How does stress cause emotional symptoms?

Everyone has their down days; when life doesn’t go as planned we feel hopeless and frustrated.  People might let us down, or we may experience loss or feel discouraged that despite our best efforts, we seem to get nowhere.

How we feel about things is important. If episodes of stress recur regularly, the stress response can reach the “danger zone”, which can bring on one or more of the three main emotional symptoms of stress:

1. Anger – feeling helpless that you can’t resolve an issue can be more than frustrating.  Anger is felt usually in a situation which is in fact out of our control and not able to be changed.
2. Anxiety – this is when we get fearful or nervous of a situation and it results in not being able to behave or perform in a way in which you know you can, or would like to.
3. Depression – this is the most extreme emotional response to stress symptoms.  When a problem or stressful situation recurs and you have tried many options, you may internally “give up” and you despair that things will never return to their previous state.

It is in the human nature to seek out feelings of happiness and pleasure and fulfillment.  Fear, guilt, grief and anger are not pleasant experiences and the human tendency is to avoid these, but it doesn’t mean they go away.

In fact, facing these feelings, although painful and unpleasant, can make you stronger and more resilient to stress symptoms.  Writing, thinking or talking about these feelings is greatly therapeutic.

In times of stress is when you most need your capability for intelligent thought and clear perception, but during frequent episodes of heightened stress, your thought is not clear, it is not rational, and it can hamper your thinking ability.  You may experience the following:

• Inability to make simple decisions

• Memory loss

• Unable to think clearly

• Feeling you are going “crazy” – total loss of control

• Tearfulness at the slightest thing.

The thing is all these emotional symptoms lead you to make poor decisions and therefore lead to greater stress.