Emotions

How to increase stress resistance?

17.06.2017

Snezhana Ivanova

Stress resistance is the ability of an individual to cope with psycho-emotional stress.

Stress resistance is the ability of an individual to cope with psycho-emotional stress. If tension accumulates periodically, it can lead to health problems. Developing stress resistance can help you better overcome life's difficulties and more effectively solve everyday troubles. Every day in a person’s life certain events occur to which he is forced to react, spending mental strength on it. The emotional component is very important here. Many people are beginning to think about how to increase stress resistance, become mentally stronger and more resilient.

Levels of stress tolerance

Each person has his own limit of stress tolerance. The patience and mental endurance of one should not be compared with another. Levels of stress resistance reflect the degree of development of readiness to take responsibility for what is happening. The level depends, first of all, on how much a person has the skills to effectively cope with emerging difficulties. In life, as a rule, we are overtaken by many surprises. Some of them are extremely unpleasant, make you suffer, and unsettle you for a long time. Feelings of guilt, bitterness, disappointment, envy and anger, people commit the most thoughtless acts. Depending on how we react to certain events, we can talk about developed stress resistance. Let's take a closer look at the levels of stress resistance.

High level

A high level of stress resistance allows a person to remain confident in various situations that would lead another into a state of panic and mental confusion. Usually such people are called strong and resilient, attributing to them incredible strength of character and fortitude. Meanwhile, it should be remembered that all people without exception have different experiences. It is impossible to always be strong and take on super tasks. It’s just that someone has successfully learned to cope with them, while others continue to endlessly complain about life. A high level of development of stress resistance allows a person to remain calm and unperturbed even in moments of strong emotional stress.

Average level

Most people have an average level of stress resistance. This level reflects the ability to actively resist everyday troubles. Adversity and difficulties happen to everyone, there is nothing supernatural about it. In ordinary life, people know how to successfully cope with them: they experience a breakdown in relationships, problems at work, a period of acute lack of funds. The average level of stress resistance forces you to constantly look for the best way out of the current situation. Lack of material well-being can be a good incentive to start working on yourself and your character, improving your existing skills and abilities.

Low level

A low level of stress resistance characterizes a weak personality. It is sometimes quite difficult for such a person to adapt to changing conditions. It seems to him that circumstances are stronger than him and nothing can be done about it. A low level of development of stress resistance is observed, most often, in those who have experienced some serious shock in life. Such people get lost even in minor problems, when solving the difficulty is not difficult. Typically, the inability to solve everyday problems is associated with the development of strong emotional sensitivity. Hypersensitivity forces a person to constantly react to any unfavorable events, actions or actions of others.

How to increase stress resistance

Developing stress resistance is a necessary and necessary skill. There is so much stress in the modern world that it is impossible to escape. If we learn not to react to at least some stimuli, we can preserve our mental health. How to relieve stress and increase stress resistance? Below are actionable recommendations.

Get a good night's sleep

The modern rhythm of life often forces us to live on the run. Constant haste creates additional nervous tension. As a result, people become lethargic, irritable, and apathetic. This results in exhaustion of the nervous system. The need to get a good night's sleep is a basic need of every individual that must be satisfied. A person simply cannot exist normally without proper rest. If you're wondering how to improve your stress tolerance, start getting a good night's sleep.

Relaxation methods

It is advisable to start developing stress resistance with relaxation exercises. You can adopt breathing practices or conduct meditations right at home. Today it is not difficult to find in your city special courses on developing consciousness and gaining self-confidence. The ability to trust yourself is the key to success in life. After all, it is so important to actually fight negative manifestations. Don’t let some person ruin your mood and periodically accuse you of something. Such thoughts are very destructive to the psyche. The skill of stress resistance allows you to minimize all manifestations of negative events. You will soon notice that you have become easier to relate to life and no longer react so sharply to everyday irritants.

Sedatives

When there is severe stress, you should use sedatives. You shouldn’t keep emotional stress inside yourself for a long time, it will only make things worse. To understand how to increase stress resistance, sometimes you need to be able to let go of a traumatic situation in time. Tincture of valerian and motherwort will undoubtedly help bring the nervous system into order.

Healthy lifestyle

Today people sometimes forget to take care of themselves. A healthy lifestyle helps build resistance to stress. It includes proper nutrition and daily walks. Staying in the fresh air helps strengthen the nervous system and develop stress resistance. You need to try to find time to relax. You can't be away from work all the time. Communicate more with your family, play with your children, go for walks, learn something new. Gradually, you will feel how a special taste for life will come: you will want to make amazing discoveries, do something good, give joy to your loved ones.

Thus, stress resistance is a quality not just of strong people, but of those who are able to maintain self-confidence despite depressing circumstances. You should always remember about your own internal resources, then it will become easier to deal with the consequences of any negative situations.

In this article, we will tell you about stress. About what it is, what triggers its mechanism. We will also look at the concept of stress resistance, what it consists of, and what to do if stress comes into your life.

The term “stress” has entered our lives very tightly, but how it is introduced is not always applied in the right place, for example, one cannot simply call the tension experienced by a person stress.

Let's take a closer look at this phenomenon and figure out what is behind this concept.

So, stress is an adaptive reaction of the body, which is expressed in increased anxiety, loss of vitality, and increased tension. The stress response includes both physiological and psychological components.

Through stress, the body puts itself in a state of readiness to adapt to new living conditions and protect itself.

Contrary to popular belief, stress can not only be negative, but can also be very beneficial. Through moderate exposure to stress, for example, you can improve your adaptability to the effects of certain factors. Thus, dosed stress can have a pronounced training effect. It should be understood that weak impacts do not lead to stress. Stress occurs only when the influence of one or another factor (stressor) is large enough and exceeds adaptive capabilities. In the case of the training effect of stress, the impact of the stressor should exceed these possibilities only slightly.

The positive effect of dosed stress can manifest itself in the improvement of a number of psychological and physiological properties:

1. Improved attention and intellectual performance. A person is more focused, his attention is more stable.
2. Improved engagement. The person is more motivated and interested in achieving the goal.
3. Since moderate stress promotes the production of endorphin (the pleasure hormone), a person under its influence may experience the “joy of action.”

When exposed to stress, the hormones adrenaline, cortisol, and prolactin begin to enter the blood. As a consequence of their action, the operating mode of the entire organism changes completely. Protective functions increase, heart rate and pulse increase, and blood clotting increases. In this way, the body prepares for the fight for survival.

Types of stressors.

Stressors - unfavorable external and internal influences of significant strength and duration, leading to the occurrence of stressful conditions.

Factors that cause stress are divided into physiological and psychological.

Physiological - physical activity, pain, temperature changes (heat, cold), hunger, ionizing radiation, many pharmacological effects.

Psychological - choice and decision-making, responsibility, resentment, guilt, conflict situation, approaching danger.

There are also stressors real And probable.
At the same time, the strength of the impact of probable stressors (assumed as a probability, but at the moment does not yet exist) may be no less, and in some cases greater, than from real stressors. For example, encountering something we cannot control or something we think we cannot handle.

Types of stress.

The following types of stress exist:

Eustress - training, positive stress. Thanks to its impact, the body’s adaptive resource is trained, as well as the growth of many parameters that the stressor is aimed at. For example, by stimulating muscles with work, we can cause them to grow, increase endurance and strength.

Distress - negative stress leading to destruction of the body. Under the influence of this type of stress, the body becomes more vulnerable to the effects of the stressor, and the body weakens. Under the influence of this type of stress, immunity decreases and the risk of various diseases increases.

Psychological stress. The most dangerous and destructive stresses for our body are those caused by psychological stressors.
Psychological stress is of the following types:

Information- arise in conditions of information overload, which is not uncommon in our time, and although the human brain is designed in such a way that it can work with very large volumes of information, a stage of overstrain can still occur. As a result, we can observe a deterioration in attention and perception, a deterioration in the ability to make logical conclusions, the ability to imagine is also lost, and the acuity of thought decreases.

Emotional- are the result of emotional processes that go hand in hand with stress. A person reacts to emotions primarily with his body, since in the process of experiencing emotions the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine component begin to act, regulating its work. Repeated repetition of vegetative stimulation can lead to disturbances in the functioning of the body and various psychosomatic phenomena.

Stages of stress.

There are several stages of stress:

1. The anxiety stage lasts from several hours to two days. Includes two phases: shock and anti-shock phase. At the latter stage, the body’s defense reactions are mobilized.
2. Resistance stage. At this stage, resistance to stressors increases. This stage either leads to stabilization and recovery, or is replaced by the last stage.
3. Exhaustion stage - at this stage, the body’s adaptive resources are depleted. In the most advanced cases, this stage can result in the death of the organism.

Prevention of stress and education of stress resistance.

First of all, let's talk about stress prevention measures. In fact, its prevention is the basis of stress resistance.

Stress resistance is a set of personality traits that allow a person to experience stress with minimal destructive consequences for the body and psyche (both one’s own and the psyche of those around him).

There is a misconception that this is some combination of inner callousness, rudeness and insensitivity. Some people even try to work on themselves, moving in this direction (they say that some even succeed on this path). The question is, would anyone want to deal with a person with such an arsenal of qualities?

It is important to understand that stress resistance- this is not the ability to endure stress for a long time and not insensitivity, but above all the ability to make the right decisions and make the right choices in order to reduce its impact.

Please note the first two items in the list below.

1. The most important! Learn to feel and regulate stress (physical, mental, mental, etc.). Try not to overwork and take time off on time.
2. Very important! The human nervous system is designed in such a way that it is not designed to withstand prolonged exposure to stressors. Therefore, when you feel the impact of any stress factor, firstly, you must identify it, and secondly, take measures to eliminate it or reduce its effect. Don't try to reduce stress with meditation, breathing exercises, or other options listed below. These methods are not useless, but first of all, they help to bring yourself into a state of balance and harmony after the stressor has been localized and an intelligent decision has been made regarding it, reducing its impact or minimizing it. Therefore, first of all, think about how to reduce the impact of the stressor.
3. Some people are less stressed than others. If we consider their way of life and thinking, then they can identify the following personal traits that distinguish them from others:

• positive thinking
• sense of humor
• love for life and gratitude for having it
• focus on the good that is in their life and a grateful attitude towards fate for what they have

All these aspects are the keys to positive resource states, which can significantly increase the adaptive capabilities of the body and psyche.

1. Physical activity allows you to burn the remnants of stress hormones, which primarily have a natural focus on fight or flight, i.e. motor activity. Consequently, intense physical activity allows them to be used for their intended purpose. In addition, reasonable physical activity promotes the production of endorphins (pleasure hormones), which can significantly improve your psychological state and mood.
2. The ability to relax can help, to a certain extent, combat the effects of stress on the body. You can use autogenic training for this, you can do yoga nidra, you can just take a relaxing bath or go for a walk.
3. Breathing exercises. Taichi, qigong. Breathing and movement are functions that we can absolutely control. When we breathe slowly and deeply, we come to a state of calm, at this moment we seem to involve all our attention in this process. The same applies to finely coordinated movement, at the moment of which we are completely involved in the process of its implementation (look at the recordings of tai chi exercises). The combination of breathing practice and motor practice is especially effective. This connection promotes independent psychoregulation and leads a person to a state of internal harmony and bodily integrity, which in turn eliminates all the effects of stress, erasing them both from consciousness and from muscle memory.
4. Hobbies and creativity. Creativity can be a powerful healing factor. In order to create something that does not yet exist in this world, a person immerses himself in a holistic state of mind, which literally heals and cures him of stress. Creativity is an additional or even the main method in the treatment of many mental disorders (I recommend reading the books of the great psychiatrist-psychotherapist Mark Evgenievich Burno).

This concludes this article. I wish you health and only positive stress!

Sincerely.
Psychologist at the Family Help Center “Family Energy”
Alkhimenko Ilya Alexandrovich.

Bibliography.

1. Malkina-Pykh I. G. Psychosomatics and endocrine diseases. Why do you need to be sick? - St. Petersburg: BHV-Petersburg, 2005. - 160 p.: ill.
2. Big psychological dictionary / ed. B. G. Meshcheryakova, V. P. Zinchenko. — 3rd ed., add. and processed - SPb.,: PRIME-EVROZNAK, 2006. - 672 p. — (Great University Library).
3. Selye G. Stress without distress. - Moscow, Progress, 1982. - 125 p.