A healthy level of stress is normal in life, but when stress builds up over time, it can begin to impact your well-being. Stress can be seen as your perception of pressure, and how you physically respond to this.
Some stress is necessary to allow us to get through the challenges and uncertainties of the everyday. Sensing something is dangerous can alert a survival response, which allows us to face up to a threat or to avoid it. This response is meant to protect us from short-term, life-threatening problems, but it wasn’t designed to cope with more modern, everyday difficulties.
Stress can be provoked by issues in your life ranging from work, relationships, or major life changes. When stress becomes chronic, we can move from feeling anxious with minor physical symptoms to more serious issues such as fatigue and burnout, that really begin to impact on how you feel.
There can be healthy and unhealthy ways of coping with stress. These can range from addictions such as drugs and alcohol, to healthier strategies such as exercise, meditative thinking, gratitude and therapy.
In therapy we can share how you experience stress in your life, we can explore your emotional response and together find meaning and understanding of what challenges you in life. We can discuss how you might want to make changes in your life to better suit you, or we can explore how you find yourself responding to situations and if there is the possibility of choice for you in this. I aim to work with you in a safe, respectful and curious environment where you feel you can talk openly about that which can be hard to share with others.