The stress we encounter each day affects how we feel, the decisions were going to be making, whether or not there’s going to be a problem or altercation with a spouse or family member, or if we’re going to meet our various obligations.
Obviously stress is going to have a huge affect on any addiction whether it is drugs or alcohol, an eating disorder, gambling, sex, or anything else that we can be addicted to.
Under stress the need to self-medicate will increase as an attempt is made to block it out. That’s why when we use we use for the effect, the effect it has shielding us from the problems in our lives. The trouble is once we’ve stopped giving in to our addiction; all our problems are still there.
So where does this stress come from? Is it from all the things that we encounter while were at work each day? Or does the real stress begin once we arrive home?
Or do we bring this stress on by ourselves? Because when giving in to our addictions, we are not running at 100% and may find it hard to keep up with what’s going on at work or at home.
A story featured October 1, 2014 by Linda White (The Toronto Sun) entitled “Time to challenge ‘ideal worker’ model?” talked about the discussion on whether our stress level is greater at home or at work, how it affects us, and is there a difference between men and women?
University of Toronto Sociology Professor Scott Schieman who is currently investigating the links between work, stress and health says that many people get a lot of psycho-social rewards from work relationships and may be able to share their workload with supportive co-workers. The burdens at home meanwhile may fall squarely on their shoulders without any relief or support whatsoever causing tremendous stress levels.
According to the 2010 General Social Survey by Statistics Canada, 27% of Canadian workers described their lives on most days as “quite a bit“ or “extremely“ stressful. Feeling that you have too much to do and not enough time to do it has become a modern-day problem.
Long work hours and excessive job pressures appear to be taking their toll with workers reporting work-family related conflict, more distress and more sleep related problems.
I think it would also be possible that when people who are suffering from various addictions are put into stressful situations they could begin to indulge in their particular addiction while at work just to get through the long hours and pressure they’re feeling to do they’re jobs. We’ve heard many story’s of people who are using on the job, and it’s more common than you would think.
Warning signs include increased irritability, anger, anxiety, physical complaints, poor concentration, as well as increased sick time and lack of attendance. Under these conditions the various addictions we suffer from will become more of a problem and burden as we struggle to remain in control.
So I guess one answer to this problem is that we need to try harder to maintain our balance of life concerning leisure time, family, fitness, and other social relationships in order to avoid this stress related overload and to prevent our addictions from controlling our lives.
We need to draw a line between stressful situations and those which will allow us to recover sufficiently each day preventing our addictions from jumping in.
This is something that anyone can begin to do at any time, I’ve been trying to balance my life for a while now and with some success I might add.
It’s all about taking care of ourselves, let’s face it, we only live once.
