There’s no doubt that most of us are at least somewhat accustomed to stress. It’s part and parcel of modern life, as we rush around trying to keep a veneer of coping as we juggle a thousand and one things.
Most of us manage it – if only by the skin of our teeth sometimes! However, a huge number of people every year are prone to stress becoming deeply problematic. It ceases to be an everyday minor issue and morphs into something larger, taking on a personality all of its own. Recognizing this is notoriously difficult, as when you’re in the eye of the storm, sometimes you can’t see the winds around you.
There are signs that can point to excessive stress, however – and they might not be the ones you think. Below are five odd things that stress can cause us to do, so if any of these sound familiar, it might be a good time to investigate treatment options for the good of your health.
#1 – Waking Up Before Your Alarm
Do you have a tendency to wake up a few minutes before your alarm goes? This can be a sign of chronic stress. It’s caused by excessive cortisol in the body, which is the hormone your body produces when you’re stressed.
#2 – Feeling Emotional
Most of us associate stress with feeling of anger, snapping at people, and aggression. While it can manifest itself like that, it’s far more likely to make its presence known by you feeling excessively emotional. If you find yourself welling up over the smallest problem or thinking back over ways you have behaved in the past, it might be a sign of stress.
#3 – Self Medicating
Sitting down with a glass of wine at the end of a long day might feel normal, but if it – or any other kind of recreational things you consume to relax – become a habit, then it’s a problem. This can get to the point of becoming an addiction that requires the intervention of the likes of CanadianCentreForAddictions.org to help resolve. If you find yourself itching for your glass of wine – or whatever it is you’re relying on – to the point of desperation, you’re using it as a way of self-medicating the problem. Seek help, and then deal with the underlying stress.
#4 – Tiredness
If you wake up in the morning and don’t ever feel like you’ve had enough sleep, then it can be a sign of stress. This is most noticed on the occasions when you’ve had plenty of sleep in terms of hours, but you’re still waking up of a morning and not feeling like you have rested at all.
#5 – Be Impulsive
When we’re stressed, we tend to have very low barriers when it comes to impulse control. That might mean you are more prone to shopping more than you should, or spontaneously wanting to rush off on holiday or do something ‘fun’. This is your body looking for an escape from the stress you’re feeling, so if you feel the urge to do something out of the norm all the time, it could be worth seeing a GP or trying some self-calming methods as described on StressHack.com.
