider getting rid of.
If it happens to be people who are distracting you constantly, don’t be afraid to tell them about how you’re feeling. They’ll likely be able to understand that they’re being a bit too much of a distraction.
Once you start to cut distractions out of your life, you’ll notice that you’re a lot less stressed out, because there are fewer opportunities for things to go wrong that you can stress out over.