Extreme Stress
From Drug Rehab Wiki
Contents |
Extreme Stress
While stress is a part of everyday existence and can normally be handled by healthy individuals with adequate coping skills, extreme stress is the result of difficult life experiences such as accident, abuse, disaster, trauma, war and other forms of violence, betrayal, exploitation and loss. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an example of extreme stress.
Extreme stress causes numerous cumulative mental and physical disruptions in the body’s ability to handle even minor upsets and can result in severe medical and psychological consequences.
What Happens in the Body
Extreme stress causes various reactions in the human body. First, these difficult life experiences cause changes in the body’s central nervous system. There’s a rush of adrenalin, the so-called “fight or flight” response, or extreme and total exhaustion. The body either can’t keep up (but keeps trying) or it simply shuts down.
The brain, as a consequence, signals a warning sign. It’s on a constant state of red alert or alarm, as in “I can’t stop feeling frightened.” The brain’s systems become overloaded trying to deal with this constant heightened alert level. As a result, things don’t get done, since the brain’s thought and decision-making processes, among other things, gradually shut down. The individual suffering from extreme stress feels overwhelmed, defeated, and incapable of making the right choices.
Signals That Extreme Stress is Happening
Here are some signals that extreme stress is beginning to wreak havoc on the body:
• Bodily signals – Heart feels like it’s bursting, gasping for breath or feeling of being smothered, overreacting or freezing to a trigger, muscles feel like they’re exploding.
• Signals in the mind – Terror, panic, aggression, rage, doomed or hopeless feeling, as well as feelings of failure, worthlessness, helplessness or being out of control.
• Thought processes – Memory becomes faulty, thought processes become fuzzy, problem-solving becomes more difficult, confusion takes over and mental processes weaken to the point where they shut down.
• Actions – Automatic responses instead of reasoned, rational response, or freezing and incapable of taking action, avoiding problems, taking foolish risks, and making a general mess of things.
Examples of How Not to Manage Extreme Stress
Coping strategies help individuals get through various situations. When they’re positive, these strategies benefit the individual by reducing stress. Often, however, individuals engage in maladaptive coping behaviors that only further aggravate a condition such as extreme stress. These behaviors include fighting, inflicting self-harm or doing harm to others, engaging in risky behaviors (such as drug or alcohol use), isolation, sleeping and thoughts of or attempted suicide.
Extreme stress produces feelings of abandonment, defeat, emptiness, pain, pressure, rage and terror. Individuals may try to cope with extreme stress by lying to others, destroying property (their own or others’), acting in an aggressive or defiant manner, procrastination or avoidance of responsibilities, and daydreaming.
Violence toward self or others often accompanies extreme stress, as well as isolation via the computer or sleeping excessively. Even excessive care giving (for parents or others) is many times a maladaptive response to extreme stress. They often engage in risky behavior, such as unprotected or high-risk sex, risky relationships, drug and alcohol use, compulsive gambling, overspending, overeating (or under eating), and over exercising.
Instead of giving in to these negative feelings and exacerbating stress levels, individuals should find better ways to cope.
Triggers for Extreme Stress
Extreme stress has external and internal triggers. These differ in type and intensity for each individual. What bothers one person may be insignificant to another. A trigger that may be debilitating for one person may cause only minor problems for someone else.
External triggers include persons, places or situations, changes in routine, sights, sounds and smells, time or date, certain activities, things you see, read or hear in the media, and/or traumatic events (re-occurring or new).
Internal triggers can be any or more of the following: emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations, and sickness or injury.
Tips for Managing Extreme Stress
Experts in the field of stress management recommend the following tips for managing extreme stress:
• Refine focus – Instead of allowing stressful thoughts and situations to overwhelm, refine your focus to concentrate on what’s really important. This involves slowing down, getting oriented, and doing a self-check.
• Know stress triggers – Understand the triggers that precede extreme stress, or that aggravate already-existing stress levels. Learn how to recognize these triggers so that you can better cope with them when they occur.
• Allow one emotion at a time - Exercise discipline to engage in only one emotion at a time. By allowing numerous emotions to flood the consciousness, the mind and body become incapable of action. Inaction thus deepens the consequences of extreme stress. Banish competing emotions by single-mindedly dealing with one emotion while telling yourself you will take care of other concerns in order of priority. By doing so, you are recognizing that other emotions exist, but you are exercising your power not to let them overwhelm you.
• Evaluate one priority thought – What is the overriding concern that you need to deal with at this moment? Once you identify it, thoroughly evaluate that thought and any required actions you must take. By prioritizing thoughts, just like emotions, you are exercising control and better managing extreme stress.
• Define your personal goals one at a time – Everyone needs goals to keep a forward-thinking outlook. Don’t allow goal-setting to become jumbled, however, as this will be counter-productive to managing extreme stress. Instead, examine all aspects of one goal, the most important goal on your near-term horizon (or far-term, if that is more beneficial to implementing positive coping behaviors). Define what this goal means to you, what you need to do to achieve it and the steps you need to take to get it started.
• Use a ladder approach – Build on all the positive behaviors you put in place so that you have a ladder approach. Using core positive coping mechanisms for dealing with stress (refining focus, knowing stress triggers, allowing one emotion at a time, evaluating one priority thought, and defining personal goals one at a time), gradually add to your arsenal of healthy strategies for managing extreme stress.
• Don’t forget good nutrition, adequate sleep and exercise – These are important in helping the mind and body heal from the effects of extreme stress. Eat a balanced diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, get the required amount of sleep each night (7 to 8 hours, on average), and exercise regularly (at least 20 minutes of walking, working out, or sports, for example, a minimum of four days a week).
Help Dealing with Extreme Stress
Therapy can help individuals suffering from extreme stress. This can take the form of individual and/or group counseling sessions, 12-step groups, self-help groups, meditation, hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and other healing techniques. Increasing self-awareness through education and the practice of positive coping strategies can also help.
Often individuals suffering from extreme stress have other co-occurring disorders or problems and can benefit from residential treatment centers for addictions (such as alcohol, drugs, gambling, eating or other disorders), hospital inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment programs.
Check with your personal physician, member of the clergy, trusted family member or friend to obtain referrals or recommendations on getting help to deal with extreme stress.
--Suzannekane 20:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
