Stress happens in our life all the time and there are lots of reasons for it to happen.
High stress levels are – by definition – a higher level than our almost background levels of stress.
These are the most common reasons for high stress levels and some pointers on what you can do to get them down again.
Death of someone close to you
Whilst we know that death is inevitable, we don’t really accept it.
There’s a sense of permanence in our lives – most things don’t change very much. Sure, people get older but it’s usually a small change each time we see them, not a leap from young to old.
But we tend to think that the people we’ve known for years – maybe all our life – are always going to be with us.
Which is why death causes so much grief and stress.
For most people, the best thing to do is gradually allow yourself to come to terms with it. But there are some things you can do to help ease the pain that death causes including meditation and hypnosis, two great ways to help yourself deal with the stress and grief it’s causing.
Divorce
When you get married, divorce is the last thing on your mind. The service even says “until death us do part” so the expectation is that we’re going to be married forever.
But things change.
Maybe the person you married has changed, maybe you’ve changed, maybe you both have and, eventually, the only option is to part company with each other.
The stress builds up, probably gradually, as you grow apart. Then the actual divorce proceedings and the decree that accompanies them.
Explaining to friends, family, children, even pets needs to happen.
And the stress grows with that.
Mindfulness, meditation and hypnosis are all good ways to help reduce the stress caused by divorce.
Job loss
Again, we think that jobs are for life. We may even have been told that at school. But jobs cease to exist – there’s very little demand for fax repair nowadays for instance – and others appear. When I was younger, the internet didn’t even exist.
But job loss is something we don’t anticipate.
This is accentuated when the economy shifts massively – as has happened at the time of writing with the coronavirus problem and happened in 2008 financial crisis and will happen again.
There’s a lot of stress with job loss – you have to find another job before you run out of money.
And it’s difficult to stay calm at times like that but, ultimately, that’s what you need to do otherwise your stress levels about your job loss will affect your chances of getting a new job.
Financial worries
Money worries are always a big factor in stress levels.
Most of us are worried about not having enough money and/or losing the money we’ve currently got and/or how we’ll make money in the future.
There are some things you can do to bring more money into your life, even if that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Do your best to squash your negative thoughts about money – this takes practice but if you don’t do it, you’re almost certainly making sure that your lack of money will stay with you.
Moving home
There are lots of things involved in moving home.
Choosing a new place to live, including all the research that goes along with that. Whether it’s somewhere local, so you don’t need to do quite as much research, or somewhere further away so you have to check schooling, crime levels, shopping, broadband speed, etc.
Then there’s the finance agreement – probably a mortgage unless you’re downsizing. And the likely chain of people involved, problems with any one of which could cause the whole process to break.
Then the move itself – packing, transporting, unpacking, getting used to the new area and so on.
Public speaking
It’s often said that the person giving the eulogy at the funeral is more afraid of speaking than they are of death.
Public speaking brings up all sorts of worries and stress.
You’re standing in front of an audience, some of whom know you, others don’t or don’t know you very well.
All sorts of things are running through your mind, none of which are exactly positive and all of which are adding to your stress levels.
Practicing your speech is essential. And visualising the speech going well (often called mental rehearsal) is a good idea as well. The more you do these, the better prepared you’ll be and that will help lower the stress associated with this.
