MANAGING STRESS: STRESSFUL SITUATIONS CAN LEAD TO VARIETY OF HEALTH PROBLEMS

Gary Underwood, a licensed professional councilor, at The Community Counciling Center, demonstrated a biofeedback machine to Brenda Schniedermeyer, a clinical therapist at the center. The machine measures musclar tension, galvanic skin temperature, peripheral skin temperature, blood volume/pulse and heart rate. The machine is used to help patients learn to recognize and reduce mental and physical stress.

The biofeedback computer screen allows the patient to see immediate results on how they can control their physical tension. A heart rate graph is displayed above.

The kids are screaming, your spouse is working late and the baby sitter has a new boyfriend and won't be available until the new millennium.

Or maybe there aren't any kids, spouses or jobs on your personal horizon.

Either of those scenarios can induce stress. And stress leads to a variety of health problems -- headaches, panic attacks, depression, high blood pressure, fatigue, heart disease.

The causes of stress -- and the reactions that stress brings -- vary from person to person, experts agree.

Dr. K.P.S. Kamath, a Cape Girardeau psychiatrist, says stress can be defined in two broad categories: Bad events and bad problems.

A single bad event, such as the loss of a job, a divorce, or a death in the family, causes sudden upheaval in a person's life, Kamath said. That upheaval can be traumatic.

Bad problems include ongoing, chronic difficulties, such as long-lasting illness or problems at work, "something that you feel trapped into, a life problem," Kamath said.

"In a bad event, you are upset all of a sudden and your stress builds up all of the time. And the problem upsets you a little bit at a time and the stress builds up," he said.

Stress causes people to feel a variety of unpleasant emotions -- fear, hurt, anger, shame, disappointment, hopelessness, helplessness, frustration, embarrassment, to name a few -- and those emotions can cause physical symptoms, such as a high heart rate or upset stomach.

The danger comes when people try to deny those emotions, Kamath said.

"If we let out those emotions, if we break down and cry or we react, we are fine," he said. "What people who get sick do is they think they are doing the right thing by holding those emotions inside."

People who repress their emotions "have a little secret compartment inside and they kind of bury things in there," Kamath said.

"If you bury an emotion, it has consequences," he said. Physical and emotional symptoms of stress can be exhausting, and in some cases, crippling.

"By the time they come to see me, most of these people have stuffed emotions inside until they can't stuff anymore," he said.

Counseling lets people talk "unstuff" stress, Kamath said. The most effective treatment "is really educating people to talk about it," he said.

"The single most important thing therapy does is raise people's awareness," Kamath said.

Sometimes people are so stressed out that they don't realize -- or won't admit -- how bad things are, he said.

"When a person becomes aware of these emotions, they're able to evaporate these emotions out of their systems," he said. "People have drinking problems, bad marriages, job problems. Initially they all deny them. But if everything is wonderful in your life, how come you feel so bad?"

All the therapy in the world won't remove the sources of stress, said Claire Laffoon, a counselor at the Community Counseling Center in Cape Girardeau.

But it can change the way people react to those stressors, she said.

"There is no way to be without stressors. All you can do is manage their effects on you," she said.

Some people "blow up" under pressure. They yell and scream and throw things. Some people shut down, hide away at home or the office and refuse to talk to anyone.

Neither option is particularly healthy.

A better choice is striking a balance between the stressful situation and an activity that lets you relax, that puts no demands on you, Laffoon said.

That activity may be exercise, music, a hot bath or a hobby.

"Talking to people often helps an awful lot," she said, and it's important that people have a support system of friends and family with whom they can blow off steam.

Therapy also can help people with ongoing problems look at those problems from new perspectives, Kamath said.

"You put problems in perspective, look at things from a realistic point of view," he said.

If you can't solve a problem, he said, the solution may be to walk away from it.