While stress may sometimes appear to come out of nowhere, our bodies often send us signals that we are feeling stressed. To become more prepared to deal with your stress, it may be helpful to become more aware of just how you respond to stress physically, emotionally, and behaviorally.
I like to call this process “taking a stress inventory.”
People respond to stress differently, but some of the more common physical symptoms may include headaches, nausea, back aches, or insomnia. Emotional symptoms may include anger, sadness, guilt, depression, or indifference, while behavioral symptoms may include overeating, angry outbursts, change in sleep patterns, or difficulty concentrating.
These are not comprehensive lists, but they may give you something to think about as you begin to take inventory of your stress. People often don’t realize just how much they are being affected by their stress, so knowing what signals your body sends you when stressed can help to head off these moments by considering alternative plans to manage your stress without turning to tobacco use.
Identifying the internal versus external sources of your stress will be important for your stress inventory as well.
External sources may consist of broad categories like:
- Workplace
- Family/ household
- Community
- Environment
- Unpredictable Events
Internal sources of stress may include:
- Unrealistic Expectations
- Perfectionism
- Behaviors that are not helpful
- Poor health habits
- Negative attitudes/feelings
Have you ever really looked at the sources of stress in your life? I mean really looked at them. Do you really know what stresses you out?
While we often think of something or someone in our life as a source of stress – it may really be how we perceive, or think about, that someone or something. So, in reality, stress may not really be an event (something that happens), but rather your reaction to that event (the way we think about it).
In life, we all know there are things that we can control and there are things that we cannot control. However, sometimes telling the difference between these can be difficult:
Have you ever wondered why when a new policy at your job is causing you stress while your colleague whom this new policy affects as well is not so bothered by it? It may all come down to how you think about this compared to your colleague. Perhaps your co-worker sees this as an issue he or she simply cannot control, so why get stressed?
Stress, then, may not actually be the event at all, but how you react to the event will determine how much one person is stressed out by something as opposed to someone else. Once you become aware of this, there may not be such a barrier to staying quit, as you begin to take back the power you have over how stressful events will affect you.
What do you notice physically, emotionally, or behaviorally when you are feeling stressed? What sources of stress in your life are you able to control? And which ones are out of your control? Does thinking about them in this way help you to “set aside” some of the stresses you are feeling which may be out of your control?
