Stress is becoming an increasingly larger part of many people’s lives. Every case of stress is different, which is why it is such a complex issue to deal with for many people, as there often is no one size fits all solution.
Gaming is for many people a getaway from the stressed everyday life, but it can also be the cause of stress. Whether you are performing at the big stage or at home with your friends, you often encounter multiple stressed situations during a game, which is why it is important to understand stress and the difficulties as well as possibilities it can create. It is therefore beneficial to learn how to utilize your body and mind to take advantage of stress to benefit your mental health as well as performance, instead of letting the stress take control over your life.
In this video you are introduced to some of the key factors that causes stress, and why every case of stress is different. Stress has to be taken seriously, as it can often lead to anxiety and depression, as well as other short and long term challenges. Therefore it is important to take action early in the process, to hinder the stress from taking control over your in-game performance and everyday-life.
Read more on how to improve your mental health as well as how to improve the mental aspects of your game or sign up to one of our programmes to get assistance from our psychologist with exactly the challenges you face!
When we don’t feel good, it is important to remember that our feelings of imbalance are a healthy reaction to unhealthy circumstances.
The stimuli/circumstance that has turned into something unhealthy, can be related to many different areas of life – it can be long term work pressure, relational problems, family issues, troubles in your relationship, chronic disease, bad health and many other things. Oftentimes it’s the sum of several challenges that lead to stress, and not just one thing.
It is important to underline that stress isn’t a disease or a condition. Stress is a reaction to pressure/overwhelm/distress.
Now you are probably thinking, what is pressure/overwhelm/distress? It is a reaction we have when the amount of challenges we are facing is larger than the amount of resources that we have at our disposal.
Stress can lead to other mental conditions such as:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Blood clots
- Cardiovascular diseases
- And worsen chronic diseases such as allergies, psoriasis and diabetes.
Stress is actually a great response, as it helps us survive in what we perceive as critical situations. Feeling stressed for short periods of time such as hours or a few days doesn’t hurt us. It actually helps us:
- Remember better.
- Be more focused.
- Better immune system.
- Perform better.
Therefore it is not necessarily bad if you feel your heart beating faster before or during an important presentation at work. Your body is really helping you to perform better.
Short term stress isn’t something that will harm you or necessarily lead to long-term stress or burn-out, as long as you have the time to restore the balance afterwards. (Therefore stress isn’t just being busy for a period of time.)
It is when the stress continues for weeks and becomes a new and constant baseline in your life that it is bad for our physical and mental health. What the stress was helping you with – better memory, immune system and performance, now becomes the opposite. Your memory does function as well as is usually does, your focus is not the same anymore, and perhaps you have infections that wont go away.
Therefore it is a sign of sustained and constant stress when we experience signs such as poor memory, low quality of sleep, and lower performance in general. There are several symptoms and signals of stress that you can be mindful of:
Physical symptoms can be:
- Headache
- Heart palpitations / Heart beating faster
- Excessive sweating
- Weak immune system – frequent infections
- Low or no appetite
- Dizziness
- Diarrhea
- Shaky hands
- Decreased libido
Psychological symptoms can be:
- Tiredness and sleep problems
- Difficulties concerning memory
- Lack of desire
- Tension and agitation
- Difficulty concentrating
- Impatience
- Anxiety about ordinary and everyday things – Unexplained anxiety
- Depressive symptoms
We believe that nobody should be alone in the midst of a tough time in their lives. Therefore we encourage you to speak up if you’re going through a difficult time in your life at the moment. We all do at some point in our lives.
Remember that you can find many resources on our website, and learn much more about mental health.
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