Do you feel under constant pressure and unable to cope?
Stress is an increasingly common feature of 21st century life, especially with the difficult economic climate of recent years. Most people have had the experience of being asked to take on more than they can realistically manage, and will be familiar with the feelings of being overwhelmed, anxious and irritable that can ensue. Some are able to recognise the warning signs of stress, but often the most conscientious individuals find it hard to accept that they are trying to do the impossible and continue trying to meet all demands, despite the escalating impact on their physical health and emotional well-being.
Consider the following two examples...
Joseph was an executive with a large engineering company, planning for retirement within eighteen months. Owing to the recession he felt increasing pressure to improve productivity and had been obliged to make people whom he valued redundant. He no longer enjoyed his job and was conscious of younger colleagues vying for attention and waiting for him to go. At home, his wife wanted to move closer to grandchildren and was talking of selling the house, expecting him to make decisions about the future at a time when he had no idea what he wanted to do. He began experiencing frequent headaches, and discovered his blood pressure had risen dramatically. He described just wanting it all to stop, so he had some time to think again...
At 32, Ellen was a busy mum with a part-time job who was training for an additional qualification. She had high expectations of herself and took it for granted that she could go to work, ferry the children to activities, shop, cook, organize the house, help with homework, and still manage to complete assignments for her course on time. But after 6 months of this routine she was feeling edgy, resentful and having trouble sleeping, despite being extremely tired. Close to tears, she confided she felt a failure, and was thinking of giving up her course as she “obviously wasn’t up to it”.
These are familiar stories – perhaps you recognise them? Ellen had taken on more than it was possible to cope with, but instead of asking for help or reducing the burden she pushed herself to do more. Joseph was discovering how stress can lead to depression, as the sense of value and enjoyment in what you do is replaced by a wish to escape and the feeling of futility.
Stress can be experienced in many different ways...
- as tension, anxiety, panic or increasingly frantic activity;
- feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, irritable and a failure,
- or largely in terms of physical symptoms - hypertension, tinnitus, breathlessness, indigestion or headaches.
- Unrecognised it eats away at self-esteem, leads to unhelpful habits such as comfort eating or binge drinking, and can seriously affect your health.
There are a number of options:
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try self-help strategies - such as those mentioned below
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attend an individual, six session treatment for stress
- come to an eight week group programme in stress management and relaxation.
- ignore the problem and hope it will go away
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The Stress Management Programme
Although these are all relatively simple and obvious strategies, putting them into practice and making changes in your life in order to feel less overwhelmed is often difficult without help. My six session Stress Management programme guides you through these stages, helping you to identify exactly how your patterns started and what prevents you from making the necessary changes.
In six 90 minute sessions we:
- put your life in perspective and start a process of change
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look at the key aspects of your relationships which contribute to the problem
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help you define what you want, and what your limits are
- help you communicate clearly but sensitively what you can and cannot do
- experiment with a range of relaxation, visualisation and hypnotic strategies giving you the skills to remain calm and in control
- identify assumptions about yourself and others that put you under pressure