Do you have Stress Illness?

These questions can be used as a guideline in beginning to consider stress illness as a cause for your symptoms. 

For many people stress illness is diagnosed only after nothing else can be found wrong. For others they may have been given a diagnosis, but the diagnosis may be a physical one, based on what are often ‘normal’ abnormalities, such as a prolapsed disc. If the underlying cause is actually stress illness and it is not addressed, then symptoms often recur.

Take a look at the questions below

Have you experienced much stress in your life in the last few weeks? Yes/No
Can you think of any pressure or changes in your life leading up to when you developed your symptom/s? Yes/No
Do you have a lot of responsibilities, deadlines or commitments?  Yes/No
Do you find it difficult to take time out to do something for yourself each week?  Yes/No
Do you find it difficult to find some time in the day to relax without any distractions, even TV or radio? Yes/No
Do you find it difficult to balance meeting the needs of others with meeting your own needs?  Yes/No
Do you have low self esteem?  Yes/No
Do you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be perfect or good in any way, do you have a need to be liked or have difficulty expressing how you feel?   Yes/No
Are you overly responsible, reliable, competitive, controlling, ambitious, self critical or do you over analyse things?  Yes/No
Are you troubled by memories of a terrifying, horrifying or traumatic event in your life?  Yes/No
Did you experience what you believe to be ‘normal’ experiences as a child, such as being picked on, peer pressure, school pressures, sibling rivalry, parental pressure to succeed etc? Yes/No
Did you have numerous changes in your childhood, or significant losses?  Yes/No
If a child you cared about was growing up exactly as you did, how would this make you feel?
0
Happy		     1
Neutral		 2
Sad or Angry		       3
Very Sad or
Very Angry

Did you score any Yes’s or score 2 or 3 on the last question?

If so, SIRPA may be of help to you.

Click here to find out how to recover from Stress Illness and to get started on your own recovery journey.