Video Transcripts
Symptoms of Stress Video
By John Jordy, M.Ed.
“Lots of time we are under stress and we don't even realize it. It's something that we're so used to that we don't even notice that it's happening to us. And actually that's partly what gets us into trouble because we can experience a lot of stress in our bodies and not even know it…and eventually, it will catch up with us. And sometimes we end up with some pretty severe symptoms of excess stress and we're kind of surprised. Like, we'll get infections that won't go away, or we'll start to get gastrointestinal problems that really are very painful, or we'll catch a flu and get sick again and again, and we can't ever really catch our breath. And you know, sometimes that's a shock to us. But if we look closely at how the stress response is occurring on a day to day basis, it starts to make a lot more sense that we may be under a great deal of stress and not really register that until we start getting sick. So, it's important for us to be sensitive to the changes in our body on a day to day basis. That can inform us and tell us more how stress is affecting us, hopefully before we get really sick. And that gives us the opportunity to do something different about it before it gets us in trouble. So, some of the things that happen are things that you might be familiar with, like heart rate will start to go up, and blood pressure tends to go up, and muscle tension will increase, especially in the neck and shoulders. Things you may not have known about the stress response, though, may include changes in blood flow. So the blood in your hands and your feet, and actually in the periphery of your body will move away from the periphery (from the skin and the feet) and so you'll end up with colder hands and feet. Actually, even your scalp will lose blood flow and some people will lose their hair as a result of lack of blood flow in the scalp, which is why some people actually lose hair under stress. It's because of lack of blood flow in the skin and scalp. So chronically cold hands can be a symptom of excess stress and when we teach people relaxation, one of the things you'll notice as you get really proficient with relaxation skills is the blood will start coming back into the periphery, and your hands and your feet will actually warm up. “
“Now skin temperature in not like core temperature, which is 98.6. It rarely changes much more than a few degrees. Skin temperature can change anywhere from room temperature (might be 70, 75 degrees) all the way up to 95 degrees, so you can have a 20 or 25 degree range in skin temperature, and than can change within minutes. So as you practice relaxation for example, your skin might start out at 74 degrees. Within 10 minutes, it might be 84. Within 15 minutes, it might actually go up to 94 degrees. So within 20 minutes, you have a 20 degree change in skin temperature. So that’s a good way to tell if your relaxation skills are really working – is by the temperature of your skin. So in the relaxation class, one of the things we do is give you chance to measure that. We use little thermometers or little measuring devices or stress dots as a way to measure skin temperature to monitor how your skills in relaxation are developing." To learn more, come to Relaxation Class, Thursdays from 4 to 5 p.m. in 540 Old Main.
Not Ready for Group Counseling?
By Maria Bakht, Psy.D
"So a person is feeling already self-conscious about themselves and they are not wanting to go to a group because it's like, 'Oh no. There are more people there, ya know. I'm going to feel even MORE self-conscious.' The idea is to go anyway, because by going, and by participating, you will actually, after time after time after time, you'll develop another habit. Because what's happened, you've developed this habit in your mind, and that anxiety starts to build, like, 'I don't know if this is going to help me,' or 'Boy, I'm too nervous or too anxious.' But, it just takes practice, just like everything else. It's almost like training for a marathon or learning to study something, or learning to practice something that you've never done before. So when you do it several times, it just gets much easier to the point where it just becomes second nature to you."
