Reflection on Stress Management

Reflection on Stress Management
Emma Ashton
2/14/13

I wanted to discuss the lecture about stress management and how stress can negatively affect your health. I always knew there were many ways you can manage stress, but this lecture definitely came up with a few more ways I never thought about. I find stress management key to my personal health due to the fact that I have a chronic illness. Crohns disease can be put at bay with medication, but it can easily flare up. There are many factors that go into a flare up, but the biggest is definitely stress. I know from experience that when I start getting overwhelmed and stressed I tend to start getting sicker too. Lowering my stress levels has definitely been the hardest challenge I have come across while attending college. Once you get stressed from one area of your life, it starts affecting everything else. For instance, when you have a bunch of tests one week you start getting stressed out and then start taking it out on the people around you, then your social life starts to have problems causing even more stress. This lecture provided a good insight on how to balance it all and try to prevent stress from building up. A little bit of stress is good, it can be used as motivation. However, being stressed for long periods of time can lower your immune system, which is exactly what you don't need! Stress is such a big part of everyone's lives which means people need to take it seriously. A lot of people think the answer to stress is self medicating such as drinking alcohol or eating abnormally. Self medicating can lead to destructive cycles and will not relieve stress. It is a public health issue because everyone should know how to lower or relieve stress. If people stay chronically stressed there will be serious consequences to their health such as lowered immune system, strained heart, and damage to memory cells in the brain. I know personally that I can't afford to get stressed because otherwise I will get sick,then get behind in school, which then leads to more stress. It is a never ending cycle that a lot people get stuck in. I would be curious to see how other societies cultures go about stress and managing it. Would their ways make them healthier people?