Stress and Anxiety Sabotage Personal Wellness

By Denise Maher

More than 40 percent of women rank stress and anxiety as a negative influence on their personal health, according to a new report. Get the breakdown, plus proven stress-reduction strategies, expert mental health advice, and more healthful living tips you can use right now.

In the nearly 20 years I’ve been covering women’s health and wellness as a journalist, writer, and editor — especially during the working-mom decade — life has been stressful. Media has evolved since I entered the workforce, and information once delivered in print now comes in digital forms, but some health themes persist across technologies and time.

Stress is one of those health problems that never goes away, even as women age and the world changes. We’re always seeking stress relief. The sources and triggers shift. What upends your twenty-something stride may not rock you in your forties, but the resulting tension is a consistent presence. You know, SSDD: same stress, different day.

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Report: State of Women’s Wellness 2017 found that 43 percent of the 3,000 American women surveyed name stress and anxiety as a top threat to personal wellness. Some 55 percent of millennial women ranked stress and anxiety at the top of the negative factors on personal health, while slightly fewer members of older generations said they considered it a negative (44 percent of Gen-Xers; 33 percent of baby boomers).

Unlike yeast infections, hangnails, or BO, though, stress and anxiety aren’t pesky health problems that young women eventually master. Stress and anxiety are factors in life that we learn — and continually relearn — to live with and manage, every single day.