STRESS MANAGEMENT IN CHILDREN & ADULTS

How we feel has an immediate effect on our body and mind. In a way the mind decides whether the body should be “alarmed” by the feelings of stress, sorrow, fear or pain. Think of it as a fire alarm: if we somatize all the time what we think (I think of tomorrow’s meeting/exam and I feel my stomach getting upset) then we constantly activate the fire alarm of our system. At one point it can be that we feel the stomach ache even without us noticing that we are under stress. In the end we experience persistent stress related complaints and unexplained pain, fatigue which can have devastating effects on our daily functioning. This mechanism is almost the same both in children and adults. In the case of children body expression is much more prominent when they want to communicate their stress.