Stress and Genetics

Stress
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By Charliebywinning on 2010-09-19 08:14:50

Are you a happy go lucky person who deals with stresses as they arise or are they ignored and not spoken about? We each respond differently, but have you ever thought that you might have inherited how you deal with stress?

There is no doubt that some people are definitely born with a lower stress tolerance than average, but we all have the same positive chemical messengers that can show us how we manage stress, but. The amount of positive messengers like adrenaline and dopamine you produce has an effect on how you deal with stress. The more positive messengers you have then the more likely you are to find stress stimulating and challenging and might even feel bored without it.

It’s a fact that when stress mounts up the number of positive messengers declines and the amount of stress that you can tolerate before your positive messengers malfunction shows your stress tolerance level.

This is determined by your genetic inheritance from your parents and the majority of us inherit a high enough level to enable us to cope with the everyday stress and strain of daily life. Even if you have an average or a high predisposition to tolerate stress you will probably still experience some of the symptoms of the brain chemical imbalance at key stress points in your life.

For the average person this may only come as a response to difficult situations such as the sleepless nights before an important interview or exam, or facing the extreme pressure of the terminal illness and death of someone close to you. You may not be someone who ‘normally’ cries but finds themselves weeping without reason and this is a sign that the brain chemical balance is not functioning at its normal rate.

However there are estimated to be at least 1 in 10 of the population who have inherited a low stress tolerance and whose positive messengers fail much earlier than the average. Situations which many people would consider marginally stressful, or very low on the stress scale, will have a greater impact on them.

Often feeling overstressed and overwhelmed for instance when you have to deal with change, or getting to know new people can really affect you. Ten percent of a population is a considerable number of people who are not able to cope with the stress of daily life.

If this seems familiar to you, then do a reality check to see it is present in your family history can identify with this, then have a close look at. Once you know you cope less well with stress then you are able to put a positive plan in place to help you deal with it. It means looking realistically at the stress load you carry and taking action to reduce it, and by identifying the situations that most stress you there is the opportunity to put strategies in place to protect you from the more serious effects of stress.

For example, if you find it stressful meeting new people, then try to do so in the presence of someone you know and trust. If the situation warrants it, seek the help of a professional such as a counsellor or someone trained in hypnotherapy or NLP who can assist you to overcome and deal with such situations.

Just because you have a family pattern around stress doesn’t mean giving up, you still can choose how you deal with it – you can overcome it.