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Workaholics

Workaholics at Risk From Being ‘Overstressed’

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Stress can have significant effects on your body, both physical and psychological. With more and more people leading stressful lives, the occurrence of long term stress has increased dramatically with one third of people reported to be suffering from stress at least one day per week. Identifying the signs that you’re overstressed can be difficult, especially when you’re constantly busy with work and the demands of everyday life. If you can identify the early signs and symptoms it can make combating the problem much easier, allowing you to get back to being yourself.

You always seem to be ill

Being ill regularly can indicate problems with stress. Although most people associate being ill with the weather, the sickness bug going around at work or perhaps an inherently weak immune system, illness can in fact have much more complicated causes. Stress can trigger illness as your body’s capability to develop white blood cells decreases, therefore making you ill more often as you are less able to fight off infections. 

How is it possible to link stress with regular illnesses? Take the time to remember when you were last ill. Where there any stressful situations going on in your life simultaneously such as a work deadline or an upcoming exam? Connecting the dots can help you tackle stress and reduce the impact it has on your body. Seeking professional advice can also help you deal with the problem as they can give you the best advice and treatment. Furthermore, it is essential that you are maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle, ensuring that your immune system is well equipped to deal with any bouts of illness that do occur.

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Everything irritates you

Another sign stress may be taking over is when you start to feel irritated by everything around you. A colleague may ask you to help with a certain task and you find yourself sighing and getting annoyed at them. It feels like everything around you is constantly going wrong and the world never seems to be on your side. 

A lot of people have no idea that they are being rude to the people around them, often causing irritation and rifts in their relationships. Being stressed and overwhelmed can mean we don’t have the capacity to consider the feelings of others around us, leaving them hurt and confused. Seeking professional advice in this situation can be extremely effective so you can go back to being yourself and prevent stress from affecting your quality of life.

You’re constantly thinking about work

A major sign that work is stressing you out is when you cannot stop thinking about it! Even though you leave the office at 5, your mind is constantly occupied with work related worries and tasks you need to complete before a certain date. Work is on your mind during dinner, when you’re trying to relax and fall asleep, and even when you’re talking to other people. Taking a step back and leaving work at the door is extremely hard for many people, causing intense stress.

Keeping yourself healthy by staying hydrated, following a nutritious diet, maintaining a healthy sleeping and exercise pattern will help you tackle stress head-on when it does hit.

You can’t focus on anything

Whilst many people cannot focus on anything but work, many find it extremely difficult to focus on anything at all when they’re stressed. Failing to make progress or even get started on that task or deadline you’ve been putting off is a sign that you may be overwhelmed. Instead of being able to focus and complete a task, you fret too much about all the other things you have to do and worry about not being able to complete those tasks to a good enough standard. You become trapped in a vicious cycle as tasks pile up around you.

Those who suffer from anxiety are all too familiar with this cycle, however beginning to refocus your concentration on what you need to accomplish is never impossible. There is lots of advice available both online and from professionals that can help you to get you life back on track.

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You’ve got eczema or inflamed skin 

Stress can also trigger problematic skin conditions such as eczema or inflammation. This is a result of your body being put through stressful events especially if you already suffer from chronic dry skin or eczema. Anxiety can also trigger flare ups and may lead to more stress, intensifying the issue. 

Seeking advice and treatments from doctors is a good place to start when tackling this issue whilst following a healthy diet and moisturizing your skin regularly can also help the situation. Removing products from your regime that you think might be causing the problem to worsen can also help lessen the symptoms. Many people also find that certain foods such as dairy and wheat can intensify breakouts, keeping your skin clear and further stress at bay. 

Everyone combats stress in different ways. Keeping an open mind to other people’s symptoms and struggles that may differ from yours is a major step towards acceptance. Keeping yourself healthy by staying hydrated, following a nutritious diet, maintaining a healthy sleeping and exercise pattern will help you tackle stress head-on when it does hit. Listen to your body, take care of it and address issues when they arise. Beating stress is never impossible and doing so will lead to a happier life.

Climate Change

Studies Detail Impact of Climate Change on Mental Health

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One of the concerns associated with climate change is the effects of rising global temperatures, pollution, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events on human health. Typically, this concern is related to people’s physical health; heavily polluted air can lead to respiratory illnesses, contaminated drinking water can contribute to all manner of illnesses, and extreme weather events can cause traumatic injury as well as dehydration and starvation resulting from damage to infrastructure. But another aspect of the health impacts of climate change is often overlooked, which is the psychological impact of understanding the global threat imposed by the phenomenon.

Climate change has been in the news with increasing frequency lately for a number of reasons. One reason is the increasing number of extreme weather events, some of which have been shown scientifically to have been worse as a result of climate change. Another reason is the work of activists, particularly young people such as Greta Thunberg, to raise awareness about the scope of the impacts of climate change, including the historic global protests on Friday. As I write this article, the U.N. is holding a climate summit to discuss the problem and potential solutions, where Thunberg is speaking. And in the United States, democratic presidential candidates are discussing the policies they’d implement to fight climate change, many of which call for unprecedented political change.

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A meta-analysis, which will be published in the April 2020 edition of Current Opinion in Psychology, takes a holistic approach of understanding the health impacts of climate change by reviewing research that has been conducted on the subject over the past several years. This study identifies three different forms of climate-related events and how they relate to mental health. These events are “acute events” such as hurricanes and wildfires; “subacute or long-term changes,” like droughts and heat stress; and “the existential threat of long-lasting changes, including higher temperatures, rising sea levels and a permanently altered and potentially uninhabitable physical environment.” The various ways in which these factors impact mental health is broad, and the authors specifically point to the development of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Children and poor people are particularly vulnerable, as these are populations most directly threatened by the effects of climate change.

For psychologists, eco-anxiety is a natural and reasonable reaction to the science of climate change, and the best response to eco-anxiety is to take action.

The term “eco-anxiety” has been introduced to describe the sense of being overwhelmed by the nature of climate change as an existential threat, and has been identified as an area of concern among psychologists. The phenomenon impacts even people who do not have a history of mental illness, and is characterized by “a chronic fear of environmental doom,” according to a 2017 report produced by the American Psychological Association. Sufferers of eco-anxiety, a condition which is thought to be rapidly growing among the global population, worry about the future of themselves and their children, and experience feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration owing in part to their conceptualization of themselves in relation to the global environment. According to psychologist Molly S. Castello, sufferers of eco-anxiety use denial to distance themselves from their existential concerns, but that denial only serves as a distraction from their anxiety, worsening the condition in the long term.

Several therapies have been proposed to treat eco-anxiety. Both cognitive behavioral therapy and medication have been shown to be useful treatments for the depression and anxiety that can result from environmental concerns, but psychologists who specialize in environmental concern recommend additional steps. These steps involve changing your lifestyle to reassert control over your feelings and instilling yourself with the knowledge that you are not remaining complacent in the fact of climate change. Duncan Greere, who edited a report detailing solutions to the climate crisis, recommends that individuals “make climate change a factor in the decisions you make around what you eat, how you travel, and what you buy,” “talk about climate change with your friends, family and colleagues, and “demand that politicians and companies make it easier and cheaper to do the right thing for the climate.” For psychologists, eco-anxiety is a natural and reasonable reaction to the science of climate change, and the best response to eco-anxiety is to take action.