Stress is the body’s natural reaction to feeling under pressure or threat. When we feel this pressure, or feel threatened in some way, the body releases chemicals that prepare us to deal with that threat; the ‘fight or flight’ response. Throughout human history, this response has proved greatly beneficial to our survival!
However, living with long term, high levels of stress has a serious impact on many areas of life. When the threat is not something that presents us with real, immediate danger, it becomes difficult to ‘stand down’ from a state of high alert. In these circumstances, you can easily start to feel overwhelmed, and the body can start to shut down so that you aren’t working as effectively.
If you are prone to feeling stress, or are trying to function in a high-stress environment, this can lead to feelings of:
- anxiety
- depression
- fatigue
- headaches
- lack of concentration
- problems with sleep
Learning to reduce and manage stress will help you to increase your overall wellbeing, and also your productivity. Many people simply don’t know how to relax and ‘switch off’; by practising simple yet effective techniques you can make a huge difference to the way that you deal with stress in your life. Hypnotherapy sessions are a really enjoyable way of learning to do just this, alongside strategies and techniques to help you to make the changes that you need to make.
Coaching can help you to set realistic goals that enable you to manage the various stresses in your life, and respond to them more positively. By working together to assess the areas of your life that cause you to feel stressed, we can work out ways to alleviate the stress that you feel. Very often simply talking about these issues will help you to understand the causes of the problem and provide your own solutions – coaching is a collaborative process that puts you in charge!