Stress Symptoms – The 33 Signs of Stress

Clear stress symptoms are vital to successful stress coping. Certainly in a world full of stress, full of demands and too little resources. It is easy to get stressed these days, but how can we tell how severe our stress level is? This list of clear stress symptoms will help you determine your stress level.

Stress Symptoms – Why Care?

Sure, stress is part of everyday life. We regularly get stressed at work, in our relationships or due to our finances, just to name a few common sources of stress. In fact, it seems easy to avoid such stressors and just move on with life.

But this can have devastating effects. In fact, not listening to stress symptoms can lead to depression, sleep problems, bad relationships or weight gain, amongst others. Instead of ignoring, we must take action and start to cope with stress. Most importantly, you need to own your stress or stress will own you.

Related: Coping with Stress – The Long-term Solution

Ask Stress Questions

To find out about your symptoms, it can actually help to ask yourself the following questions:

• Are my relationships becoming worse due to stress?
• Is my motivation decreasing?
• How is my performance at work affected by stress?
• Am I trying to avoid stress?

Such questions can help you to determine whether you are stressed or not. Moreover, there are more concrete stress symptoms helping you to determine your stress level.

Stress Symptoms and Your Body

Your body usually tells you right away if there is something wrong. In other words, just like the perfect monitoring system, your body will give you a clear signal in the form of stress symptoms. Moreover, it is incredibly important to listen to your body and to not ignore what it is telling you. Certainly, ignoring the stress symptoms will backfire at some point and you could end up with more severe issues, including burnout or depression.

1. Sleep troubles
2. You never feel relaxed or rested
3. Muscle tensions, especially in the shoulder area
4. You find it hard to concentrate
5. You experience stomach issues or heartburn
6. Your weight is fluctuating
7. You have more infections than usual
8. Your defensive mechanism is worse than usually
9. You feel powerless
10. Ticks or spasm, like repeatedly blinking with your eyes
11. Unusually high blood pressure

Stress Symptoms and Your Relationships

Above all, our social network is the number one source for effective stress coping. Of course it is very easy and convenient to call up a friend, contact a colleague or share your thoughts with your partner. In fact, the sole act of sharing your worries will help you to cope with your stress.

However, when we are stressed we tend to draw back from social life and lose touch with our social network. When this happens, we see clear stress symptoms and need to act immediately. So what are the symptoms?

1. Fights with your parents or siblings are increasing
2. Impatience with others
3. You realize that you are always looking for the fault in people
4. You criticize heavily
5. Validation from others rather than relying on your self-image
6. You avoid “difficult” discussions
7. You are always late
8. Your romantic relationship is becoming a burden to you
9. Your partner mentions to you that there is a problem
10. You become detached from your friends
11. The relationship to your co-workers or teachers is getting worse

Stress Symptoms and You

Most importantly, your stress develops due to your self-image. There is no pain without your consent. In short, you will only be stressed out if you let stress affect you. Similarly, stress episodes are accompanied or initiated by clear stress symptoms which predominantly reflect issues we have with ourselves. Here are some clear signals, that indicate your stress level:

1. You constantly have negative thoughts about your self-image
2. Low self-esteem is a problem for you
3. You rely on the opinion of others and seek it
4. Your expectations of yourself are way too high
5. You can’t handle criticism
6. You are dependent on other people’s affection
7. Your emotions are changing constantly
8. Your thoughts are repeating over and over
9. You get easily upset
10. Other people’s opinions are important to you
11. You get frustrated, overwhelmed and anxious

Stress Symptoms – Conclusion

To sum up, stress will have an effect on your thoughts, feelings, and actions. While some of the symptoms may be more noticeable than others, it is important to also listen to the more subtle symptoms. The earlier you act, the more effective you can cope with stress.

Once you identified the stress symptoms, it is important to act. For example,our article “Coping with Stress” covers various ways to find stress relief and develop sustainable stress resistance.