Posts Tagged ‘life style’
Stress caused by finances
August 3rd, 2008 | 
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Financial aspects figured quite high on the Holmes and Rahe scale - for example, being affected by large debt or being involved in bankruptcy actually scored higher than the death of a close friend. This is because a sever change in financial status can bring about drastic changes in life-style such as for example the loss of a house, disruption of family life, not to speak of the psychological stress with regards to loss of status and self-esteem.
The constant stress and worry about finances can also be very stressful over longer term periods. Obviously when the economy becomes bad there are knock-on effects that can be very stressful and that each feature individually on the stress scale - this can include circumstances such as the loss of a job, having to move house, having a spouse take on a new job, having to work harder with less free time.
It must be remembered that we are all subjected to these stressful and life-changing events - everyone suffers from the economic consequences of a bad housing market, higher interest rates, foreclosures, becoming bankrupt, losing a job etc etc. But it is how we each react to these events that makes the difference between experience high stress and not being as stressed. Some people are just more resilient to some types of stresses than others.
Tags: bankruptcy, changes in life, drastic changes, economic consequences, financial aspects, foreclosures, free time, housing market, interest rates, life style, losing a job, new job, psychological stress, self esteem, stress scale, types of stressesRelated posts
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Causes Of Stress Overview
In the broadest scheme of things there are two types of stress - the type is largely self-induced and the type that causes you stress due to unforeseen or foreseen life-changing events.
Self-induced stress is largely due to your personality. Some personality types are just more inclined to ’stress themselves out’. This type of stress is mostly due to working too hard, having too little time, feeling out of control the whole time…
The other type of stress is due to major life-changing events that you might, or might not have control over. Some examples of events that you have control over are getting married, moving house, having a new baby. But then there are those events that you have no control over such as illness, death of a loved one and so forth. BOTH these types of events are stressful, even the so-called ‘happy’ events. The reason for this is that a change in life-style disrupts your routine, it destroys the mental map that you had of the world and it forces you to create a new map. Coupled with this can be extreme emotions such as grief, anger and feelings of loss. Altogether, these feelings add up and can cause stress - feeling of anxiety and fear, depression and anger.
These types of changes can be broadly grouped into these four categories:
- Family
- Personal
- Work
- Finances
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Stress - The Modern Disease
Stress is often called a modern disease since it seems as if it is a disease or malady particularly applicable to today’s lifestyle.
One needs to question whether people in older times also were not subjected to stress. After all, a few years ago people did not have access to the level of modern medicine that we have today and illnesses such as Tuberculosis and further back, other illnesses such as plagues, caused great hardship, death and surely stress? Similarly, people had much less access to physical comforts (indoor plumbing comes to mind…) and the world also went through various major wars. Surely that should have contributed to stress for people living in those times?
The biggest difference between those times and today though is that up to the beginning of the last century people tended to live quite physically active lives – the majority of people tended to work at physical labor, and the lifestyle in general was more physical (no TV!). This tended to alleviate the physical symptoms of stress.
What I mean by that is that stress has a large physical component to it. The human body has been engineered to react physically to danger – the so-called ‘fight or flight’ reaction. This reaction is brought about by the central nervous system and is not something that we have any conscious control over – much like breathing! The reaction prepares us physically to react to dangerous situations by making sure that we have more adrenalin in our bloodstream so that we can run or fight, our heart would beat faster, our muscles would fill with blood, we would start to breath faster.
Stress reactions are also controlled by the central nervous system, and although not as extreme as the fight-or-flight reaction, it has a more insidious effect since our modern life-style does not permit a physical reaction to the stressor – you can hardly punch your boss in the face if he irritates you!
This means that while there are a lot of stressors that could cause physical stress reactions – much the same type of physical reactions as the one brought about by the fight-or-flight reaction just to a lesser degree, the problem is that our bodies have much less of a physical outlet to get rid of these effects. We have much more sedentary life-styles than in previous years. The physical effects of these stressors (factors which cause us stress) therefore build up in our bodies and eventually manifest themselves over the long term in the form of physical and mental ailments – heart disease, digestive problems, tension headaches, insomnia, loss of weight, susceptibility to colds and flu and a general weak immune system.
But without stress, on the other hand, life would be extremely boring! We need a certain amount of stress in our lives in order to function properly. Stress is what makes us perform at our best, stress adds spice to life! It is how we each individually react to stressors that make the difference. Stress can therefore be defined as the state that we are in when the demands that are made upon us exceed our ability to cope – and this differs from person to person.
Tags: bloodstream, central nervous system, conscious control, flight reaction, human body, life style, physical stress, physical symptoms of stress, stress reactions, stressor, stressors