Real Relaxation by Konstantin Koss

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Stress can come from anywhere. Most people think that stress comes mostly from the pressure we get from work. But that’s only because that’s what we do all day and the challenges and failures we experience is what causes our daily headaches. It’s imperative though to know that stress can even come from home, your solace for the day.

Promoting wellness by removing stress in your life is one of the most effective methods in getting a happier life. Doing so would require you to examine four aspects in your life, all of which greatly affects your mental wellness.

1) Health

Your physical aspect can give you a lot to worry about. Illnesses, pains, and ailments can cause a lot of stress to a person. Obesity can also become another source. If you are ashamed of your body, then you are alienating yourself from everybody. Try to get some exercise and develop a good eating habit to remove these physical problems.

2) Relationship

Your relationship with the people around you can cause damaging effects to your mental wellness. Being around people that can cause you emotional pain will promote stress rapidly. Surround yourself with people that you love and maintain a good relationship with them.

3) Finances

All of us need money. There is great pressure to earn well to maintain a good life. We need money to meet our daily needs. Failure to do so causes a lot of stress to a person.

4) Habitat

The place we live in is also another factor that can stress us out. Bad neighborhoods can raise concerns on our safety and etcetera.

->For a more in-depth analysis of the various causes of stress, go read my popular stress causes article

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Everyone can experience stress. The human body is designed to feel stress and respond to it. Stress keeps us alert and prepared to prevent danger. Being knowledgeable on the prime causes of stress is important and using your knowledge to control stress is vital.

The causes of stress change as we age. A stressed child at young age can threw tantrums but when he becomes a student, he can be stressed by school works. Once he becomes a teen, he is stressed by dating and relationship. And the causes of stress differ as he grows older thereon.

So what causes stress really? Anything can cause stress if it allows you to adapt to changes in the environment. The body will have to react to changes with mental, emotional and physical responses. All people have their own ways of adjusting to changes, thus the stress causes can differ for each individual.

General Stress Causes

Generally, the causes of stress are:

1. Threat. An apparent threat can lead a person to be stressed. Different threats include social, physical, financial, and others. It will become worse if the person experiencing the stress feels that he can’t do anything to lessen the threat.

2. Fear. Threat can cause fear which further leads to stress. Fear advances to imagined outcomes and these outcomes are the real causes of stress.

3. Uncertainty. When people are uncertain, they can’t predict and thus they feel they are not control of a situation. This can lead to a feeling of fear and of threat.

4. Cognitive dissonance. We are experiencing cognitive dissonance if there’s a gap on what we think and what we do. This dissonance can also happen when we can’t meet our commitments. This dissonance can therefore lead to stress.
Other than the general causes of stress, there are the life causes of stress. Such causes include:

• Health: illness, pregnancy, injury
• Crime: burglary, mugging, sexual molestation, pick-pocketed
• Argument: with friends, family, boss, spouse, boss, co-workers
• Death: of friend, spouse, family
• Money: investing it, lack of it, owning it
• Sexual problems: with partner, getting partner
• Physical change: new work hours, lack of sleep
• Family change: marriage, divorce, new baby, separation
• Self abuse: alcoholism, drug abuse, self-harm
• Environment change: in house, school, job, jail, town
• Responsibility increase: new job, new dependent
• New location: moving house, vacation

Looking at what causes stress, let’s have a look at the most common situattion where stress arises: In the workplace.

Stress Causes at Work

There are also stress-related to work. United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive gives 6 key stress related factors at work:

1. Demands of the job.

2. Relationship with colleagues

3. Control staff on how they can do their work

4. Workplace changes

5. Receiving support from superiors and colleagues

6. Understanding their responsibilities and roles.

The other indicators of stress at work are:

• High staff turnover
• Sickness absence
• Bullying
• Poor team communication
• Contribution and value
• Lack of performance feedback
• Technological change
• Working for long hours
• Lack of clear roles and responsibilities
• Dissatisfaction with the non-monetary benefits
• Mundane and boring work
• Uncomfortable workplace
• One-off incidents

We may not admit it but the lives of students are also faced with a lot of stresses. There are many pressures faced by students at school. These pressures equate to a lot of stress. Some of the school stresses are tests and examinations, reports, school bully, difficult subject, strict teachers, etc.

From the causes mentioned above, you may be asking yourself which among them are the leading causes of stress. In 1967, Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes, both from University of Washington, conducted a study on the relationship between illnesses and significant life events. They compiled the major causes of stress and created a chart as a part of their study. The chart which had 43 stress causes in 1967 was updated on 2006 with 55 additional causes of stress. This proves that our society finds more causes of stress year after year.

Studies come up with ranking for the major causes of stress. The online poll LifeCare Inc. conducted a survey on the top most causes of stress in 2005. Majority of the respondents considered finances as the leading cause of stress. Next is work related stress such as job security. Third in the rank is family stress followed by personal concerns such as shopping and household chores. The fifth cause of stress is personal health and safety; sixth is personal relationship and the last in the rank is death.

There are seemingly endless causes of stress and we can find some new causes as long as we live. Everyone must be aware of these causes in order to take control of the situations that can lead to stress.

Learning about these stress causes can arm us with defense once stress attacks us.

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Last time I wrote a guide to my favorite relaxation technique: the primal scream. But why does this work so well?

The primal scream releases stuck emotion in your body.

Whenever something bothers us, our primal roots actually want to scream out and fight the obstacle. This is still embedded in the basic animalistic parts of the brain.

Actually repression is the exact cause of the thoughts that are running rampant in our heads when we experienced some type of emotional, social or other type of abuse. (Read: your collegue was a prick)

Now, this doesn’t sound very plausible at first if you think about it. You are not repressing when someone just unloaded her anger on you and now you are freakin’ upset at them. You are feeling those emotiones, you are not repressing. Or are you?

Well, your primal instincts would rather have that person’s face smashed in with a stone and not taking physical action is repression to those instincts.

The word repression somehow got a bad vibe to it. Of course repressing in modern society is highly desirable, don’t get me wrong. On the one hand we do not want instinct-driven animals everywhere, but on the other hand this is a violation to some deep burried roots.

Also, notice what happens when you got a stress-reaction. Your blood starts flowing less into your head and digestive tract and exponentially more into your muscles. Your heart beats faster, spreading more oxygen into your cells. It’s the same reaction like when running or doing any other sports activity.

Think about it, someone merely insults you and your body gets ready for hardcore physical activity, for fight or flight.

But you just keep restraining yourself and keep the fight in your head. That’s why you keep mentally battling them when going to bed, that’s why stress stores up in the body. And that’s why abreactive primal therapy works so well, it get’s you physical. Screaming out your anger is what your biology wanted to do in the first place. (And screaming is just one part of primal therapy.) That’s also why working out is so effective in calming down.

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