Discussions about stress and anxiety, especially among young people, often focus almost solely on the mental health impacts. But understanding what it does to us physically is an important part of learning how to manage stress and anxiety in the short-term and the long-term.
We’re taking a closer look at the connection between the physical and mental impacts of stress with the help of ReachOut – as Australia’s most accessed mental health service for young people, ReachOut has free information, forums and online tools to help deal with whatever life throws at you.
What’s the difference between stress & anxiety?
First up, some definitions. We often talk about ‘stress and anxiety’ as a singular topic without clearly defining and outlining the differences between the two.
Stress and anxiety are both ways that the mind and body respond to ‘danger’.
When we face ‘danger’ – such as pressure from external demands, like assignment deadlines, finding a job, life or relationship stress – our body and mind switch into a heightened state to help us overcome the challenge. That’s stress. While it’s normal, healthy, and even productive in short bursts, feeling stressed out long term could signal other issues.
Anxiety is similar, as the feelings of worry, fear and uneasiness are also caused by detecting potential threats. Your breathing might increase, your heart might start pounding, you could feel butterflies in your stomach, and you might get a burst of energy, however, feeling too much anxiety about something, or feeling anxiety that’s not connected to an obvious challenge, isn’t helpful. It can get in the way of your day-to-day activities and can affect your quality of life.
Again, feeling anxious from time to time about specific events is normal. But when anxiety is constant, is triggered by non-threatening or imagined scenarios, and causes the person to withdraw from their life, it can be classed as an anxiety disorder.
How does stress affect the body?
To reduce the impact stress and anxiety have on our lives, we have to understand how stress affects our bodies.
When we sense a potential threat or source of pressure, the hypothalamus floods our body with the stress hormone adrenaline. This puts our entire system into fight-or-flight mode, triggering physiological changes including:
- Putting the nervous system on high alert to continue detecting threats, which can cause feelings of nervousness, an inability to switch off, and headaches
- Faster breathing to get more oxygen into your body, which can cause hyperventilation and panic attacks
- Pushing the heart to beat harder and faster, raising your blood pressure to pump more blood to your muscles for the ‘fight’
- Tensing your muscles to protect from injury in the ‘fight’, which can cause aches and pains in the aftermath
- Priming the immune system to heal your body faster, which can actually weaken your immune system in the long run
While the physical response serves an important purpose in the short term, experiencing stress for too long and too often can have serious long term health problems due to the toll it takes on your body.
5 techniques for managing stress & anxiety
If you think your stress levels are becoming problematic, consider a two-part strategy: managing your feelings in the moment, and addressing the causes long-term.
To calm yourself in the moment, address the physical effects with:
- Breathing techniques to slow down your breath, your mind, and stop the ‘accelerating’ sensation that can cause panic attacks. 4-7-8 is a popular breathing exercise – breathe in for four seconds, hold it for seven seconds, and breathe out for eight seconds.
- Intentionally release the tension in your body by relaxing every muscle, one at a time. Also known as a ‘body scan’, start by relaxing your forehead and progressively work your way down to your toes.
Once you’ve calmed your body’s physical response, shift your focus to longer-term strategies:
- Identifying what triggers your stress response
Think about the scenarios that make you stressed or anxious. Are there common factors or specific details that you could control in the future? Coming up with an action plan to deal with recurring triggers can help reduce their impact on your life. - Practice challenging negative thoughts
Get in the habit of noticing when anxious thoughts enter your mind. Rather than automatically accepting them as ‘true’, interrogate those beliefs as if they were false. ReachOut has a great guide on questions to challenge negative thoughts – writing them down helps too!
- Ask for help
If you’re dealing with long-term stress and anxiety that is impacting the rest of your life, please don’t go it alone! It is always okay to ask for help.
There is lots of help available: if you don’t know where to start, NextStep is an online tool for 18-25 year olds that guides you to support services relevant to your individual situation.
ReachOut has free info, forums and online tools for whatever life throws at you. Their trusted self help information, peer-support and referral tools save lives by helping young people be well and stay well.
