9 Signs You Are Chronically Stressed

What is chronic stress? Stress is chronic when you have a long-term increased level of cortisol and other stress hormones. According to the Mayo Clinic, this can increase your chances of having multiple health conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.

How do you know if you are chronically stressed? Here are 9 signs:

You over- or under-eat

Stress can literally upset your stomach. Maybe that causes you to be so upset that you aren't able to eat much. You have no appetite. There's too much on your mind to be able to spend time eating or you simply don't think anything looks or sounds appetizing. On the other hand, you may be someone who eats their feelings. Overeating during stress is very common. We feel overwhelmed and frazzled, so eating things that comfort us feels good. It's a reward at the end of the day. Increased cortisol levels can lead to weight gain, so eating your feelings may lead to other changes in your body. Having some cookies or glass of wine at the end of a hard day is completely fine (and a healthy relationship with food) but making it a habit to overeat can have detrimental effects on your health.

You have a lack of energy

When your body senses stress, it activates the sympathetic nervous system which is the fight-or-flight response. In terms of survival, this mechanism is designed to keep you alive. If something is about to attack you, that response gets you out of harm's way or gives you the adrenaline rush to fight and defend yourself. When you aren't about to be attacked and you are having modern society's version of stress, you don't need to "fight or flight", but your body still acts in that way. Your heart will race, your muscles will tense, your body will be alert and ready to act to protect you. Doing this takes a lot of energy from your body and doing it long-term (from chronic stress) can make you exhausted. Physically, stress is tiring. It also leads to the next sign of chronic stress:

You are not able to sleep well or enough

You may also lack energy due to a lack of sleep. Not sleeping well could be due to a variety of reasons. Stress may cause you to not be able to shut your mind off enough to fall asleep or stay asleep. You may lay in bed for hours worrying about everything going on, or you may wake up in the middle of the night with insomnia. This significantly decreases the amount of quality sleep you get, which makes you tired during the day. Also, stress can chemically reduce your sleep quality. Increased levels of cortisol in your body causes your body to release less melatonin, which is a chemical that is released from your brain to regulate your sleep cycle. Melatonin causes you to start to get sleepy when it gets dark at night and cues other responses in your body to go to sleep. When melatonin is low, you may not get tired at a normal time, and it may be very difficult to fall asleep. Combine that with racing thoughts and it's no wonder why you're having trouble sleeping.

You lose patience easily

Worrying all the time and being extra tired can make you on edge. Even though you don't want to, you may snap at other people more often that you'd like. Your patience is low, and every little thing that so-and-so does that you don't love drives you nuts. Most of the time you can't control it when you do snap. So much of your energy is going into that fight-or-flight response and not getting much sleep doesn't help. You're at your wit's end. You don't have time or energy to put up with it, and so you snap. Those words come out of your mouth before you can stop them. And then comes the guilt. You feel bad about your actions, because you really did not mean to act that way. You wish you wouldn't react like that, but you couldn't help it. This guilt is normal but doesn't feel great when it happens. Your nerves are overly sensitive because they are being overworked.

You experience headaches and/or migraines

One reason chronic stress causes headaches and migraines is because when you are stressed, you likely tense a lot of your muscles (whether you realize it or not). Tensing up your muscles and your jaw area can lead to headaches. In some research studies, chronic stress was the #1 cause of migraines.

You have stomach and digestion issues

Increased cortisol levels due to chronic stress lessens your body's anti-inflammatory response, leading to inflammation in throughout your body including in your gut. The least serious symptom of this can be having an upset stomach or lack of appetite, leading back to an earlier sign of chronic stress being under eating. Gut inflammation can also cause issues such as constipation, bloating, diarrhea, and IBS. If you frequently have stomach problems, it may be caused from your stress load.

You get sick often

If you feel like you are always fighting off a cold or the flu, your immune system is likely weakened from one thing or another. It may be from chronic stress. How can chronic stress weaken your immune system? It all comes back to that increase in cortisol. As mentioned earlier, cortisol lowers your body's anti-inflammatory response. This can cause your body to not be able to fight off infections, viruses, and bacteria as easily. Feeling run down all the time can be because your body is constantly under attack due to a weakened immune system. Try reducing your stress and see if you get sick less often.

You have low libido

Stress changes many hormones in your body, including stress hormones. These changes can cause your sex drive to decrease. Wondering why? That fight-or-flight response from stress puts so much energy into being ready to defend yourself or flee that your body allocates your energy differently. It no longer allows energy to be used for reproduction purposes because it needs it for survival. Plus, there's no reason to reproduce if you are about to be killed by whatever the source of stress is. Your body doesn't understand that your financial stress won't literally kill you. It just senses stress and locks down into survival mode. That's why you may not feel "in the mood" as much as you once did.

You have skin problems

This is a common and well-known sign of stress, but I will discuss it briefly anyway. Acne, eczema, and psoriasis are just a few examples of ways stress can present in your skin. Cortisol (yeah, yeah, I know it comes up in almost everything here). Cortisol increases oil production which can clog pores and cause acne, or it can cause skin cells to build up on each other resulting in psoriasis and eczema. Stress may also cause you to touch your face more or pick at your skin as a nervous habit. As I mentioned earlier, chronic stress also changes your eating habits. Eating a less nutritious diet can impact your skin health in a negative way. If you decrease your stress, your skin problems may clear up.

In summary

You may be chronically stressed if you are over- or undereating, you lack energy and quality sleep, you lose your patience with loved ones easily, you have headaches or migraines, you experience stomach and digestion problems, you get sick often, you "aren't in the mood" as much as you used to be, or you have skin issues. There are many ways to decrease chronic stress. The most obvious answer is to eliminate or reduce the cause of that stress, but that's not always possible. Instead, it may be more realistic to change the way you handle that stress. Yoga and living more mindfully can really significantly reduce your stress levels. I offer many options for yoga, ranging from free to an affordable monthly membership (only $22/month!!). If the problems talked about in this blog post sound like you, I highly encourage you to reach out to me so you can start managing your stress better.

Love,

Sara