What is stress?
Stress is the feeling we get when our management capacity is exceeded by the number of challenges or the limited time available to resolve them. Some stress is avoidable and some is intrinsic to certain situations. Chronic stress appears when avoidable stress becomes accumulated stress, causing problems in different areas of your life.
Stress in itself is not bad. In small doses it activates us, prepares us to act and can even improve performance. The problem appears when it becomes chronic: when the pressure does not let up, the body and mind have no time to recover, and the state of alert that should be temporary becomes permanent.
Not all stress is the same. Identifying what part is unavoidable and what part you can avoid or manage is the first step to restoring balance.
Signs
When stress accumulates over weeks or months without resolving, the body begins to send warning signals. These are the most frequent ones we see in practice:
- Feeling overwhelmed.
- Muscle tension.
- Digestive problems.
- Withdrawing from others.
- Increased consumption of alcohol, tobacco or other substances.
- Unable to relax.
How we work at PSINCRO
We work on the thought patterns that amplify stress: the tendency to magnify the negative, to take on responsibilities that are not ours, or to fail to communicate effectively, and we develop concrete resources to better manage the response to daily demands.
We will focus therapy on distinguishing intrinsic stress (overwork, job loss, retirement, divorce…) from avoidable stress, understanding how you have reached a point where avoidable stress has accumulated and led to this situation.
When to seek help?
If you have been sleeping poorly, feeling irritable, low on energy or with the constant sensation that "you can't keep up with everything" for more than three weeks, stress has stopped being temporary. Addressing stress before it becomes chronic makes the process shorter and more manageable.
Frequently asked questions
Stress usually has an identifiable external cause: a workload, a conflict, a difficult situation. Anxiety tends to be more diffuse and persistent, appearing even without a concrete threat. They often coexist and one can trigger the other.
Yes. Sustained stress has documented effects on sleep, the digestive system, the immune system and the cardiovascular system. The body does not distinguish between a real and a perceived threat: it reacts the same way. This is why addressing stress also means looking after physical health.
It depends on how long it has been present and what factors sustain it. In many cases significant improvements are achieved in a few weeks. The goal is for you to leave therapy with your own tools, not dependent on the process.