Stress and depression are becoming more and more common forms of anxiety and mental trouble people face these days. Increasingly people across all walks of life are accepting that they face some form of anxiety on a daily basis.
Stress can be caused by a single incident or a temporary condition. When this stays on for long and creates more mental trouble then it may lead to depression. Stress can be acute (happened by an event) or can be chronic (lasting a long time without you noticing it earlier or without any specific reason).
Stress and depression can happen because of:
- Family troubles
- Professional issues
- Financial struggles
- Relationship issues
- Feeling of loneliness and lost
Signs of Stress and Depression
As soon as you start experiencing these signs, you should know that something is bothering your health, well-being, mental stability and overall your life:
- Constant anxiety and worry
- Loss of concentration
- Low self-esteem
- Feeling of being overwhelmed
- Feeling of insomnia and difficulty relaxing
- Developing short-temper and feeling of irritability
- Constant mood swings
- Increased substance abuse
- Metabolic function getting disturbed more often
- Eating more or losing appetite
- Loss of energy levels
How to Manage and Treat Stress and Depression?
As this is a state of your mental disturbance that transcends to your health, managing it has to be a regular practice. Right from changing your lifestyle to seeking online stress counselling to much more, there is so that you can do that will definitely help you. Read on to know what steps you should take:
- Realize When the Problem is Taking Shape
As we have mentioned above as soon you start experiencing the symptoms is the time when you have to take note of pressures and feelings of illness and tiredness that you are facing.
- Look into What is Causing the Problem
There are underlying causes for the physical and social and behavioral problems you are facing. Now sort them in categories:
- What has a practical and immediate solution
- What can get better over time
- What has become intense and need external support and help for solving
- Write Down What is Causing
Just identifying the causes in a flow of cloud won’t help you effectively. When writing, divide this into 2 different categories:
- What you are stressing about unnecessarily
- What you feel grateful about
This way you will know from what approach you have to move on to what.
- Review Your Lifestyle
Are you becoming more and more inclined on your professional life? Is your work-life balance proper? Do you give enough time to socialize and be with friends, family? Do you take out time for relaxing, and hobbies? Are you adopting a lifestyle of booze, party more than it should be? Figuring these out will help determine what should be prioritized.
- Talk About but Don’t Dwell it on Too Much
Experts and seniors have emphasized on this a lot, time and again – whatever is bothering you, talking about it with your partner, family, friend and close confidante definitely helps to relieve the stress and gain a feeling of relaxation. This way you will also receive understanding and your close ones are in a better way to give you some great advice as they you better. Talking things out will help turn your attention to positive things and make you more determined and prepared to take corrective action for solving problems.
- Spend Time with Family and Friends
Sometimes just a simple way of your daily routine by spending more time with your family and friends can work wonders to help take you through the stressful times. It gives you a sense of self-worth, belonging and make you strong to face the tough times.
- Exercise Regularly
It is one of the most important steps to take. Physical stress on your body relieves the mental stress. Regular exercise routine helps to release chemicals, endorphins, which improves mood. It also helps in improving the sleep pattern, and make you more competent that increases the feeling of self-confidence.
- Stress Management Techniques
Adopting the practices of yoga, meditation, progressive relaxation, guided-imagery, regular napping and bio-feedback are effective to make you less susceptible to stress factors. Along with this spending time in nature, religious settings, prayers and other spiritual practices can also help a lot.
- Therapy Treatment
When your problem of stress and depression has gone to that stage where it needs expert support and help like clinical or severe depression phase, or when you have a feeling that seeking guidance and therapy is the most suitable solution for relieving your problem then you should seek counseling therapy for managing stress and treating depression.
While medication is a part of treatment for depression, using psychotherapy or ‘talk therapy’ alongside can be of great help to help treat everyday stressors. There are several types of therapies that you can opt from including cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, psychodynamic therapy and individual counseling. Therapy treatment helps provide several benefits including:
- Give a new perspective to treatment
- Help ease stress
- Learn ways to talk to people about your condition
- How to deal with medication side-effects
- Help to stick with the therapy treatment process
- Help know when your depression is getting worse
One thing that you have to understand is that results of counselling therapy for depression and medication treatment take time to appear. Make sure that to combat stress and depression you should express yourself more and more, try to notice good things, and reward yourself on your achievements and right steps.