ARE YOU STRESSED?

Stress — a little of it is helpful, but a lot quickly becomes toxic. Over the following pages, Dr Harry Barry looks at how much is too much, the science behind stress and what it does to your body. He explores how to manage stress through diet, exercise,

IMAGINE the following: Susan is a 39-year-old mother of two and she is constantly tired. Both she and Tom, her partner, are working in fulltime stressful jobs. His work involves some travel so Susan is often left carrying the can. Both their children are in creche and it is a constant battle to drop them off and collect them as she commutes a distance to work.

Recently Susan has been promoted, but she is struggling to keep all the balls in the air. She lives in a state of constant anxiety with tension headaches, sleep difficulties and teeth grinding at night. A drip-feed of caffeine is needed to counteract her exhaustion, and she is losing weight because she just feels too wired — and exhausted — to eat healthily.

Susan is a perfectionist who procrastinates at home and at work. As a result, problems are mounting up. She is also a chronic catastrophiser and that ratchets up her stress levels. On top of all that, her mother has developed early dementia and much of the responsibility of finding a carer and dealing with any problems falls to Susan.

Struggling to cope, Susan finds her usual glass of wine turning into two or three as she tries to wind down in the evenings. She depends on social media to keep in touch with her friends. At night she is exhausted but too wired to sleep and instead spends hours browsing online. When she does sleep, the nightmares are horrendous. Her libido plummets and Tom is not happy about the disappearance of their sex life. Things come to a head.

She finally breaks down in front of Tom. She has had an awful day, ending with a full-blown panic attack in her car. She got phone calls at work from both the creche and her mum’s carer, all looking for an instant response. She feels tired, and weepy.

Susan’s story mirrrors many of those who come to see me. She says her life is a mess and she feels such a failure. All her friends are coping with their lives. What is wrong with her?

The answer to Susan’s question lies in two words — toxic stress. Remember her situation because it embodies what many of us experience, and we will return with solutions to her dilemma (page 4).

But first, what is toxic stress and why is it an increasing challenge to our mental and physical health?