The Struggles of Stress at Every Age
Stress is a mental condition that has physical consequences, and it’s one that’s growing rampantly in society from childhood through the golden years. Because it can affect your entire existence, it’s important that you learn what causes stress at different stages of life and how to alleviate the symptoms that arise from it.
Top Stress Factors for Children
When people think about who gets stressed out the most, their last thought is kids. From an adult’s perspective, kids have nothing to stress about. They don’t pay bills, they don’t have to work, and all they do is hang around all day gaming, chatting with friends and eating.
Theoretically, all they have to do is go to school and come back home. While this sounds like a dream to most people, there are many subtle factors in a kid’s life that can stress them out quite a bit, and it’s important to address these factors early on so that they don’t develop any problems later in life.
One of the longest running and worst causes of stress for kids is bullying. Adults don’t face this problem nearly as much, because if someone is harassing you in the real world, you can simply leave the situation or file a complaint.
If the harassment is physical, an adult would be arrested for assault. However, kids can’t just leave school or call the police if they’re getting bullied. Some might say that they can just talk to a teacher, but that seldom fixes the problem.
Kids feel as if they’re trapped there at school with their bully, and with no way out of a harmful situation, they can get extremely stressed out every day of the week. Another cause of stress in kids might be their home life.
Unlike teenagers and young adults, kids can’t just drive away from home if it’s not a good place to live. They’re powerless in terms of moving away, and completely at their parent’s mercy.
If a child’s household is full of fighting or has abusive family members in it, the kid might get stressed out about even going home. They could have a fine life at school, but every day they have to go home at some point.
Abusive parents or siblings can absolutely ruin a child’s home life, stressing them out beyond your knowledge. In a similar situation to having a bully at school, kids can’t do anything to prevent or help their situation at home, due to the fact that they can’t escape in any way.
Being unable to leave your situation can cause more stress than anything. Recognizing stress in kids can be either easy or difficult, depending on the kid. In younger children, it will be fairly clear when they’re stressed out, because they’ll usually start to cry.
Young children cry whenever they’re stressed, upset, or feel as if anything is wrong. This type of sign is the easiest to recognize, and you certainly shouldn’t overlook it as them being a “whiny kid.”
There’s almost always a reason for a child to cry – you just have to be able to look for it. If you don’t, they’ll start to develop some long-running issues. Of course, there are many kids who have outgrown their standard crying days.
Older kids have a very different way of showing that they’re stressed out, and this is the point at which it can become dangerous, so you really need to be looking out for these kinds of signs.
One sign that a kid is stressed out is that they start to close off from other people. They might start to become incredibly quiet – not just around you, but also around other kids their age.
While some kids are naturally introverted and shy, this is a totally different situation. When kids start to close off, they won’t even be open with their own parents or with their closest friends.
Another way older kids start to show stress is by acting out. Kids with a bad home life and similar problems might start to act out at school, at home, and elsewhere for the sake of getting positive attention from their friends – something that they desperately need.
Another common sign involves kids becoming reluctant to do certain things. For example, if a child is reluctant to go to school, there might be deeper meaning to it than them just not wanting to go because it’s boring.
They might be getting bullied at their school, and they’re avoiding going because they’re scared of what awaits them. Similarly, they might be reluctant to come home from school if they’re afraid of their home lives.
There are tons of different solutions when it comes to helping kids deal with stress. The first one is addressing the problem at its source. If it’s the home life that the child is stressed about, then try to improve it by going to family counseling, where the child can clearly communicate their feelings about their home life to a counselor or to their parents directly.
You can also directly address the source of bullying by getting onto the parents of the bully, in an attempt to get the parents to reprimand them appropriately. The bully’s parents might be totally unaware of what’s going on, so informing them might help the situation.
Another solution for improving a child’s stress is to remove them from a stressful situation. This applies best to the bullying situation. If you’ve already tried talking to the school’s administration, to the bully’s family, and to the teachers, then it might be time to switch your child over to another school or choose a homeschool option.
This is best done early on, so that the child doesn’t have to endure years and years of bullying. This also allows them to get a fresh start at a new location. One of the best options that you can take is to just talk to your child and help them better understand the scope of time that they’re in.
While they might be stressed out about school and all of that right now, they need to know that things do get better. It can be helpful to explain to them how small of a portion of their life this will be.
Show them a timeline of a person’s life from age 0 to 100 and how small the school years are in that line of existence. It’s important to get their thoughts on their own situation as well, because it makes them feel respected, as if they have a bit of power in their tough situation.
The Stress Teens and Young Adults Face
One of the most prevalent times for stress to arise in one’s life is between the ages of about 13 and into the mid-20s. There’s a lot of stressful things going on around this time in people’s lives.
At the earlier end, many kids are going through puberty and through their awkward years. This is the point in time when bullying can be the worst, as teens start to become a bit more grown-up, but not fully, and still make poor decisions by picking on people.
The stresses at this age vary greatly from person to person, but one of the most prevalent ones is bullying and harassment. By this age, many people are still kind of awkward, but they’re at the point where they want to start dating.
This can create a ton of stress from being harassed about who they like, to getting rejected when they ask someone out. These problems can last all the way up through college for some people, and it only gets more stressful as time goes on.
Another problem, especially towards the later years of high school, is figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Often, teens are pressured about what they want to do for the rest of their lives, as if they have to have it all figured out by age 18.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. They’re expected to make decisions about where they want to go to college, if they want to go at all, and if so, what they will major in. For many people, this is a stressful process of applications and trying to figure out what their passion is.
It’s certainly a lot to take in, and if they don’t have the right guidance, they’ll feel overwhelmed quickly. Finally, towards the tail end of this age group, you have the people who are in college.
College comes with a ton of stress factors that aren’t well known to everyone. In college, you have a lot more independence than you do in high school, but that comes with its fair share of drawbacks.
Students are often left out to dry by the university and their professors, who both assume the student is capable of doing everything on their own. They might find it hard to adjust, and with the realization that they’ll soon be working a full-time job, many can begin to panic from the get-go.
Teens and young adults don’t show their stress very clearly, so it can be hard to pick up on it. Many don’t want people to worry about them too much, so they just suppress their stress and worries and just hope things go well.
Some will just try to act as though everything is fine, until one day they just kind of break down. Some show that they’re stressed out by secluding themselves from others, so as to not spread their negativity or rely on others too much.
You might notice that someone is spending a lot more time on their own, being reclusive by going home as soon as they get the chance to just be alone. This isn’t always a sign of stress, because some people are just naturally introverted.
But if someone is normally social and suddenly starts wanting to be on their own all the time, there’s clearly something wrong there. You also might want to watch their eating habits, since some people will either eat much more or a lot less when they’re stressed out.
This can lead to undesired weight fluctuations that can cause even more stress. Moving up into college, some students try to alleviate their stress by partying. Many students will resort to heavy drinking for the sake of getting the negative thoughts out of their head.
By using alcohol as a coping mechanism, they put themselves at risk to develop alcoholism. Some will even start using drugs, which can put them at risk of an overdose, addiction, and getting arrested.
No one solution will work for everyone’s problems, but there are common ways that you can go about trying to help people in this age range. As a rule of thumb, you should never, ever try to come at them aggressively to try to help them with their problems.
They’ll just deny anything’s wrong and seclude themselves further from you. You should always try to get them to open up a bit, and then casually move it towards thinking about solutions.
When it comes to teens, your first step should be to teach them to handle the situation as best as they can on their own. If that fails to work, then you might intervene yourself, instead of trying to get administrators or teachers involved, because they’ll feel really embarrassed if the teachers have to step in for a school bully problem – and it may make matters worse.
You need them to feel as if they can trust you as a parent, because if they don’t, they’ll never open up to you fully. Make it a point for them to know first and foremost they you have their back and support them fully, no matter what.
Then, you’ll have a much better shot at getting them to open up to you. When it comes to young adults, getting them to go to a counselor might be a good option. Many universities and high schools give free counseling, and sometimes just blowing off a good amount of steam can fix a lot of problems.
If the resource is there, why not take advantage of it? Be sure to explain to them that bottling up their emotions isn’t a good way to go about anything in life, and by just getting things off of their chest, they’ll find a lot more support and they’ll feel a lot better not having to brace against it on their own. Nothing creates additional stress quite like loneliness.
Stress in Your Late Twenties and Thirties
After you’ve settled into a career, you face a whole new type of stress in your late twenties and thirties. You’re well past the point now where you have to worry about stresses from school such as bullying or grades, but now you’re in a whole new situation: your job, and to a greater extent, you’re now really on your own.
This stage in your life is full of figuring things out and having to put up with a lot of stuff that can be stressful. Most stresses around this age come from your job and finances. This can vary greatly depending on what job or career you’re in by this point, but let’s take the average office job for instance.
Chances are the work is a bit tedious and repetitive, meaning that after a few years, you’ll want a change so badly that you’ll start to worry that you’ve gone into the wrong field for your career.
These regretful kinds of stresses are the worst ones by far, because you feel as though you’re trapped and powerless to undo the path you’re on. You might feel stuck where you are.
For many people around this age, they start feeling as if they’re actually getting old for once. They’re no longer in school, no more partying off in college, but just living a full adult life.
This can come as a sudden and bizarre revelation, but the concept of feeling old can stress some people out. Some might feel as though the best of their days have blown by, and now they have to be serious for the rest of their life.
Another factor that comes with getting a little older is that some people will start to feel as though their bodies aren’t as active as they used to be. As most people go into adulthood, they miss the unending activity and abundant energy they had in school, but this process doesn’t happen all at once.
It can start as early as your late twenties with simple things such as soreness and perhaps some back pain from moving around a certain way. This can take a serious toll on someone’s confidence and can be a major cause of stress.
One of the most serious stress factors around this age can come from having a family. By this time, most people have settled in with someone. Perhaps they’re married, and they might even have one or more kids.
Parenting alone can cause immense amounts of stress for someone who’s just learning how to go about it, and this goes for all ages of kids. People around this age might be a lot more open about what they’re stressed out about than other age groups are, and in fact might be the most clear about it.
They’ll often complain about their problems to close friends and family, whether they’re unhappy with their job or worried about feeling older and the responsibilities that go along with it.
Usually you can find out what’s wrong with them by listening to what they choose to complain about. Something many people might start to do around this age is make rash decisions for the sole purpose of breaking up the monotony.
Essentially, by doing something very different from what they’re used to, they feel “alive” again, and are just happy to be doing something different for once. This can vary between getting a new car, going on a vacation, or taking up some kind of strange obsession or hobby.
Just something that they can enjoy and ignore work or the stresses of life for a little bit. One unfortunate sign of stress from people in this age group is that they cease to do things that they used to do for fun.
Getting rid of certain hobbies just because they either don’t have the time or money for it anymore is a sign that they’re not having a good time going through this stage in life. For example, if someone used to enjoy going out with their friends once a month, but now never comes out, chances are they’re going through a lot and want to seclude themselves as a result.
This can lead to additional feelings of loneliness on the part of the person secluding themselves, which can in turn cause even worse stress. One of the best solutions for a lot of stressful problems at this age is to simply have some downtime.
It doesn’t have to be a lot, and it doesn’t have to be expensive, but just having an hour or so to yourself each day to help decompress can turn someone’s life around really quickly.
If they can take some time to just do nothing for a bit, or something that really gives them joy, then they’ll be a whole lot happier as the day goes on. This can also come in the form of short breaks throughout work, just to revitalize.
Many people get stressed out at this stage over mindset issues, and having a change of attitude can mean the world to them. Switching their outlook from a negative one to a positive one can make things like work, parenting, and aging a whole lot more likable than just sitting there moping and looking on the bad side of everything.
Everyone knows there are many drawbacks to those things, but there are also positive aspects that you have to embrace. When it comes to helping with stress related to body issues, getting into a consistent workout schedule can help immensely.
People start to experience things like aches and pains because they aren’t using their bodies as much as they should be – especially if they’re sitting in office chairs all day. By getting into a good workout routine, they’ll be in better shape and they’ll be a lot more mobile.
Stress of Those in Their Forties to Late Fifties
This period in one’s life can come with a ton of challenges, both tangible and abstract. These are the years that are typically branded as the mid-life crisis years, and for good reason.
At this point, many people realize that the first half of their life is over, and to some extent, they really can’t get back any of their childhood or young adult experiences. They have to be able to be extremely content with the lives they’ve lived thus far.
One of the most dreadful causes of stress that people experience at this age is more philosophical than it is tangible. They start to see things in the bigger picture rather than just small portions of their life.
At this point, many people will start to wonder a lot about what they’ve done for the world. Thoughts such as, “What did I accomplish in my younger years?” and, “What was I put here to do?” are common, because it’s hard to imagine that you’ve already lived roughly half of your life without feeling like you did much.
They really just want to have left some kind of reliable legacy, because there’s something scary about the prospect of one day being forgotten. In a much more physical sense, this is when health problems can become really apparent.
Joints at this age don’t work quite as well as they used to, leading to things like early stages of arthritis, general joint pain, and more. It might become harder for people this age to do things that they once enjoyed – especially when it comes to things like sports or hiking.
By making basic enjoyable tasks painful, these health problems can take away much of their happiness and add on a lot of stress. One major problem around this age that can cause stress is the sheer amount of responsibilities they have when it comes to family.
Around this age, your parents are starting to get much older, and bluntly put, might pass away soon. They’ll have a ton of health problems of their own, so you’ll likely have to make sure they’re taken care of or become a caretaker yourself.
At the same time, your own kids will be a bit older, so you’ll also have to give them a certain amount of care and concern as you ready them to go out in the world as young adults soon.
Trying to balance that alone is bad enough, but you also still have to work and earn money, start thinking about retirement, and you might be experiencing issues with your relationship by this point.
All kinds of problems can arise around this time, making it one of the most stressful times of one’s life. The classic sign of stress around this time is the mid life crisis. A mid life crisis occurs when someone has been going through the same motions for decades now, and is so sick and tired of the monotony, that they do something very out of character in order for them to feel refreshed and reinvigorated.
A mid life crisis could be any number of things, varying from person to person. With men, it could be something like buying a new sports car or a motorcycle – something exciting and interesting that they can enjoy.
In some more extreme cases, a mid life crisis might include leaving your significant other, especially if you’re not fully happy with the relationship. It doesn’t have to be something specific, either.
Many people experience this crisis just by realizing they’re now older than they want to be. They start taking note of little things like how much the world has changed, how much they’ve changed, and how everything they used to do is now old-fashioned.
This can be really hard on some people, and they’ll show it. One prevalent sign of stress around this age is changes to the body. Many men experience a receding hairline as a result of both age and stress, and by worrying about it, they only make it worse.
Men can also experience a severe drop in testosterone around this time. No matter who you are, you’ll also start to get some gray hairs coming in, which can be stressful if you’re worried about your looks.
Both men and women alike will dye their hair in an attempt to keep looking youthful. There are many, many solutions for stress around this time. The first solution you might try is coming to terms with and accepting your age.
Growing older isn’t a bad thing, but it feels bad at the time. In reality, you’re experiencing more and more each day than many other people got to, so you should enjoy the time you have rather than sit there stressing and having regrets.
It’s also important that you deal with your stress in a proper way. Going out to drop tons of money on an expensive car is not healthy, nor is leaving your family or taking up unhealthy habits.
Instead, find joy in things that are either productive or make you feel whole. Sure, life is stressful, but if you can escape it for an hour to engage in some kind of hobby, you’ll feel so much better by the end of the day.
One practice that has helped many people become more positive in their lives is to embrace positive thoughts as much as you do negative thoughts, if not more. Each time you think about something negatively, think of a positive aspect to it as well.
For example, if you’re unhappy with your job, it’s fine to think about that, but just also think about the fact that you’re lucky to be employed and to have a stable source of income. Taking time to appreciate all of the little things can really make such a difference in your life.
Stress When You’re Sixty and Over
By the time you’ve reached the twilight of your life, you still face a very unique, yet very real set of stresses. The stress that elderly people face is much different from that of any other age group, and as such, many people younger than them don’t know how to help, because they simply can’t relate as they’ve never experienced these things themselves.
One of the most prevalent factors of stress at this age is simply death. Most people don’t live past their early eighties, with exceptions, of course. Once you start approaching that age, you realize just how little time you have left.
There’s this constant pressure to make your life feel complete by the time you pass away, so there’s this major stress you have to face in trying to do all of these things you always wanted to do.
Of course, this isn’t always entirely feasible, because chances are, you wouldn’t exactly be as mobile at this point. Once you really start to climb in age, your mobility just gets worse and worse, and in some cases, you might even be wheelchair bound.
Some elderly people remain mobile their entire lives, while others might end up stuck in a wheelchair or bedridden early on. Along with a variety of other health problems, physical health is something very worrying for people this age.
Another cause of stress for people sixty and over is that they often see their circle of family and friends shrinking each year from them passing away. Parents and older siblings may have passed away, or even their spouse.
This can cause an immense feeling of loneliness, with many of the people you once knew no longer being in your life. This also accompanies the first major factor, with people wondering whether or not they’ll be the next one in their circle to pass away.
With that in mind, one of the final causes of stress in older people is that they are often secluded and don’t see much attention. Without the mobility or energy to go out, with so many friends passing away, many older people don’t have a reason to do much – besides sit at home and watch TV or read.
Some are a bit more active, but regardless, it’s very difficult for them to do anything. Some have no form of transportation, even if they did feel like going somewhere. It’s not easy at all to recognize stress in older people, as they typically contain it very well.
They’re often overlooked when it comes to thinking about people who get stressed out, because they don’t necessarily do much. They’re likely retired, and spend most of their time at home watching television.
For many people, that sounds like a great time, but for them, it’s just the only thing they can do for entertainment, since it’s so hard for them to go out and about. One way you can tell that they’re a bit stressed is that they’ll start to eat a lot less.
By ceasing to take good care of themselves, they’ve essentially just given up. This can be dangerous, because if they’re not taken care of, they might end up having some serious health issues, since their bodies aren’t exactly in top physical condition.
Another big sign of stress in older people is that they just kind of stop caring. At some point, when most of the people you once knew were gone, and you will be soon, it’s difficult to find genuine joy in just about anything.
The few things you might have been able to enjoy are often too physically demanding, leaving you with so few options that you’re simply uninterested in anything else. There are some solutions that can make older people’s lives much better.
For example, it’s very important that they continue to be social, even if their old friends aren’t with them any longer. There’s no harm in being social with your kids or grandkids, and it gives you a much needed opportunity to get out of your shell once in awhile.
It’s not healthy to go from being social your whole life to suddenly being reclusive. You’re just not meant to endure that kind of change. It’s very, very important that you come to terms with the life you’ve lived by this point.
Living the later years of your life full of regret is not good, so just learn to be happy or accepting of the life you’ve had. There’s no sense in worrying about the past since you can’t change it, so you might as well do something more enjoyable than just worrying all day.
It can be good to reminisce about old times, but you shouldn’t spend an excessive amount of time on it. Looking back through an old photo album once in awhile with some family or friends and talking about the past can be a great way to fondly remember exactly what your life was like, but if you dwell on it or obsess over it, you’ll just start to become sad that you’re not there now.
It helps to just change things up a little here and there to break up the monotony. Get food from some place new, perhaps take a tour of a place you’ve never been to. Little things like this can make all the difference, because you’ll be able to essentially scratch something off of your bucket list, leaving you with one less thing to be able to regret.
Stress can be at your side through your entire life. As a toddler, you may have endured a volatile family situation, then gone through bullying in school. You followed that up with bad decisions in college, and financial and career stress as a young adult.
As you aged, you experienced relationship stress, health stress and the looming stress of getting older. Because it’s something that everyone deals with in one form or another, it’s important that you learn to recognize when you, yourself are stressed as well as your loved ones.
Knowing stress is getting out of control can alert you that it’s time to seek out a solution or remedy. Because everyone is different, the treatment that works for one person may not work for another.
You might need professional help, or be able to handle it on your own, naturally. You also may need to experiment with a variety of stress relief solutions and find one or a combination of things that work best to alleviate your concerns and help you enjoy life and remain calm on a consistent basis.