Do you sometimes suffer from tension? That all your muscles tense up, and that neither your body nor your mind can relax? If your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife sees that you are tense, many of them offer a massage, because that works well against tension. They then want to massage all your tension away. But what if this tension has been present for months or years at a time? They could not possible massage you every day, could they? In that case, something else is likely to be going on.
Tension: psychological causes
In most cases, tension is caused because we exert ourself mentally, and do this for too much time at once. We pressure our brain too much, causing it to become overwhelmed. This can also cause our body to tense up, or cause us to feel exhausted. You feel like you cannot relax. If it is not your mind, then it is your body which cannot seem to relax. There are different things which can cause this mental tension. For example, you might experience a lot of stress, you might be anxious, you possibly feel depressed, have experienced a trauma,... In short, there are many reasons and ways to overwhelm your mind. You can exhaust your mind by constantly thinking about things, for example about how you could have done something better, or if you think a lot you might remember what you were supposed to do. It can also be so that long-term stress takes its toll after some time. Your body and mine will namely go into overdrive in long-term stress in some cases, which makes it difficult to relax.
Tension: physical causes
Except for psychological causes, it can also be so that there is something in your body which causes you to be tense. It can, for example, be so that you have a constant neck ache because of your poor posture at work. Then it is difficult to relax. Furthermore, it can also be so that certain medication causes some tension sometimes. In general, tension is more often caused by psychological causes than by physical causes.
Tension: treatment. How do I deal with it?
What you can do to reduce tension, is to treat its causes. For example, you can follow our online self-help program in order to treat your stress, anxiety, and/or depression. The program contains tools and exercises which you can do to reduce your tension.
Tension? Take our stress test!
You can fill out our free online stress test, to discover to what extent stress, anxiety, and depression are present in you. After filling out the test, you get your personal scores right away!
