Your personal signs of stress
Your mind and body have many different ways of telling you that you’re stressed. On top of the fact that different people are stressed by different experiences, the way they express that stress can happen in a variety of ways as well, some obvious, some much more subtle. Understanding your own personal signs of stress is the first step in making changes to reduce your stress.
Here are just some broad categories of what might be a sign of stress for you.
Body
What physical changes do you feel when you’re stressed? You may feel it in your muscles as aches, soreness or tightness. If you’re stressed right now, your heart may be racing, or you may be wired and unable to sleep… If you’ve been stressed out for a while, you may feel tired. Stress can also affect your insides, leading to stomach aches, indigestion or diarrhea.
Emotion
How does it feel? Having a brain full of scattered thoughts might feel confusing, overwhelming, even scary. If your body is jittery, you may also feel anxious or uneasy. When you’re pressured, you might feel sad, depressed or lonely… or you might get irritable, angry or frustrated… or you might just go numb or not care at all.
Thought
What are you thinking? When you feel like you’re being bombarded from all sides, so many thoughts running through your head can be really confusing. You may have trouble focusing, organizing or even verbalizing your thoughts. Your thinking might get narrower, negative, so that it’s hard to see the big picture. Conversely, sometimes your thoughts can get stuck on one idea, on the past or on the future, and it can be hard to think about anything else.
Action
Do you do anything different? Some people are naturally clumsy, but if you’re distracted and inattentive, you may fumble and stumble more than usual. If your energy is being sapped by your stress, you might be rude or aggressive with the people around you. When the pressure builds up inside you, it may come out in bursts of crying or sudden anger.