It is National Stress Awareness Day, and unsurprisingly it is almost top of the trending list on Twitter. Why? Because it affects us all. Not just 1 in 3, all of us at at least one point in our lives will feel stressed. It is a horrible feeling and it can eat away at your mental health if you let it go on too long.

So what to do when you experience these feelings of stress? Do you learn to cope, or do you walk away?

The last time I was intensely stressed, I had to walk away from the cause of it. It was my job, and it started to affect my mental health, so I had to walk away. It was the best decision I ever made. It was tough walking away, but I had tried to cope, and it had led to depression and panic attacks. That’s the problem with people telling you to learn to cope with stress. Yes, coping techniques are good if they work, but if they aren’t and you start pushing yourself to the limits, it can put your health in a dangerous condition.

I am certainly not saying you should walk away from any problem which stresses you out. There are ways to deal with stress that work very well, and it is important to learn how to be resilient when faced with stress – Click here for a very useful guide from Mind. But if a relationship, job, friend, or other situation is making you feel stressed to the point that it is affecting your health, it may be time to walk away. This does not make you a failure, it makes you much wiser than many others…