Everyone feels their lives are stressful and it’s no better at this time of the year. The holidays are over, school is back, the Festive season bills are due and work is hectic at the start of a new year.
According to the NHS, many of life’s demands can cause stress. And these range from work and relation ships to money problems – all of which lead to the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure and being unable to cope.
When you feel stressed, it can get in the way of sorting out these demands, or can even affect everything you do. People have different ways of reacting to stress, so a situation that feels stressful to one person may be motivating to someone else, adds the NHS.
Stress can affect how you feel, think, behave and how your body works. In fact, common signs of stress include insomnia, sweating, loss of appetite and difficulty in concentrating.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says work-related stress, depression or anxiety is defined as a harmful reaction people have to undue pressures and demands placed on them at work.
The HSE says that statistics in a recent Labour Force Survey show that the total number of cases of work related stress, depression or anxiety in 2014/15 was 440,000 cases, a prevalence rate of 1380 per 100,000 workers.
It added that the number of new cases was 234,000, an incidence rate of 740 per 100,000 workers and the number of working days lost due to this condition in 2014/15 was 9.9 million days. This equated to an average of 23 days lost per case.
The survey found that, in 2014/15, stress accounted for 35% of all work related ill health cases and 43% of all working days lost due to ill health.
It showed that stress is more prevalent in public service industries, such as education; health and social care; and public administration and defence.
So, how do we cope with stress? There’s medication and counselling or turning to drugs and alcohol to ease our worries.
Stress is not an illness itself, but it can cause serious illness if it isn’t addressed. It’s important to recognise the symptoms of stress early, warns the NHS.
One sure way of coping with stress and anxiety is hypnotherapy. The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) says we live in a society where great demands and responsibilities are placed on us. Today, about one in seven people are suffering from stress or anxiety at any one time in the UK.
The NCH adds that a hypnotherapist can help assess anxiety and stress, identifying its roots whether it is a situation, a physical issue, a past experience or a relationship.
Then he or she will set you a goal asking how you wish to feel, how you would like to be, and things that you would chose to do in your life if you were free of anxiety.
The therapist will then work with you to reach your goals using a range of different techniques. Every therapist may use slightly different techniques, but working towards the same goal.
After sessions with a hypnotherapist you may feel more confident; more relaxed in situations that have previously challenged you. Many people say that they are calmer and that they have more clarity of thought – able to make decisions more easily.
People, who have experienced side effects of anxiety such as insomnia, find that they are sleeping much better and as a result are able to work more effectively.