The consequences of not managing stress in our lives

These are the ways in which not taking action in the face of excessive stress affects us.

Stress is an element that is part of our body's natural functioning. However annoying it may be at times, the fact of being stressed does not have to be a problem, much less a psychological disorder. It is simply an adaptive mechanism that helps us to be prepared to act quickly in key situations.

However, problems due to excessive stress are a reality. Sometimes, we become so stressed that it works against us, not for us. And when we have to go through such an experience, the best thing to do is to take action as soon as possible. Let's see why, through a review of the consequences of not intervening in the face of stress problems.

The main consequences of not putting solution to stress problems.

These are the ways in which excessive stress damages our quality of life in the medium and long term if we do not take measures to mitigate it.

1. In maintaining healthy habits

One of the areas of life in which the impact of excess psychological stress is most clearly reflected has to do with our self-care habits; that is, how we eat, how we take care of our hygiene, how we keep fit and how we ensure we get enough quality sleep.

As on the one hand excess stress makes us focus on the most extreme short-termism, and on the other it tends to "paralyze" us through psychological rumination (i.e. the tendency to think over and over again about what we are obsessing about or worrying about), In situations like this, we often tend to constantly postpone actions such as cooking something healthy, going to bed at the right time, taking a shower when it is due, etc. such as cooking something healthy, going to bed at the right time, taking a shower when it's time, etc.

2. In physical health

This kind of psychological alterations or only influence our physical health through their influence on our self-care actions; in addition, they can also wear down the functioning of our organism in a direct way, through physiological or organic processes.through physiological or organic processes in general. When this occurs, we speak of somatizations, which are health problems in which psychological discomfort is expressed through physical signs and symptoms: belly pain, itchy skin, headaches, etc.

The somatizations are one of the most common consequences of stress problems when these are maintained for relatively long periods, and although the exact mechanisms that transform stress into physical discomfort are not known, it is believed that it has to do with the wear and tear produced by abnormal patterns of hormone release and maintained for too long.

3. In the family

In the family environment, the main consequences of stress are the tendency to introspection and social isolation (fruit of the psychological rumination) and, on the other hand, the predisposition to show irritable when we are very stressed: any contrariety or comment that we consider ambiguous makes us adopt a hostile attitude by the frustration that this generates to us. In short, we do not like that through living together social interactions arise that interrupt our flow of thoughts focused on what concerns us..

4. In friendships

With friendships, something similar to what happens with families occurs in relation to problems due to excessive stress: this kind of psychological disturbance predisposes us to isolate ourselves and to focus our attention on the other person. and to focus our attention towards the interior of our mind or towards the external stimuli that can have to do with what worries us, but not towards the rest of elements that surround us. For that reason, it is habitual that those who take a season being too much stressed stop seeing their friends so often.

5. At work

Finally, it should be said that although in theory stress serves to help us react quickly to fleeting opportunities and to signals that if we don't move in time something bad will happen to us, this does not mean that it always improves our job performance.

In fact, more often than not, in the medium and long term, excessive stress worsens our performance at work.. Firstly, because it exhausts us, making it difficult for us to concentrate on a task for long enough to "connect" with it. And secondly, because the fear of facing certain experiences that we anticipate and that obsess us, makes us try to avoid going through it, so we postpone again and again the tasks that make us think about what makes us anxious.

Are you interested in learning how to manage stress in your day to day life?

There are several habits and strategies that help mitigate stress and anxiety so that they do not overwhelm us and become a problem that detracts from our quality of life. And one of the most useful and simple is to adopt the practice of meditation. Incorporating into our daily routines brief sessions of several minutes of meditation helps us to rebalance our emotional state and favors that the general levels of nervous activation are not higher than those required by the circumstances.

In this sense, the app Gurumind app can be very useful both to learn to meditate and, if you already know how to do it, to have access to multiple meditation materials and incorporate them into your schedule through programs tailored to your needs. Download the app from the Gurumind website and start living in a more emotionally healthy way.