Who is in control of your life, Stress or you? Would you let stress rule your life and affect your physical and mental wellbeing? As a natural response to mental strain or tension, stress is a result from demanding circumstances. As human beings, stress is a part of our everyday life and is unavoidable. It can affect us physically and mentally in positive ways and in negative ways. It makes our way into what we do on a daily basis, like at work or school, at home or during play, and in our social lives. Knowledge is our friend right? And arming ourselves with knowledge of stress can help us ultimately control it!

In stressful situations, one can find themselves under the feeling of pressure like a heavy coat on his or her back, weighing them down and making their tasks difficult. Stress affects us all but sometimes it can affect us in different ways. Mentally, stress has the ability to change our way of thinking. It can be helpful, like pushing us to study for an exam, doing a presentation, or performing well for a sports team. It makes us think sharper, faster, and can help us with decision making (helpguide.org). Stress can also cause poor judgment, inability to concentrate, constant worrying, racing thoughts, or viewing day to day life in a negative way. Physically its symptoms are evident. Some symptoms can be increase in heart rate, your body tensing up, quickness in breath, and sharpened senses (helpguide.org). Negative symptoms of stress could be frequent colds, change in diet, change in sleep, procrastination, chest pains, or can even result in the use of drugs and alcohol. Although the negative effects of stress seem unpleasant, learning to control and manage stress can lead one to success.
Although stress has positive effects that can help us through our lives, too much stress can lead to damage to the mind and body. As we know by now, stress can help us on a daily basis, but too much stress can lead to health issues like heart disease, asthma, obesity, diabetes, constant headaches, and even premature death (webmd.com). Handling stress can let us control how much of it we have to deal with. Some ways of handling stress could be taking a break from what is stressful, figure out what is stressing you out, organize yourself, or even asking for help. (psychcentral.com). When one figures out what is stressful to them, they can handle it and take care of it. Getting organized can help too. Being organized can help one be more progressive and power through the stressful tasks. Most people are too self-conscious and decide not to reach or ask for help. But, those who can’t handle the stress, but choose to anyways may face the harm it can cause. The damage stress causes isn’t permanent, however it should be avoided for the sake of one’s health.

Emotions are altered by stress. It can be alters like a picture through a kaleidoscope. As stress affects our mental and physical wellbeing, it can also affect our emotions and how we perceive them. The double edged sword of stress can be helpful or chaotic. Symptoms of emotional eustress can be felt through emotions like happiness, love, joy, blissful, or the feeling of liveliness. Distress’s symptoms would be moodiness, irritability, easily agitated, inability to relax, feeling overwhelmed, sense of loneliness and isolation, depression, or being unhappy without cause (helpguide.org). Going through emotional distress is something no one has to deal with. If one find’s themselves in emotional distress, a good way to handle it and make oneself feel more positively emotional would be to talk it out with someone who can be trusted or to take it to pen and paper and write out their feelings. Talking out feelings is always good because the thoughts in one’s mind get out in the open for cross examination. Like talking out one’s problems, writing them out is also helpful because they can also be cross examined that way. Handling one’s stress can help control their emotions.

Stress can be like a wild beast; once it’s been tamed it can be controlled and used to motivate oneself. When eustress is used to encourage someone to success, they have properly used the stress they are under to help them in their life. Distress, when let out of hand, can damage one’s mental and physical health. Good ways handle stress would be figuring out what is stressing you out, getting organized, or reaching for help. Knowing about how stress works can help one control it. So who is in control, stress, or you?