It's Been Suggested That When You Suffer Chronic
Stress, You Need Professional Help, Is That True?
What is chronic stress?
Chronic stress can be a continuous series of stressful situations, which
don’t allow your body time to recover, or a difficult perhaps intractable
situation that has no easy solution and creates continuous stress. An
example might be your marriage on the ‘rocks’.
In these situations, you will never beat your stress until you resolve the
underlying problem that’s causing it. This often means facing up to
painful decisions. It could be a relationship, job or health problem, the
solution is still the same. You must get to the root cause.
But, you don’t have to do it alone.
The first step is to find a support network of friends and people you can
talk to. Just discussing your problems with someone you can trust will
ease the burden a little. It never does any good keeping it to yourself,
even if you feel embarrassed about it.
Very often a sign of chronic stress are tension headaches and migraines.
Both tension headaches and migraines can be helped by muscle relaxation
techniques and head massages. Migraines are a particularly nasty and
disabling condition that affects as much as 10% of the population.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is very effective for chronic stress. It has a
built-in plan of action and is used by many professionals for both stress
and anxiety disorders. It uses a step-by-step approach that starts by
identifying the source of your stress.
Dan Robey has created a new program -
the power of positive
habits - that uses what he calls 'cognitive restructuring' which is
based on cognitive behaviour therapy and is currently very popular.
So, when should you get professional help?
This really is a personal decision. But you will benefit the most when you
suffer from chronic stress and perhaps additional problems like anxiety or
depression. It would be right for you if you did not want to solve your
problems on your own, or felt that you couldn’t do it on your own,
especially if you don’t have a support network.
The best place to start in your quest to find a therapist is referrals and
recommendations. Ask friends, family, doctors or even the local hospital.
It’s always better when professionals come recommended, particularly if
your trust the referrer’s judgement.
Otherwise there are simple, practical steps you can take to find a
shortlist of therapists and then use your own selection criteria. You
could start by searching the National mental health service finder's
database - HelpPRO.
Check out a new report, just released - "A
step-by-step guide to beating stress", which includes, what happens to
your body, situations to avoid, 15 instant stress busters, 13 stress
management strategies and creating a plan of action.
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