Stress, Coping, and Health

Stress has become a predominant problem in the contemporary world and has affected the lives of many people. Levin (2017) defines stress as the physical and mental occurrence of some important life experiences, trauma, and long-term pressure. Stress can negatively affect a person’s health, depending on the level at which it is. Long-term effects of stress can destruct the entire body exposing an individual to both mental and physical health problems such as anxiety, sleep problems, depression, and weight loss. Drawing from a person experience, stress can negatively affect an individual’s life but the situation can be useful in understanding the practical aspects of life if effective measures are taken to cope with the problem.

There is an increase in evidences indicating the negative effects of stress in people’s lives. Seward (2017) argues that stress of a mental, physical or chemical nature is one of the factors that tends to promote release of the hormones norepinephrine and epinephrine. In a chemical reaction, those hormones gradually break down elastic polymers in the walls of the arteries (Boss, Bryant & Mancini, 2016). The resulting artery damage and loss of elasticity weakens the walls of the arteries and hardens them to cause a buildup of atherosclerosis which is a slowly evolving precursor for the potential development of numerous different disorders that typically occur in later life such as: hypertension, cardiovascular disease, aneurysms, hemorrhages, strokes, vascular dementia, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

Depending on how individuals personally respond and cope with stress is the crux of how much it affects their life. I have learned to cope in new ways over time with stress but not before it brought me to the brink of death and despair. Four years ago, from March 2018, I came close to my personal demise. In 2013 after a long battle with the government on getting disability, I finally won my case. Then I lost my wife, my daughter and my hope since I was alone and isolated. During time I had a dissociative fuege that lasted almost two weeks, not knowing who or where I was. I had intentionally overdosed and some months before that and had surgery to remove cancer. It did not stop there, lastly I ultimately became homeless. I changed everything in my life. Starting with trying my best to keep stress far from me. If I had a deadline, that is an easy stressor that motivates my dogged determination but if things feel like they’re closing in I try my level best to get at the root cause of my stress.

Stress can be an eye-opener to living a better life and understand the practical aspects of life.  Levine (2017) studied the causes of stress and found out that stress or frustration is mostly caused when individuals fail to achieve the targets set or when things do not work out as planned. To minimize stress, the World Health Organization (2013) suggests that individual need to make a plan, set goals at a daily, weekly, monthly level and stick to those plans and goals. There is need to navigate life in a way that benefits an individual as well as the people around them. Investigations on how to cope with stress have also been carried out by researchers, besides strategies of the same have been developed by practitioners to talk about the cost at which stress overabundance can cause both an individual and organizational wellness and work rate (Boss, Bryant & Mancini, 2016). While coping with stress, the practitioner needs to focus on the level of mastery, look on the self-esteem of the person, and the social support that can help in reducing the effect of what caused the strain on health and the well-being of the patient.

In conclusion, stress has been a major problem that has affected the lives of many people. According to different studies stress can lead to a number of both short term and long-term complications and diseases. Drawing from person example, individuals can cope with stress in different way which might light to positive impacts in their five. Stress can also help individuals to understand the practical aspects of live and by navigating their plans wellness, individuals can cope with the problem in their lives.

References

Boss, P., Bryant, C. M., & Mancini, J. A. (2016). Family stress management: A contextual approach. Sage Publications.

Levine, S. (2017). Social stress. Routledge.

Seaward, B. L. (2017). Managing stress. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

World Health Organization. (2013). Guidelines for the management of conditions specifically related to stress.