Stress Awareness Month
What is Stress?
Stress is essentially an imbalance between the demands put on yourself and your ability to cope with these demands. Stress is often seen as a negative emotion, but stress plays an important role in our survival; Stress triggers an automatic response which is designed to make sure that you cope effectively with emergencies. Stress also makes your body produce adrenaline; this adrenaline will help you perform well in challenging situations. We all react to and cope with stress in different ways but when stress is regular and doesn’t seem to let up, this can be bad news.
Some symptoms of Stress
Mood swings
Loss of concentration
Loss of appetite
Sleeping problems
Feeling constantly tired
Headaches
Who is affected by stress?
Anyone can be affected by stress at anytime of their lives, being a teenager and approaching adulthood can be one of the most challenging periods in life with a lot of physical and emotional changes.
You might feel stressed in different areas of your life – whether it’s at home with your family, at school and with exams, with your friends or in close relationships.
Help with Stress
Everyone needs help to manage stress from time to time.
Sometimes stress gets on top of you. Especially when the situation causing the stress goes on and on, the problems just seem to keep building up. You can feel trapped, as if there is no way out and no solution to your problems. If you feel like this, it is important to get help.
You should get help if……….
You feel that stress is affecting your health
You feel so desperate that you think about stopping school, running away or harming yourself
You feel low, sad, tearful, or that life is not worth living
You lose your appetite and find it difficult to sleep
You have worries, feelings and thoughts that are hard to talk about because you feel people won't understand you or will think you are `weird'
Remember, it’s very important to act quickly to stop stress that could be damaging – before it affects your physical or mental health.
Useful Contacts
Young Wrexham Outside In counselling.
Child line
Helpline: 0800 1111
Samaritans
Helpline: 08457 909 090
