Emotional Stress Symptoms

Stress, both chronic and severe, can result in emotional symptoms that may sometimes be misunderstood as behavioral changes. Additionally, many stress symptoms tend to mimic physical and mental ailments making it difficult to establish stress unequivocally. Confirming whether the symptoms being observed are related to stress or another ailment is something that can be done only by ruling out the possibility of other ailments at times.

Emotional stress symptoms occur generally when you have long periods on unresolved stress. Unresolved stress occurs when all attempts to remove the cause of stress come to not. This is typically the situation when you cannot come to terms with something that has occurred in your life. A huge loss in investments and a business that has gone bust are some specific situations where the cause of stress may take a while to manage. Sometimes stress does not get resolved if you are unable to refuse to accept certain events that go against your belief or upbringing.

Heightened and recurrent levels of stress result in the level of physiological arousal or the stress response to reach danger zone. This brings about the three major emotional symptoms of stress – anger, anxiety and depression.

Anger

Anger emanates from a feeling of helplessness at the inability to solve the issue. It often occurs in situations that are out of your control and therefore cannot be changed.

Anxiety

Anxiety occurs when you are unable to perform in a manner that you would like to. For example, you may want to be able to make presentations that are flamboyant and confident but may end up with tongue tied in front of a large audience. This can lead to repeated anxiety, every time you come close to a presentation date.

Depression

Depression is probably the last and most extreme emotional response to stress symptoms. It arises due to complete helplessness after having tried various options. Depression is a state of mind where you may have given up hope that things will ever get back to normal.

The fact of the matter is that you need the power of your intelligent thought and perception in times of stress. But the fact is that frequent episodes of acute stress can greatly affect the way you think and feel. It can hamper your thinking ability, make it difficult to take decisions, inhibit cognition and result in temporary loss of memory, the very things that you need the most in stressful situations. You are unable to think your way out of stress leading to poor decisions and even more stress.

What makes the situation even worse is that at the time when you are too stressed to think properly accompanying emotions like anger, anxiety and depression hit you at the same time. Taken together, these emotional symptoms can be mild, moderate or severe and may sometimes require professional help.

When emotions are compounded and become more intense they can become so powerful that they can overwhelm you completely causing you to lose self-control. The emotions sort of ‘boil over’ and you may feel anger or depressed or just scared.

The most important thing to realize and internalize during these times is the fact that the situation is actually as stressful as you want it to be. A positive mindset can help overcome the most difficult of situations without having to undergo the various emotional symptoms of stress.

Back to Symptoms of Stress.