Why people Fail to Effectively Deal with Stress?

Why people Fail to Effectively Deal with Stress?

Hectic lifestyle, disturbed relationships or break ups, death of a loved one, financial difficulties, loss of job and other challenging circumstances do make life stressful. Managing stress requires taking charge of the factors that cause stress. This implies that you need to control your thoughts, emotions, work and personal schedule and environment. To be successful in stress management, it is also important to first identify the real reasons behind stress. This is not that easy and at times, there may be multiple factors contributing to stress in your life. Some people also fail to identify the real stress inducing factors. However, once identified, the factors causing stress can be controlled with some conscious efforts.

People often fail to deal effectively with stress when they use unhealthy ways to cope with their problems. Some strategies that may temporarily help to reduce stress can actually cause more harm in the long run. Some of these include:

• Smoking
• Excessive drinking
• Using sleeping pills, sedatives or other drugs to relax
• Overeating or under eating
• Spending hours in front of before the television or browsing the Internet
• Sleeping too much
• Distancing from family, friends and daily activities
• Lashing out angrily on others in frustration
• Procrastinating work

Obviously, not all stress can be avoided and running away from a problem that needs real or urgent attention is not the right solution. However, there are several stress causing situations and factors in life that can be successfully avoided. When you know your limits and stick to them in your professional and personal life, it becomes possible to eliminate unnecessary stress. So, if you have too much on your plate, try to identify your priorities. In other words, learn to distinguish between ‘should’ and ‘must’.

At times, a person may stress you out. However, instead of avoiding true friends, family and real well wishers, the right approach is to avoid that person – the one who consistently becomes a source of emotional or psychological disturbance in your life. If complete avoidance is not possible, limit the amount of time that you spend with him/her.

It is a common experience that bottling up certain feelings also increases stress in life. So, when something or someone bothers you, it is better to communicate your concerns in an open and respectful way. Also, when you expect someone to change their behaviour, be willing to bring a little change in your attitude too. In personal relationships, when the other person refuses to bend or change, the best remedy is to forgive and forget. After all, we do live in an imperfect world and people do make mistakes.

Spending time with positive people who encourage you and help you to deal with stress is also a good strategy.

A very docile or submissive person also fails to deal with stress effectively. Taking a back seat in life or accepting defeat against problems will never end stress. So, learn to deal with problems head on while also doing your best to anticipate and prevent them in future.

People fail to deal with stress when they use inappropriate ways to eliminate stress. A change in attitude can help to take effective charge of thoughts, emotions, environment and life.