Explainer | Stress: how to know if you are suffering from it and ways to relieve the stress if you are

As much as 90 per cent of illness and disease is stress-related; it affects every single organ and is the ‘silent pandemic’ of the Covid-19 era, an expert says

Stress shows itself in a variety of ways, such as eating and drinking more and snapping at people. Mindfulness, meditation and digital time outs can help

Reading Time:5 minutes

You may not think you are stressed, but if you blow up easily at people, have trouble sleeping, start eating and drinking more, they could all be signs that you are. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 5:45pm, 23 Jan 2022Updated: 8:15pm, 23 Jan 2022

If a colleague asks whether you are stressed, many of us will snap back: “No, I’m not.” We respond swiftly, as though being stressed were a sign of weakness or failure rather than a natural response to challenging circumstances.

What’s your answer to these questions: are you having trouble sleeping? Do you need strong coffee to get you going in the morning and then wine at night to wind down? Do you grind your teeth in the night? Are you eating more than usual? Are you finding it difficult to focus?

If you answered yes to one or more of those, you could be stressed – and there is no shame in that. We are into the third year of the coronavirus pandemic and a lot of us are stressed. For many of us, it has been a long time coming, a slow wearing away of our physical and mental health.

Not all stress is bad. There is good stress, the sort that alerts us to a challenge in front of us and helps ensure we do something about it; short-term stress, that fires us up to react to an immediate situation; and then there is toxic stress, which is the sort we get when we don’t have control over a threatening situation.

Dr Quratulain Zaidi, a registered clinical psychologist in Hong Kong, calls toxic stress the “silent pandemic” of the Covid-19 era.