Symptoms Of Stress - How To Recognize Them

Stress affects virtually everyone at one time or another in their life. Everyday, you could hear someone complaining about stress and how they are affected by stress. Temporary exposure to stress may not be a problem and in fact it could even be beneficial to us but under long term effects of stress, it often proved to be detrimental to our overall well-being and health. As such, there is a need for us to learn how to cope with stress in order to lead a normal and healthy life and to prevent the development of any severe stress related disorders should we be exposed to prolonged stress. To do so, we have to first learn to understand stress a little better and there is no better way to get started than to learn how to recognize the signs and symptoms of stress.

Now what are the symptoms of stress?

Basically, we can broadly classify symtoms of stress into 3 main groups. They are

1. Physical symptoms
2. Emotional symptoms and
3. Relational symptoms

Physical Symptoms Of Stress

Here is a list of some physical stress related disorders that you may be very familiar with. They include:

• Sleep disturbances
• Hypertension
• Headaches or migraine
• Irregular heart beat, palpitation and chest pain
• Fatigue
• Hair loss
• Upset tummy, constipation or diarrhoea, acid reflux, heartburn and flatulence (gas)
• Shortness of breath or asthma attacks
• Eating disorder resulting in weight gain or weight loss
• Muscle ache
• Weak immune system, falling sick frequently

However, a word of caution. The signs and symptoms of stress as mentioned above may have resulted from some underlying illness rather than a direct cause by stress. You are advised to seek proper medical consultation before ruling out the possibility of any underlying illnesses.

Stress can also affect the feelings of a person. Below give me the list of some of the emotional symptoms of stress that you may have felt at one time or another when under the influence of stress.

Emotional Symptoms

• Worry or anxiety
• Irritable, nervous
• Frustration, depression, moody
• Lethargy, tired
• Difficulty sleeping (insomnia)
• Confusion and difficulty in concentrating
• Inability to think clearly,
• A sense of helplessness

Like physical signs, these emotional stress symptoms may arises from some underlying illness other than stress alone. It is advisable to seek medical confirmation to eliminate other causes first before attributing their causes to stress. 

Relational symptoms

When a person is under stress, they tend to be anti-social and this can cause strains on relationships with family, friends, co-workers, or even strangers. A person under stress may manifest signs such as:

• increased arguments
• Aggressive and abusive
• tendency to over-react
• anti-social
• Violence

Severe reactions to stress under prolonged period of time may interfere with our daily life. It is therefore important to learn to recognize these signs or symptoms of stress related disorders and to seek medical or professional assistance to overcome them as soon as possible.