The Challenges Of Stress Management And How You Can Overcome Them

If you've been dealing with stress, then you might have realized that overcoming it is easier said than done. But what is it about stress that make it such elusive? Take the time to learn about the challenges that one often meets when adapting stress management efforts so you can be stress-free in less time.

Stress as Fact of Life

Whether you choose to accept it or not, stress is an inevitable part of life. Stress lurks at every corner of the society – at home, in the workplace, at school, and even in your personal relationships. The effect of stress could also take on many different forms, such as physical, mental, or emotional. Indeed, stress is something that people from all walks of life have in come. In fact, even young kids do suffer from stress, too!

Since stress has become intertwined with one's daily life, it becomes more important to manage it. But aside from identifying the cause of stress, your ability to identify the challenges to beating out stress is also an important step to living a healthier, stress-free life.

Lazarus' Model of Stress

A common model used to understand and explain how stress works is the Lazarus model of stress. In this model, he describes thoroughly the methodology of stress. According to him, stress occurs during situations wherein you have completely exhausted your resources, or is depleting in supply, since you were offering it to meet an outside demand. Over time, your own resources have been completely exhausted and there is no more left for you to use or offer.

This particular model is very reminiscent of stress caused in the workplace or one's approach toward work in general. Stress, in this case, becomes an effect instead of the cause of the problem. Your body prompts you to look for alternative ways to provide that resource but if you cannot address that situation clearly, then you could go on a downward spiral. Lack of knowledge about stress and its cause is therefore the first and most common obstacle in any stress management regimen.

Stress Affect Each Person Differently

Another common reason why people often fail to overcome stress is that it has different manifestations from one person to another. This makes it very difficult to diagnose stress, or even identify what is causing it in the first place. There is no current standard or one-size-fits-all approach to describing how stress affects an individual and recommended approach to cure it. Each person adapts a unique stress management approach, while often it requires a combination of more than one technique at once to produce effective results.

Symptoms of Stress

The symptoms of stress are also proving to be an obstacle in one's stress management efforts. There are literally hundreds of different symptoms, most of which are too common that it is often associated with some other illnesses or condition. As a result, people dismiss it as having been caused by stress and relate them to some other condition. In the end, what happens is that the symptom is addressed but not stress as the main cause of the problem.

So, if you want a truly effective stress management approach, then it is important to learn what these obstacles are and how you can overcome them.