By Books Author Denise Turney

Major life changes can happen absent warning, creating a painful internal struggle. Because of this, it’s advantageous to learn how to manage stress and avoid burnout. It’s also important to stay open, flexible and willing to try techniques that work for you.

A sense of hope, peace and happiness are byproducts of effective stress management. Even more, effective stress management could help you to achieve and maintain hormonal balance. Why? When you’re stressed, your body can get flooded with hormones. To bring the point across, it may help to think of stress in visual terms.

What’s Stress

Toward that end, Loud Cloud Health shares that stress is referred to as “any situation that causes a biological reaction”. Imagine seeing stress as a “situation”. That alone may help you to see just how many events in your day could be causing stress. To start, there’s the morning and evening commute, school assignments, work projects, health challenges, bills to pay, relationship strains, family obligations and tight schedules.

That’s a lot to juggle.

Left unchecked, stress impacts every bodily system. For example, stress can weaken the immune system. It can also produce increased cortisol which, in turn, can cause inflammation. If you’ve ever dealt with achy joints, you know what it feels like to deal with inflammation.

Inflammation can also cause dental and back pain. Live with stress too long without adequate relief intervals, and digestive and cardiovascular systems could suffer. In a nutshell, “Our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, but when that stress becomes long-term or chronic, it can have serious effects on your body,” according to the American Psychological Association.

Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

Additional symptoms caused by burnout and stress include shortness of breath, forgetfulness (grief can affect memory too – I could write a book about that), nausea, dizziness, constipation and headaches. But, you don’t need to be convinced that prolonged or chronic stress isn’t good for the human body. You already know this. The trick is how to effectively manage stress.

Another reward is to find effective ways to live a full, rewarding life without running into burnout. Admittedly, pulling that off isn’t always a walk in the park. Today’s work world can easily push you into a 50+ hour workweek. Before you know it, deep sleep has become an odd and rare treat. Worse, a crammed lifestyle can let stress sneak up on you.

Symptoms That Show You Need to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

Talking about stress being sneaky, here are a few signs that you could be headed for stress or burnout:

• You’ve become cynical. Spotting mistakes and wrongdoings at work could become second-nature should you reach the cynical stage. This is when complaining becomes “what you do”.
• Just the thought of going to work feels like a burden.
• Focusing and concentrating is like running a marathon. Concentrating and focusing is just hard to do once you enter burnout.
• There’s no reward associated with your job that seems to be “enough”.
• Turning to external substances like alcohol or food has become an easy “escape”.
• Family and friends comment that you have become short, argumentative, judgmental or hard to be around.
• And sleep – what’s that? Getting a good night of sleep is something that you may not have done in weeks.

Options to Manage Stress and Avoid Burnout

Below are a few ways that you could start managing stress and avoiding burnout. If you already use stress help techniques, see if any of the below actions resonate.

Combining one or more of the following self-care stress relief techniques to your existing routine could help even more. Fortunately, this may apply whether you’re dealing with stress at home, while visiting family or at work.

• Practice Awareness – Notice how you are feeling. Even more, notice when you are experiencing early stress symptoms. As tempting as it may seem, stay free of turning away from what you’re really feeling. After all, if you get into the habit of turning away from what you’re feeling, you might start to believe that you’re merely irritated when you’re outraged. Or you might think that you’re just a little tired when you’re frustrated or entering early depression. Let this happen and you might not spot stress symptoms early enough to curb them before they get stronger.
• Change Routines – Alter plans and change routines once you become aware that these routines and plans cause you to feel stressed. As an example, instead of saying “yes” each time a relative, colleague or friend ask you to babysit, work on a community project or help with an event at the worship center that you may attend, set healthy boundaries. If you’re like me, it may take several tries before you start to become comfortable with setting healthy boundaries and telling people that you’re not going to fulfill their request.

More Burnout and Stress Support Options

• Deepen Loving Relationships – Depending on how you deal with stress, this one could be challenging. A trick about stress is that, as you start to use stress reduction tools, you might want to flee. In fact, instead of turning to family and friends for stress support, you might want to hide. You might want to be alone, day after day. However, rather than giving into this desire, let trustworthy relatives and friends be there for you, the same as you’re there for them. Meet with family and friends in-person. Call loved ones and enjoy talking. Do so with people who you know are trustworthy, people who you genuinely trust. And, if you feel like there’s no one to talk with, take small steps. Start building new friendships. Of course, if you need more stress support, consider speaking with a professional, someone who has years of experience helping people move through stress and burnout.
• Care for Your Body – Take good care of your body by eating and drinking healthy foods and beverages. Getting sufficient sleep is another way to take good care of your body.
• Explore Nature – Try this stress and anger relief action and see if you don’t feel better. You might love walking, jogging, hiking or bike riding in nature. Do so in a safe environment.
• Express Yourself – Back to stress support option #1. Consider journaling, painting, singing, dancing or adult coloring to express yourself. Let emotions that you’re feeling and thoughts that you’re thinking flow out while you express yourself.

Stress Around The World

Here’s something that you may find comforting. When it comes to stress and burnout, you definitely are not alone. Loud Cloud Health shares that 60% of adult Americans state that they deal with constant daily stress. Regarding work, 15% of American workers would like to resign from their job due to stress.

Furthermore, a 2018 study, found that 74% of people living in the United Kingdom felt so stressed that they felt overwhelmed or incapable of coping with the stress. More than half of these people shared that stress caused them to feel depressed. Higher numbers of people shared that stress caused them to feel anxious.

Take Action

It’s not better in other parts of the world. IT News Africa shares that, “The South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) reported that 1 in 4 South Africans struggle with depression.” Workplace politics, poor job satisfaction and challenging work environments are among the job stressors. Clearly. these issues are not going to go away on their own.

Both burnout and stress management and elimination require honesty. That’s where self-awareness comes in. Avoiding and healing from burnout and/or stress also requires the right actions. You deserve to be happy. Burnout and chronic stress shouldn’t be part of your routine. Please try different stress support techniques and incorporate ones that work for you into your day. The rewards could be lasting.