Chronic stress is long-lasting pressure or tension that can seriously impact your health if left untreated. It can stem from everyday family and work pressures or traumatic situations.
While we’re built to handle acute (aka short-lived) bursts of stress, long-term stress takes a more serious toll. When stress is constant or intense, the body does not get enough time to recover and activate the relaxation response. This keeps you in a constant state of physiological arousal, which can strain nearly every system in the body, either directly or indirectly.
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Verywell / Alison Czinkota
What Chronic Stress Feels Like
Chronic stress affects both the mind and body. It produces physical and psychological symptoms that can affect a person’s ability to function normally in daily life.
These symptoms can vary in their severity from one person to the next. Some of the most common signs of chronic stress include:
- Aches and pains
- Decreased energy
- Difficulty sleeping
- Disorganized thinking
- Fatigue
- Feeling a loss of control
- Feelings of helplessness
- Frequent illnesses and infections
- Gastrointestinal complaints
- Headaches
- Irritability
- Muscle tension
- Nervousness and anxiety
- Trouble concentrating
- Upset stomach
Questions to Ask Yourself
It isn’t always easy to recognize chronic stress. Because it is pervasive and long-lasting, people often grow so accustomed to it that it begins to feel normal. Some signs to look for when identifying chronic stress:
- Are you often moody or irritated?
- Does it feel like you are always worrying about something?
- Does it seem like you don’t have time to take care of yourself or do the things that you enjoy?
- Do the smallest inconveniences seem like too much to handle?
- Do you always seem to catch colds or get infections?
- Have you been relying on unhealthy coping mechanisms like alcohol to manage your stress?
What Causes It?
Sources of chronic stress can vary, but often fall into one of four different types:
- Emotional stress: difficult emotions such as anger, sadness, or frustration
- Environmental stress: where you live and work
- Relationship stress: how you relate to friends, family, co-workers, partners
- Work stress: challenges and pressures related to your job
In many instances, these types of stresses affect multiple domains in a person’s life. Work stress can create stress in your relationships. Relationship stress can make it more difficult to manage difficult emotions.
Real-Life Examples
This type of chronic stress response occurs all too frequently from our modern lifestyle. Everything from high-pressure jobs to loneliness to busy traffic can keep the body in a state of perceived threat and chronic stress.
In this case, our fight-or-flight response, which was designed to help us fight occasional life-threatening situations (like swerving to nearly miss a car crash), can wear down our bodies and cause us to become ill, either physically or emotionally.
Examples of situations that can create chronic stress include:
- Financial problems
- Chronic illness
- Housing insecurity
- Family conflicts
- Job insecurity
- Accidents, violence, and other traumas
- Major life transitions like having a child, moving, or getting divorced
- Poverty
- Lack of access to adequate healthcare
Your constant worry wears down your body, making you feel tired and anxious. You may be working harder than ever to make ends meet and make unhealthy choices about food and exercise, which can make you feel even worse. This can lead to a number of significant health concerns.
We can also have chronic stress related to work. Many jobs require a lot from us, and it can often feel like we never get a break or are always under pressure to perform.
Working overtime, constant travel, and high-pressure business relations can keep your body in a constant state of excitement, even when you get home to your family. This can also add to the wear and tear on your body, and continuous stress can contribute to serious health issues like heart disease.
How It Affects Your Health
Because chronic stress is so prolonged, it can have a detrimental impact on your health and well-being if left untreated. Some potential complications related to chronic stress include:
- Acne
- Depression
- Diabetes
- Eczema
- Heart disease
- High blood pressure
- Hyperthyroidism
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Low sex drive
- Ulcers
- Weight changes
Estimates suggest that between 60—80% of primary care visits involve a stress-related component. That’s why it is so important to learn stress management techniques and make healthy lifestyle changes to safeguard yourself from the negative impact of chronic stress.
Finding ways to manage chronic stress is important for overall well-being. This may involve professional treatment, but self-help and relaxation strategies can also often be effective.
How to Reduce and Handle Chronic Stress
If severe chronic stress is causing significant distress or impairing your ability to function normally, professional treatment can help you develop new coping skills and find ways to lower your stress levels. Options include:
- Psychotherapy: Approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you identify negative thought patterns that contribute to chronic stress. Working with a therapist, you can then begin to change these thoughts to more realistic, helpful ones. You can also learn coping tools that will help you better manage your response to stress. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is another approach that can help people utilize mindfulness and meditation to cope with chronic stress.
- Medications: Your doctor may prescribe different medications to help you manage some of the symptoms of stress. If you are also experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression, your doctor may prescribe an antidepressant. Your doctor may also prescribe medications that can help you sleep or reduce stomach upset.
Benefits of Stress Management
Chronic stress can often be managed through self-help approaches. When you recognize chronic stress in your life, it is important to begin using stress management techniques as early as possible. This works for a few reasons.
- Provides quick stress relief: Fast-acting techniques can reverse the stress response so your body has a chance to recover and your mind can approach problems from a proactive stance rather than reacting from a stressed or even panicked perspective. When you’re making choices from a more relaxed and confident place, you tend to make choices that better serve your best interests and avoid creating more stress for yourself.
- Develops stress resilience: Longer-term healthy habits can build resilience. These habits give you a regular break from feelings of stress and allow you to use strategies that improve your ability to manage stress better. They can also save you from the more negative effects of chronic stress. Some of the most effective habits include exercise, meditation, and journaling, as they have been shown to promote resilience to stress.
- Seek social support: Having people in your life with whom you can share your worries and stresses can also help. Research has shown that social support plays an important role in buffering the negative effects of stress.
- Creates new coping skills: Changing how you respond to stress can also help. Taking steps to reduce the stressful situations you face (saying no more often, for example) and to change your perspective (reminding yourself of the resources you can use and the strength you possess) can both help. Approaching stress from a proactive stance can help reduce chronic stress.
If you have tried self-help strategies and feel you need more assistance, or if you feel these will not be enough to help, don’t hesitate to talk to your doctor about your concerns. Effective help is available.
Key Takeaways
- Signs you might be experiencing chronic stress include physical pains, frequent illness, muscle tension, irritability, anxiety, and trouble concentrating.
- Many factors can contribute to it, including work, financial worries, relationships, environmental factors, and emotional problems.
- Over time, it can lead to problems like depression, cardiovascular disease, weight changes, and high blood pressure.
- Therapy and medications can help you manage stress, but you can also make changes in your life to help lessen the impact of chronic stress. Stress management techniques (like deep breathing and meditation), good coping skills, and social support can also help.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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