The night before giving an important presentation, you toss and turn. The pre-commute coffee you’d typically enjoy gives you jitters. You’re stressed.
Then, you ace the talk, and your nerves and restlessness fade.
Sound familiar?
This is a normal reaction and resolution to a stressful situation. The cause of the stress — the presentation — is clear, and after moving past it, your symptoms disappear. But other times, you might be unable to shake an anxious feeling or find yourself under such constant pressure that it takes a toll on your life.
Prolonged stress can negatively impact your well-being, relationships, and self-esteem. But acknowledging and treating these feelings can help you regain your footing. Learn how to spot emotional stress symptoms, apply coping techniques to alleviate them, and find the root causes of the problem.
What’s emotional stress?
Emotional stress arises when a person experiences emotional turmoil or overwhelming feelings, often triggered by challenging, threatening, or nerve-wracking situations. Physical stress, on the other hand, can either refer to the physical symptoms of stress or stress placed on your body, like strenuous workouts or intense physical demands. But stress can also cause physical symptoms, from tense muscles and headaches to reduced immune function or digestive problems.
When most people say stress, they’re referring to the combination of the emotional and physical reaction to stressors.
Emotional distress is an even more prolonged or heightened version of this stressful condition. You should take both emotional distress and stress seriously, watching for symptoms and coping with them as safely as possible.
What causes emotional stress?
You may experience emotional stress caused by inevitable worrisome or painful situations in your life, or as a reaction to internal stressors that negatively affect your self-perception. Here are a few of the common catalysts for this mental state:
External factors
External stressors include situational pressures over which you may have little to no control, like:
- Shifts in the workplace
- Financial difficulties
- Challenging or intense schoolwork
- Discontent with your living situation
- A lack of direction and uncertainty about the future
- A worrisome health diagnosis, either yours or a loved one’s
- An overwhelming project or upcoming event
- A feeling of social otherness or isolation
- Tensions in intimate or familial relationships
- Big responsibilities, such as parenting or caretaking
Internal factors
Internal stressors are the anxiety-inducing or demotivating facets of your inner world that can cause stress over time, like:
8 emotional stress symptoms to look out for
If you’re stressed about an upcoming presentation at work, you can likely pinpoint the signs pretty quickly. A sleepless night or jitters are symptoms you can tie back to the anxiety-inducing event on the horizon.
But chronic stress symptoms can be trickier to detect. The root cause of the problem may not be clear, and the manifestations of mental pressure can be deceptive. For example, you may notice you’re eating less than normal but not enough to consider your decreased appetite as a stress symptom, when it may very well be.
You can use the following lists of mental and physical stress symptoms to detect the effects of anxiety-driven pressures. Remember: you could present symptoms outside of those on these lists, and the best course of action is to seek professional help if you’re not feeling well.
Mental symptoms of stress
Mental emotional stress symptoms include uncomfortable feelings and behaviors. These manifestations are part of your system’s reaction to stress and can include:
- Anxiety: Anxiety describes a state of mental distress, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed and fearful. Anxiety can also emerge in physical signs like a racing heartbeat, sweating, nervous habits (like knuckle cracking), or shortness of breath.
- Depression: People living with depression experience sadness, a lack of enjoyment, and decreased motivation. Activities that usually bring them joy may no longer do so, and they may feel hopeless about the future.
- Irritability: Irritability is an agitated sensation similar to anger. Anyone experiencing it may become irrationally upset about minor setbacks, like a light traffic jam, or others’ behaviors, like the sound of a coworker’s typing.
- Increased substance use: People experiencing stress may turn to substances, like alcohol, as a coping mechanism. Studies also show a neural link between the body’s stress response systems and chemical dependencies.
Physical symptoms of stress
The physical signs of stress can be worrisome, especially before you pinpoint the cause. A medical professional can help you determine whether to attribute the following health problems to stress:
8 coping mechanisms for emotional stress
Coping mechanisms are behaviors or activities that help lessen the effects of negative emotions like stress. Not all coping mechanisms are healthy. But there’s a wealth of positive stress control activities that can make an excellent addition to your self-care checklist. Here are eight examples:
1. Relax
When you’re stressed and someone tells you to relax, this advice can come off as flippant — and challenging to implement.
But relaxation is just what you need. Your body is telling you you’re under an unhealthy amount of pressure and to take time to heal. So schedule self-care into your day, whether that means taking a de-stressing walk, napping, or listening to soothing music. Relaxation isn’t a cure-all, but it introduces rest into an otherwise busy day that could further augment your stress.
2. Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness is the practice of staying in the present.
Pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. As you do so, you slow down your thoughts, calming the frenzy of stressful ones. Even if you can’t completely block anxious ideas from your mind, you may increase your self-awareness by getting in touch with these thoughts and how they render in your body.
For example, you could track that reliving a tense interaction with a coworker makes your neck muscles cramp. The more you know about what’s upsetting you, the closer you get to being able to envision a solution — on your own or with the guidance of a mental health professional.
3. Journal
Journaling about your day is a great way to understand your feelings and their causes while focusing your attention away from your stress and onto the page. Plus, some find the act of writing physically soothing.
Grab a notebook and write whatever comes to mind, whether or not it seems important. The idea is to delve into a meditative state and discover something new about yourself.
As you write about your workday, you may find yourself returning to a specific interaction with a coworker. This could help you realize your stress has increased since you started working with that person. And you may feel motivated to improve your relationship with that peer or shift your ways of working to mitigate their impact on your well-being.
4. Read
Reading is another excellent activity for refocusing your attention and removing yourself from life’s stressful events. As you lose yourself in the narrative of a novel or self-help book, you can set your problems aside.
Reading won’t make those issues disappear, but you’ll get a break from them — and perhaps even emerge with a fresh perspective. Plus, scientific studies show that reading can relax your body, lowering your heart rate and loosening muscle tension.
5. Try to get better sleep
Improve your sleep hygiene and you may see a direct improvement in your quality of life and stress levels. Maintain a stable sleep schedule, as doing so will regulate your circadian rhythms and, in turn, your physical and mental behaviors.
It may help to institute a bedtime routine that enables you to relax. Wind down by reading, taking a hot bath or shower, and drinking some herbal tea. And set your routine up for success by optimizing your bedroom’s sleep conditions. Install black-out curtains, use earplugs if you’re sensitive to noise, and avoid the blue light of your TV or cellphone.
6. Get physically active
You may be aware of the benefits of physical activity on the body, but exercise also boosts mental wellness. Movement can regulate emotions and stress levels, which is excellent news for anyone under sustained emotional pressure.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to be athletically inclined to enjoy these benefits. If it suits you, you could train for a marathon. But if you prefer a more low-impact approach, try yoga, walking, or taking a workout class with friends.
7. Take a break
Remove yourself from a stressful moment by having a little fun. This may sound like a simple fix, and it won’t always work. But if you have the energy to go to the movies, meet friends for dinner, or take your kids to the park, get out there.
Stress, especially when constant, may only increase if you think about the root issue in a never-ending loop. Allow yourself a much-needed break from that mental hamster wheel.
8. Consume nutritious foods
Focus on what you put into your body when you’re stressed. Some choices can heighten the negative feelings you’re experiencing.
You can fight stress with a nutritious diet because eating well stabilizes your mood. Foods rich in antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamin B12 boost mental health.
Watch out for foods that can dysregulate hormones, like sugar, or depressants, like alcohol. And consume caffeine in moderation, as you may feel jumpier or experience an increased heart rate as a result — symptoms that pile on top of those you already feel due to stress.
Finally, drink plenty of water. Studies show that staying hydrated decreases depression and anxiety. While neither of these conditions is exactly the same as emotional stress, they can contribute to or exacerbate it.
When to seek help
There’s always a way to learn to manage your stressors and build resilience to cope effectively. Working with a coach can be helpful for you to understand what triggers your stress, where it stems from, and how to address it.
Consider a new manager who seeks coaching to manage their stress. They might find through coaching sessions that they’re battling imposter syndrome, which is harming their self-image and leading them to second guess every decision, increasing analysis paralysis and demanding a lot of their emotional energy. Finding strategies to combat that imposter syndrome will help this new manager find a path forward that mitigates their stress.
But if your stress begins to impair your daily functioning or you think you’re experiencing anxiety or depression, it might be helpful to seek professional mental health help. Therapy provides you with the tools to approach difficult moments with a level head, control behaviors and physiological symptoms related to emotional distress, and view yourself and your possibilities in a more positive light.
As you work toward healthy stress management with a professional, you’ll unpack the root causes of your situation. You may find that perfectionism drives you to work harder than your body can sustain or that your workplace is toxic and it’s time to look for a new job.
The beauty of both coaching and therapy is that you gain a profound understanding of what makes you tick and which calming techniques work for you. And you’re better prepared the next time a stressful situation arises. If you think working with an expert is the answer to gaining control of your emotional stress symptoms, don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Emotional stress deserves your attention
Everyone experiences all types of stress, and the very normalcy of it may make you underestimate its potential impact on your mental or physical health. But any condition that negatively affects your well-being deserves proper attention and care.
Practice identifying your emotional stress symptoms and the stressors that spur them, implement coping techniques, and seek mental health care. Stress may be inevitable and challenging, but you can improve your relationship with it and minimize the situations that cause it.
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