Avoiding and reducing stress

Stress is a natural and generally healthy response to changes in our environment; everybody who approaches the limits of their mental and physical capacity will receive all kinds of warning signals from their body.

Under normal circumstances, stress is a temporary thing from which we recover quite quickly. But if we are under a lot of pressure for an extended time, we may suffer consequences.

For some people this might mean anxiety and irritability, while other people may become depressed, fatigued or burnt out. In some cases people take to coping strategies such as substance abuse, while others might end up in the hospital as a result of the physical toll of their prolonged stress levels.

In this seminar we will look at stress as an adaptive mechanism, that means as a natural part of our system designed to allow us to deal with pressure, but also warn us when the pressure becomes too much. How can we recognize these warning signs in ourselves? How do we adequately recover from stress? And what actions can we take to reduce or avoid exposing ourselves to an overdose of unmitigated pressure?