Chronic stress, that sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed over long periods of time, has become synonymous with living life in a modern world. This type of stress makes us age more quickly and sets us up for serious health issues such as heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, obesity and type II diabetes. Depression, anxiety and addiction disorders top the list of the most common psychological consequences of living a chronically stressed life.
From my 25 years of experience as a frontline clinician, one of the obvious roadblocks I observe when it comes to stress management is that the way we cope with stress as individuals is often molded early in life and is dependent upon the environment we grew up in, how much adversity we encountered and, perhaps of most salience, the way the people who raised us coped with stress themselves.
Unfortunately, these organic ways that we learned to cope with chronic stress, while useful in the moment, often turn out to be bad for our long-term mental health.
Yet America remains one of the most stressed nations on earth, with around a third of American adults reporting their stress level to be overwhelming on most days.
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