Your breathing is shallow, you suffer from a headache, feel tension around your neck and shoulders and your bodily reserves diminish and your immune system weakens. As a consequence you can\u2019t enjoy the things that you normally love to do. Maybe you experience a lack of energy because of the over 100,000 words and other stimuli that your are bombarded with each day, or because your workload continues to pile up. In short: you feel stressed. Yikes! Read this blog post and find out how you can reduce your stress level and start to enjoy your activities like before. This way, you very likely save yourself from becoming part of the one million Dutch people that malfunction for a longer period of time, because of stress. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The Week of Work Stress is currently happening. The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs encourages employers and employees to talk to each other shamelessly and freely about what stress at work means to them. According to ArboNed, an organization that provides consultancy services in the field of labor, the amount of people suffering from burnout in the Netherlands<\/a> has increased in the past year. When completely stressed-out, employees also tend to have a longer duration of absence. In the past year, about 20 percent of long term absence from the workplace was caused by stress. Employees that fall ill because of experiencing too much pressure, on average spend 180 days at home. Do you feel like you are lacking energy to go to work or do other things, because of the stress you experience? Or is stress bothering you in daily life? Then please read on, and prevent yourself from all of this harm!<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get back to basics first. What is stress, actually? The average psychologist will much likely tell you that stress simple means tension, or too much pressure. This is being caused by stimulants that increase tension, the so-called stressors. At times when you are in a stressful situation, your body gets ready to fight or flee. A long time ago, when our ancestors had to run from wild animals or other tribes quite often, this fight-or-flight reaction was really important. Nowadays, there still are some moments when your body has to become active right away. For example, when you are facing a dangerous traffic situation. However, you can also experience stress when you run into non life-threatening situations, like certain unpleasant situations at work or in your personal life. The way you deal with this is incredibly important for your wellbeing. Experiencing some stress every once in a while, isn\u2019t that harmful. It can even be healthy sometimes. Among other things, because it makes you aware of your boundaries. Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal tells you more about the positive sides of stress in her TED Talk. (You might also like the confession that she makes on her activities in the field of stress management!)<\/p>\nFriend or enemy?<\/h2>\n