Everybody know the feeling of stress, the knot in their stomach, the sweaty palms, the headache and irritability are just a few of the short term symptoms. But those can all go away if the stress is temporary or if you have your stress under control. What if they aren’t temporary and you continually have trouble dealing with stress then you might find yourself with chronic stress.

Chronic stress is where you are bombarded with stressors in your life. The stress is so constant and so deep that you can’t do anything about it. Not only are you affected emotionally by chronic stress but also physically. This type of stress can lead to stress burnout.

Long term effects of stress on your body.

• Causes you to have sleep problems.
• High blood pressure
• Possible heart problems
• Lowers your immune system which in turn makes you more susceptible to other illnesses.
• Back problems

Another possible side effect of chronic stress is drug and alcohol addiction. With there is too much stress in life many folks turn to alcohol and drugs to help self-medicate themselves. Of course this leads to more problems than they already had.

What to do about chronic stress?

There are various stress management techniques that you can learn on your own or with the help of your doctor or counselor.

Some of the therapies and treatments are

• aromatherapy
• deep breathing techniques
• progressive muscle relaxation
• Stress relief games online
• Autogenic training

Without engaging someway to control stress your health and emotional wellbeing will suffer greatly.

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 The main idea behind this type of procedure is to control each muscle in the body by recognizing the muscle, making the muscle tense then relaxing the muscle. With practice this will enable you to release stress throughout your body muscle by muscle. This particular exercise is great in conjunction with self-hypnosis, self-imagery and deep breathing techniques.

 Make sure the place that you do this exercise is quiet and you won’t be interrupted.

Use the following progressive muscle relaxation steps:

1. Start with your feet, concentrate on your feet then tense the muscles of the feet. Say out loud or to your self. “My feet are tense”
2. Relax your feet and say out loud or to your self. “My feet are relaxed”
3. Move on to your calf muscles, tense the calf muscles “My calf muscles are tense”
4. Relax your calf muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My calf muscles are relaxed.”
5. Tense your thigh muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My thigh muscles are tense.”
6. Relax your thigh muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My thigh muscles are relaxed.”
7. Tense your stomach muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My stomach muscles are tense.”
8. Relax your stomach muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My stomach muscles are relaxed.”
9. Tense your hand muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My hand muscles are tense.”
10. Relax your hand muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My hand muscles are relaxed.”
11. Tense your forearm muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My forearm muscles are tense.”
12. Relax your forearm muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My forearm muscles are relaxed.”
13.  Tense your biceps and say out loud or to your self. “My biceps are tense.”
14.  Relax your biceps and say out loud or to your self. “My biceps are relaxed.”
15.  Tense your shoulders and say out loud or to your self. “My shoulders are tense.”
16.  Relax your shoulders and say out loud or to your self. “My shoulders are relaxed.”
17. Tense your neck muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My neck muscles are tense.”
18. Relax your neck muscles and say out loud or to your self. “My neck muscles are relaxed.”

 At this point your body should be relaxed, if not repeat the steps. It is important to practice this and take time to concentrate on each set of muscles. Don’t forget any of the muscles.