Mental and Emotional Stress

The stresses most people are familiar with are of the mental and emotional types, which include tension, anxiety, and depression. Mental stress may contribute to pain, moods of anxiety or depression, and loss of enthusiasm or motivation, and can lead to physical and chemical problems as well. Mental stress affects cognition, including sensation, perception, learning, concept formation, and decision-making. These are all very important factors in sports. For example, mental imagery and the ability to form an effective racing strategy are hallmarks of great athletes.

All three forms of stress are often associated with training and competition. But stress can also come from your job, family, other people, your emotions, infections, allergic reactions, and even the weather. Most people are affected by more than one form of stress, and frequently by all three types. And, stress is cumulative; the response to a physical stress from the weekend’s long training may be amplified by Monday’s chemical stress of too much coffee and poor eating, further compounded with a family-related mental stress on Tuesday and another with the boss on Wednesday. All of this will affect your performance at a competitive event on Saturday.

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The weather is a potential stressor, as previously shown in its relationship to the MAF Test. Weather stress can affect us physically, chemically, or mentally. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a good example of how the weather at certain times of year, typically in the fall and winter in the northern hemisphere, can have a dramatic adverse effect on people.

Some people accumulate so much stress that they lose track of it. When I ask a patient to list their stresses, for example, they may recall three or four—but if I ask, “What about this or that?” they say, “Oh yes, that too.” When you’re ready to deal with stress, the first thing to do is make yourself aware of it. The best way to do this is write it all down as a stress list.