Stress has been a long-standing concern in healthcare. Medical professionals view it as a universal explanation of various illnesses, ranging from physical problems such as gastrointestinal disorders and heart diseases to mental and emotional problems such as anxiety and depression. For employees, stress is the main cause of work burnout, fatigue, and mood swings. It can also lead to chronic musculoskeletal pain, which urges people to resort to back pain relief and alternative medicine.
Stress is a ubiquitous experience and an unavoidable part of everyday life. While a sufficient amount of stress increases our alertness and improves performance, too much of it can take a huge toll on our health and well-being. In recent years, more people have been experiencing stress at unprecedented levels, leading to stress management programs.
Stress management programs involve treatments and techniques to help patients manage their stress. These techniques include mindfulness exercises (e.g., yoga), self-care challenges, wellness programs, and support groups. In the process, people learn more about stress and proper methods to manage it.
Despite thousands of factual resources about stress, misconceptions still persist about stress management. When it comes to healthcare, believing in misconceptions can negatively affect your ability to eliminate stress from your life. To avoid falling into the traps of stress-related myths, here are the most popular and dangerous misconceptions about stress management.
Stress management is about removing stress from one’s life
Many people assume that stress management means eliminating everything that causes stress in your life. Although this is a critical part of stress management, removing stress isn’t the end goal.
The truth is that it’s impossible to eliminate stress completely from one’s life. It’s also not advisable to cut out stress because it comes with certain benefits. Stress is the body’s way of responding to different kinds of threats and demands. Ever notice how you feel charged when doing something different or scary? This is because stress causes physical changes that allow us to address certain challenges.
We need stress to optimize our human function and to grow in times of challenges. Eustress is a subtype of stress trigger that enhances our vitality and overall health only if we experience a healthy amount of it. Also, eliminating stress will likely cause more stress if you try. This explains why you feel uneasy and frustrated if you’re bored and have nothing to do.
Relying on stress management to escape stress itself has damaging effects on our physical and mental health. You miss out on the benefits of stress management, and you’re causing more stress by reaching a goal that’s impossible to achieve.
The best approach is to accept stress as a part of your life while learning how to manage it effectively. Eliminate the unnecessary stressors and develop techniques to handle the triggers you can’t remove from your life.
The right attitude is the key to not feeling stressed
People think that having the right attitude is enough to live a stress-free life. They believe that stressed individuals are the ones who struggle to manage their behaviors and attitude.
While shifting your attitude helps in improving stress levels, severe stress can take a huge toll on your health even if you have the most positive attitude than everyone else. Also, stress will still affect your health even if you’re aware of it.
Assuming a positive attitude can help a person face challenges head-on can cause negative self-assessment. The worse part is telling people to stay positive when confronted with stress. This prevents them from knowing the cause of their stress and the right way to manage it.
Keep in mind that even feel-good stressors can take a toll on your physical health. As you strive to embrace a positive outlook in life, don’t forget to look after your body, especially when facing difficult challenges in life.
Follow the right techniques, and stress will leave you
Stress management strategies, such as meditation, exercise, and enthusiasm, help manage stressors and build your resilience against stress. But the truth is, no method can remove the stress you’re feeling.
If you expect all stress management techniques to help eliminate stress, you may end up choosing a technique that doesn’t work for you and eventually give up. This also encourages someone to think that something is wrong with them because a certain technique doesn’t work in their situation.
Stress management is all about finding balance and knowing how to handle whatever comes in your life. Although stressors can sometimes leave you off track, stress management techniques will serve as your coping mechanism in times of adverse situations.
Stress has plenty of causes, but the good news is, there are unlimited ways to manage it effectively. The key lies in knowing which methods will benefit your health and well-being. Since stress can be a debilitating disease, it’s important to be mindful about which stress management techniques will benefit us the most.
