Stress Management
Stress! We all experience it, and most of us feel like we've got too much of it. Most people live with high levels of stress from time to time - this does not necessarily mean that they don't live fulfilling, satisfying lives. However, chronic high levels of stress can be damaging to both physical and mental health.
Increasingly, scientific data indicates that it can exacerbate health problems, have negative effects on the body's immune system and ability to heal itself, even cause us to show more accelerated signs of aging! High levels of stress are associated with a host of mental health problems, as well; most people are more likely to engage in behaviors that are functional to help them "get through" in the short term, but are not effective for them in the long term.
Stress can be defined as your body's response to change, and this varies greatly from person to person. Situations that one person might find incredibly stressful, like public speaking, might not bother someone else in the least. Other situations, like losing a loved one, are incredibly stressful for almost everyone (but often in different ways). Not all stress is bad or harmful; with no stress, life would be dull, unexciting, and lacking in surprise and mystery. The key is to learn to manage stress properly and decrease the degree to which it makes you feel angry, afraid, or helpless; makes sleeping difficult; gives you aches in your head, neck, jaw or back; leads to habits like excessive use of substances, or exacerbates health problems and causes harm to your body. At the ASRC, we offer two approaches that have proven helpful to decrease the harmful effects of stress: Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.