Dealing with stress is "vitally important" as courses launched to help people affected in Essex
ACL Essex is hosting courses to help people understand and manage stress
This International Stress Awareness Week, courses are being highlighted in Essex to help people understand and cope with stress.
ACL Essex are hosting free courses on stress and wellbeing, with the goal of reducing long-term stress levels and helping people to manage their experience.
Alison Smith, the Project Lead for the Mental Health Recovery Programme and a vocational trainer, said controlling stress levels is "vitally important" to lower long-term physical and mental impacts, and prevent serious burnout.
She said learning to deal with it is crucial, even if stress can't be prevented in the first place.
"It's a natural reaction that we have in our body regarding stress when we're feeling threatened or pressured, unable to deal with a situation.
"And we go into that fight, flight and freeze mode.
"When we're feeling threatened, ultimately about our survival, something triggers us and suddenly we go into this. We might get the symptoms of irritability, I might start to shake, I might start to talk really fast. All these different things might start to happen.
"So all the energy goes from our immune system right into our muscles and it's getting our muscles ready to kind of move, fight, flight or freeze."
"It's a real window of opportunity. I always feel very blessed and really proud to deliver these courses.
"I really love getting those light-bulb moments when you're looking at a learner and then suddenly you can see it goes 'click'.
"Especially about what you can control and what you can't control. You can't control the weather, but what you can do is get yourself a raincoat, and deal with it and still go out in it."
"If stress goes on to long-term, if we go from that acute, short burst of stress through to long-term, then what that is causing is a health issue. That's a physical health issue and a mental health issue.
"Can you imagine you're in fight, flight, freeze mode constantly over a long-term? You're releasing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol long-term.
"What we really want is to be in our rest and digest state.
"Once our system starts to trigger, all that energy is coming out, getting us ready. It's going away from our immune system.
"We're going to start having issues with our digestion, with our immune system as well. So that's going to be a real problem for our physical health.
"Its about understanding how important stress is, and that we can do something."
The courses are funded by Essex County Council Commissioners.
They look at a range of different areas around mental health, stress and other parts of wellbeing.