Common Signs and Symptoms of Too Much Stress

Everyone deals with stress, but having too much stress can be devastating to your physical and mental health. We all experience stress in our daily lives from different sources: jobs, relationships, finances. Whether you’re dealing with a daily stressor, chronic stress, or a major life challenge like illness or divorce, stress can take a significant toll on you both physically and emotionally.

Why It Can Be Hard to Spot the Signs of Too Much Stress

How do you know when you’re dealing with a level of stress that’s unhealthy for you?​

The answer to this question can be tricky for a few reasons:

• Wide variety of effects: Stress affects the body in many different ways. Some of these are obvious, but others may not be as noticeable or easy to detect until they become more severe.
• Personal differences: Different people are affected more or less intensely and in different ways.
• Ambiguity of symptoms: The effects of stress often look like symptoms of other illnesses (partially due to the fact that stress lowers immunity and makes us vulnerable to many things), sometimes people mistake symptoms of illness for stress and vice versa.​
• Habituation: People who thrive on stress tend to feel it as their natural state, making it more difficult to discern stress symptoms until after much of their stress is alleviated.
• Feeling too overwhelmed to notice stress: Ironically, when under high levels of stress, people often find it difficult to stop and notice their body’s responses. It seems counterintuitive that someone could be "too stressed to feel stressed," but it does happen.

Common Signs That You're Highly Stressed

While stress affects everyone in a unique way, there are certain factors that are common. If you are experiencing any of the following, it could be a sign that you’re being affected by stress:

Headaches

Certain types of headaches can be related to stress. Tension headaches tend to feel like you have a band wrapped around the sides of your head and that band is slowly tightening. If you’re experiencing more headaches, especially tension headaches, stress could be the culprit.

More Frequent Colds or Flu

There’s an inverse relationship between stress and immunity, meaning the greater your stress levels, the lower the effectiveness of your immune system, generally speaking. This is true for stress that is greater in severity or stress that is more chronic.

Sleep Problems

There are many ways that stress affects sleep. Stress can make sleep come less easily and can lead to wakefulness throughout the night. Too much stress can rob you of sleep and make the sleep you get less restorative.

General Anxiety

Anxiety does serve an important function for survival, but if you’re feeling anxious much of the time, it could be because you have too many stressors in your life, or it may indicate a mental health condition like generalized anxiety disorder.

Fuzzy Thinking

Your body’s stress response pumps your body with hormones that make it possible for you to fight or flee quickly. It was built for infrequent stress, however, and stress that is short in duration. When triggered in excess, this stress response can actually cause you to think less quickly.

Feelings of Frustration

If you’re faced with many demands at once, the natural result for many people is increased frustration and irritability. This can lead to more difficulty in relationships as well as in personal happiness. The trick is to find ways to prevent frustration and calm down quickly.

Lowered Libido

Stress can affect your libido in several ways. If you’re too tired for sex, or can’t seem to find the time for your partner, this can be due to stress in your life as well. This lack of sex drive can also create more stress in your romantic relationships, leading to yet another example of poorly managed stress leading to greater levels of stress to manage.

How to Handle Too Much Stress

If you are dealing with too much stress, taking a step back and evaluating your options is essential. If you keep going without addressing the problem, you may end up experiencing the negative effects of chronic stress. This can include worsened physical health, an increased risk of mental health problems, and burnout.

Some steps you can take when you are facing excessive stress include:

Try Journaling

Keeping a journal can help you process emotions and look for patterns. Looking back on your writings may help you spot stress triggers so you can brainstorm ways of coping with them.

Stay Active

Regular exercise can be a great tool for managing excessive stress. Consider going for a walk each day or signing up for a membership at your local gym.

Get Enough Sleep

It can be hard to sleep when you're stressed, but being sleep-deprived also causes more stress. Focus on doing things like going to bed and waking up at the same time each day and work on creating a restful sleep environment.

Get Support

Social support is important for mental well-being and can act as a buffer against stress. Reach out to your friends and family if you are struggling with stress, or consider expanding your social network.

Use Relaxation Techniques

Practicing relaxation techniques like deep breathing, visualization, mindfulness, and progressive muscle relaxation can help you relax in the short term. Practicing such techniques regularly can also promote well-being and combat chronic stress.

When to Get Help

If stress is causing distress, interfering with your ability to function in your daily life, or causing you to avoid people, situations, or tasks, it's important to seek help. Talk to your doctor or therapist about steps you can take to minimize the stress in your life.

Working with a therapist can be particularly helpful. They can help you identify sources of stress, look for ways to minimize these stressors, and help you develop effective coping skills to manage the stress in your life.

Takeaway

Too much stress doesn't just feel bad; it can actually make you sick. Signs that you're under too much stress include constant headaches and illness, problems sleeping, increased anxiety, difficulty concentrating, increased frustration, and reduced libido. If stress is taking a toll on your life, incorporating stress management techniques and talking to a mental health professional can help.