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Sacrifice Chirisa Mental Health Matters
Stress is an epidemic and a universal fact of modern life. There are so many sources of stress: caring for children, disabled persons and elderly parents, holding down a job, and making time for a social life are all everyday sources of stress.

Added to these everyday stresses are extraordinary events such as deaths, serious illnesses, elections, natural disasters, social and relationship upheavals that often occur randomly and without warning.

It is easy to become frustrated by the great number of pressures that consume one on any given day. Over time, the cumulative effects of multiple stressors, small and large, can combine to wear you out before you’ve had a chance to get  started.

Stress can overwhelm your defences despite your best efforts at coping. In the short term, you may lose your temper, your blood pressure may soar, and you may even feel sick to your stomach. Over the longer term the cumulative nature of stress can keep you on edge long after individual stressful events have passed, and can even contribute to medical problems.

For example, unresolved and lingering stressful feelings of anger, hostility and aggression appears to make the development of heart disease and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) more likely to   occur.

There is no escaping stress, but there are ways you can learn to handle stress better when it is present and this is termed resilience.

To be resilient means to be able to “spring back” into shape after being deformed.

To be emotionally resilient means to be able to spring back emotionally after going through difficult and stressful times in one’s life.

Stressed people experience a flood of powerful negative emotions, which may include anger, anxiety and depression.

Some people remain trapped in these negative emotions long after the stressful events that have caused them have passed. Emotionally resilient people, on the other hand, are quickly able to bounce back to their normal emotional state.

Emotionally resilient people are more effective at managing stress than non-resilient  people.

The key difference between these groups appears to be that emotionally resilient people have a specific set of attitudes concerning themselves and their role within the world that motivates and enables them to cope more efficiently and effectively than their non-resilient peers. Specifically, emotionally resilient people tend to:

Have realistic and attainable expectations and goals.

Show good judgment and problem-solving skills.

Be persistent and determined.

Be responsible and thoughtful rather than impulsive.

Be effective communicators with good people skills.

Learn from past experience so as to not repeat mistakes.

Be empathetic toward other people (caring how others around them are feeling).

Have a social conscience, (caring about the welfare of others).

Feel good about themselves, as an individual person.

Feel like they are in control of their lives.

Be optimistic rather than pessimistic.

These special beliefs characteristic of resilient people help them to keep a proper perspective, and to persist with coping efforts long after less resilient types become demoralised and give up. In order to become a more resilient person, it is necessary to work on cultivating these beliefs and attitudes for your own  life.

This might involve some coaching, mentoring and psychological and psychiatric sessions to accomplish. Get help to develop the resilience you need in life because the fact is life is getting more stressful.

Dr Sacrifice Chirisa is a passionate mental health specialist at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, one the country’s major referral centres.