Here’s the thing: Stress is a natural reaction of the body towards challenging, risky, or upsetting situations. Everybody feels stressed out at times, and we also get out of it eventually.
However, it’s also important to understand why stress poses a threat to quality of life.
Though a certain level of stress can even be advantageous in some instances—for example, people who accomplish more things when there is an immovable deadline—being chronically stressed can be damaging to various aspects of your life.
In this article, let’s go through the different ways short-term and long-term stress could be affecting your day-to-day life and your relationships with the people around you.
1. Experiencing Stress for Too Long Can Lead to Health Problems
The majority of people tend to associate stress with its effects on physical health. After all, these signs can be felt immediately and sometimes, quite intensely.
Common examples of how chronic stress could be harmful to your health include:
- Recurring or persistent headaches
- High blood pressure
- Pain or tension in different parts of the body
- Having a hard time falling or staying asleep
- Issues with the digestive system
Such problems affect not only the body, but poor health can also be detrimental to how you interact with other people, or how you physically perform.
For instance, how do you expect yourself to ace an exam when you’ve been having trouble sleeping since the start of the semester?
Or would you be genuinely excited to engage in fun activities with your friends if the stressful environment at home makes you suffer from severe headaches from time to time?
Did You Know That…
Stress affects a person’s body language, too?
Observe someone who is about to go on a job interview. You might notice their fingers shaking as they fiddle with their coat.
Some couldn’t help but touch their hair or fix their makeup because they are anxious to present themselves in the best light possible.
A nervous person also perspires excessively, so don’t be surprised if they wipe off the sweat from their foreheads or the palms of their hands.
2. Personal Relationships Suffer When You’re Always Stressed Out
Many effects of stress on emotions and mental wellbeing can strain your relationship with the people around you.
Your worries, fears, and doubts may cause you to feel more irritable even if it’s just because of trivial matters.
When you experience mood swings, there’s a chance that you might lash out at your family or friends, regardless of whether they are truly at fault or not.
If you continually have these negative interactions with them, then your bond with the people you care about will likely diminish. Over time, you might also gain a bad reputation for being mean or ill-tempered.
As a result, you would feel more isolated from people that could have helped you manage better your stress level.
Whether the withdrawal from personal relationships is your choice or theirs, the person who would receive the biggest blow from this social isolation would likely be you.
Entering and building new relationships—whether platonic or romantic—could also be more challenging if you’re constantly stress-ridden.
It can be hard to trust and love another person when stress has hardened you to the point that you cannot distinguish genuine care from superficial acts.
Another effect of stress that could be a burden to your social life is the risk of developing an unhealthy dependence on substances or unproductive activities as a means to relieve stress. Typical examples include:
- Excessive smoking
- Overeating
- Drinking too much alcohol
- Taking, smoking, or injecting drugs
- Gambling
- Spending too much time playing video games
While imbibing beer or hard liquor for enjoyment is not incredibly harmful if done occasionally, it will be problematic once the person becomes alcoholic.
Other than causing harm to the liver and other parts of the body, alcoholism has been associated with various relationship problems and divorce.
3. Stress Harms Your Performance and Relationships at Work
Work has been cited by many as their primary source of stressors. After all, a lot of people spend the majority of their waking hours at work.
The thing is, your work performance also takes a hit if you’re frequently feeling too stressed to function at your best.
Working so hard to the point of exhaustion or burnout, for example, is counterintuitive at the end of the day. You can’t expect your quality of work to remain within standard if you cannot focus on the task at hand.
Moreover, you cannot sustain this kind of pacing without experiencing physical or mental fatigue. Some even get sick because of the constant pressure they have to bear.
So, instead of getting a commendation for a job well done or a sizeable year-end bonus, you would either lose your job or quit on your own volition.
Much like the case with your family and friends, your professional relationships with your boss, co-workers, or even clients will be at risk of being destroyed if you cannot manage your stress level at work.
Let’s say that you’re a part of a team that is preparing for a sales pitch to secure a big account for the company. It’s natural to feel pressured because of the workload or the importance of the client.
Don’t overdo it, though because your stress level rises until it becomes an impediment to the team.
What do you think would happen if you cannot meet the expectations of your teammates because you’re too stressed out?
You will likely be considered as the weakest link, and others might have to cover for you so that the whole thing won’t fall apart. This would cause them to feel pressured, which may affect the overall result of the sales pitch.
When the team goes over what went well and what didn’t go so well, fingers might be pointed at you and your lack of substantial contribution to the failures of the group.
In the end, not only does your work performance suffer from your inability to maintain your levelheadedness, your capabilities and professionalism would also be questioned by your superiors and co-workers.
4. How You View Stress Influences Your Spiritual Wellness
Spiritually healthy people feel a sense of purpose because they are connected to something greater than themselves.
They find meaning in the things they do and say, and it grounds them when challenges in life come their way.
Stress can enhance your spiritual wellness if you view it as a motivation to practice spiritual wellness activities, such as:
- Performing meditation or yoga
- Writing on a personal journal
- Doing volunteer work
If this is the case for you, then you believe that these activities are reinvigorating for the body, relaxing for the mind, or nourishing for the soul.
Unfortunately, stress can also prevent you from being spiritually healthy. If you believe you’re too stressed to engage—or even just think about—spiritual wellness, then you’re already letting stress take over another important area of your life.
Furthermore, these spiritual exercises could help reduce the effects of stress on the body and mind. Many people who make it a habit to meditate every morning say that it can do wonders for the rest of their day.
In contrast, if you believe that it’s a waste of time to take a pause and reflect on yourself or what is going around you, then you are likely missing out on a chance to reduce your stress level, and perhaps, gain an insight into how to handle something that has been bothering you for a while.
Imagine a life where you can’t enjoy the happy and peaceful moments because you’re perpetually anxious about everything under the sun.
Would this state take a toll on your physical and mental health? How do you think your relationships with your loved ones would fare? Can you achieve your goals and targets at work when you can’t concentrate due to stress?
It’s perfectly normal for stressful life circumstances to affect your spirituality. The problem becomes significant if you allow your stressors to cut you off from engaging with your spiritual side.
Why Stress Poses a Threat to Quality of Life: Conclusion
The interrelated impacts discussed in this article explain why stress poses a threat to quality of life. It’s not just your body that will suffer from being overwhelmed by stress.
The relationships with the people around you, your performance at work, and even your spiritual wellness are all at stake when you don’t or couldn’t find a way to manage stress.
As pointed out at the beginning of this article, stress is an inevitable part of living. What matters then is how you view and handle the probable stressors in your life.
Ignoring the problems won’t make them go away. Stress is going to build up over time, and the negative effects on your quality of life would continue to compound.
Be kinder to yourself by managing your stress level. Though you don’t have complete control over its triggers, you have the power to determine if you’d let stress determine your beliefs, decisions, and actions in various aspects of your life.
So, how do you think stress affects your daily life at home, during work, and within the community? What can YOU do about it now?
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