We all experience stress in our daily lives from different sources: jobs, relationships, finances. And whether you’re dealing with a daily stressor, chronic stress, or a major life challenge like illness or divorce, stress can take a significant toll on you both physically and emotionally. How do you know when you’re dealing with a level of stress that’s unhealthy for you?

The answer to this question can be tricky for a few reasons:

• Stress affects the body in many different ways.
• Some of these are obvious, but others may not be as noticeable or easy to detect until they become more severe.
• Different people are affected more or less intensely, and in different ways.
• The effects of stress often look like symptoms of other illnesses (partially due to the fact that stress lowers immunity and makes us vulnerable to many things), sometimes people mistake symptoms of illness for stress and vice versa.
• People who thrive on stress tend to feel it as their natural state, making it more difficult to discern stress symptoms until after much of their stress is alleviated.
• When under high levels of stress, people often find it difficult to stop and notice their body’s responses.

While stress affects everyone in a unique way, there are certain factors that are common. If you are experiencing any of the following, it could be a sign that you’re being affected by stress:

• Headaches: Certain types of headaches can be related to stress. If you’re experiencing more headaches, especially tension headaches, stress could be the culprit.

• More Frequent Colds or Flu: There’s an inverse relationship between stress and immunity, so if you’re under too much stress, you may be getting sick more often.

• Sleep Problems: There are many ways that stress affects sleep. Too much stress can rob you of sleep and make the sleep you get less restorative.

• General Anxiety: Anxiety does serve an important function for survival, but if you’re feeling anxious much of the time, it could be because you have too many stressors in your life, or it may indicate a medical condition like generalized anxiety disorder. If you experience an increase in anxiety, you may want to to talk to your doctor.

• ‘Fuzzy Thinking’: Your body’s stress response pumps your body with hormones that make it possible for you to fight or flee quickly. When triggered in excess, this stress response can actually cause you to think less quickly.

• Feelings of Frustration: If you’re faced with many demands at once, the natural result for many people is increased frustration and irritability. The trick is to find ways to prevent frustration and calm down quickly.

• Lowered Libido: Stress can affect your libido in several ways. If you’re too tired for sex, or can’t seem to find the time for your partner, this can be due to stress in your life as well.

These are just a few of the many ways that stress can affect your body and mind.

- Article by Wale Bello