Stress Testing for Stress Relief
Monday, November 10th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
My wife and I have been involved in teaching student was reading disabilities. We wanted to know students who had reading disabilities had high levels of stress. We chose a group of nine-year-old students and measured their stress using a self-report system. Luckily, the student with reading disabilities showed no elevated stress. This meant that we didn’t have to worry about introducing stress relief programs.
Many people ask me to measure their levels of stress to provide stress relief. There is no difficulty in measuring levels of stress. The simplest way is to report your level of stress, depression and anxiety to a psychologist. Self-report is the usual method for explaining your levels of stress. If you are self aware, you can be very accurate in describing your symptoms, feelings and behavior.
Apart from self-report, you can also measure stress through an analysis of a urine specimen. Blood analysis continues as levels of cortisol which is a market for stress levels. Cortisol increases as your stress increases. As well as cortisol changes, there are other physical changes as well. Flushing, skin blotching, increases in heart rate and blood pressure are other signs of high levels of stress. Some people experience what is called an aura and they might also have headaches and migraines.
If you want to find out about your stress levels you can use online testing. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that these tests are reliable. I use a structured self-report system to measure my patients’ stress. I need to be able to keep track of stress changes with my patients so measure them several times over several months. To know if my stress relief therapy is effective I need frequent measures.
The emotions that I explore include instances of feeling worried, uneasy, upset, tired, nauseous and variable in mood. You can characterise stress behaviour in four different groups. Some people have cognitive or thinking changes, others have interpersonal difficulties, some have physiological and physical responses, and most had changes in emotional well-being.
You need to know how stressed you are. If you have some idea of your stress levels, you can respond better to stress relief programs. I always says that stress is a silent killer and that is the enemy in terms of our feelings of security and emotional comfort. No one needs the emotional challenges of high stress, burnout, and constant feelings of being stressed out. There is very little of value to an individual who experiences high levels of stress. For a stress relief program to be effective, the patient needs to be able to know and understand their stress levels. I have 15 strategies for stress relief. For me, the stress relief challenge is to set the best strategy to the individual patient. I do not want my patients to have miserable, stressed lives.
When we are stressed, our relationships suffer. The danger of relationship breakdowns is that we lose the capacity to seek social support from our loved ones, one of the most effective stress relief interventions. Talking with others and sharing feelings is great for stress relief. Social support equals free therapy. Sharing worries and concerns reduces the stress. Some people are so worried that social support does not provide stress relief. One good example is mortgage stress and impending foreclosures. Professional help is essential in these cases.
I hope this information on stress and stress relief is helpful. Naturally, these short articles are like icebergs - we can cover a small amount of the issue but much remains under the surface and requires deeper reading and investigation. My final point is that the more you know about your personal psychology, mental health, stress levels and anxiety, the more YOU can take charge of your life, successfully relieve and manage stress.
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