Hurumanu - Taha Hinengaro/Mental & Emotional Wellbeing - Stress

What causes stress?

• Work
• Finance
• School
• Being pressured
• Fear/Being in trouble
• Having to adjust to a new environment 
• Significant other
• School
• Overthinking
• Thoughts

What can stress physically do to the body?

You will have high blood pressure, you could get heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, abnormal heart rhythms, you get sicker easily. For mental health problems; you could get anxiety, depressions and personality disorders. 

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How does stress affect the 4 areas of wellbeing? 

For physical wellbeing: 

• You often get headaches
• Chest pain and rapid heartbeat
• Low energy
• Diarrhoea, constipation, and nausea
• Aches, pains and tense muscles
• Insomnia
• Frequent cold and infections
• Dry mouth and having a difficult time swallowing
• Nervousness; shaking, ringing in the ear, cold or sweaty hands and feet
• Clenched jaw and grinding teeth

For mental wellbeing:

• You're easily agitated, frustrated, and moody (angry, sad, fearful)
• Overwhelmed
• Having a difficult time relaxing your mind
• Low self-esteem; worthless, loneliness, and depressed
• Avoiding others
• Difficult time focusing

For spiritual wellbeing: 

• Difficulty praying because there's too much in our mind (that's why we need to relax when doing this)
• Hard time meditating when our mind is all over the place

For social wellbeing:

• Avoiding people (we tend to shut people out, afraid we might hurt them or we don't want them to worry)
• Having fights about little things
• We hurt/bully people to make ourselves feel better about ourselves (online or not)
• We lie more than we think we do

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How can we overcome stress?

• Set a goal - a goal which can improve your health and the 4 dimensions of wellbeing
• Do the things that you love 
• Meditate - Meditation helps your brain relax and it stops your mind from going all over the place
• Exercise - You live happier, improve your ability to sleep
• Surround yourself with great people; people who can help you to be a better person, people who make you happy, who accepts you (real/genuine  people)
• Stop comparing yourself to others, always remind yourself that you're you, you have your own weirdness, things you are good at.
•  Learn to accept yourself because there's nothing greater in this world than self-love, before you love others, learn to love yourself first. 
• Forgive yourself -  Move forward, apologies to people you've hurt including yourself, if you make mistakes, that's okay, learn from it, that's life. Everyone has made mistakes at some point. Mistakes make us human, mistakes help us to be a better person, mistakes are how we grow as people. Don't focus on the end result, you should be proud yourself that you made it, give yourself credit for the amazing work you've done and all the accomplishments you've achieved "Don't let the fear of failure get in the way of doing something new" - Cristel Carrisi 
• Breathe - Calming down your breathing makes you more relax and it stables your mind.