I'm bringing this up in honor of April being National Stress Awareness Month. What better way to be aware than to come clean about my own stress levels?

Of course, I'm not alone in my problems: Year after year, nearly three-quarters of Americans say they experience stress at levels that exceed what they define as healthy, according to the American Psychological Association. The latest survey found that 35 percent of Americans say their stress increased in the past year.

But I also might be a part of a bigger problem. Research shows that millennials (that's me) are more stressed out than older generations.

That's according to a study by the American Psychological Association, which reported that half of millennials—those ages 18-33—say it's hard for them to sleep at night because of stress. And more than any other age group, they report being told by a health care provider that they have either depression or an anxiety disorder.

Researchers point to a number of reasons why millennials may be having a hard time. For one thing, many have been trying to start out—or succeed—in a collapsing economy. They also are trying to figure out just who they are and where they should be going.

For me, a sense of uncertainty and unsettlement has always been one of my biggest stressors.

Stress is one of the deadliest health problems, but it's rarely taken as seriously as it should be. You know what's truly stressful about stress? How much it affects our health. Stressed-out people have a higher risk of cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and obesity.

Even worse, experts often warn, is that health problems and stress tend to be self-reinforcing. For example, if a person is stressed out, he may eat badly, causing him to gain weight. Then he'll start to worry about being overweight. It's an ongoing cycle.

There are a number of life factors that we can't control, but we can at least try to understand how we react to them. And being aware of stress and its associated problems is always a good place to start.

Which is why at the very least, starting tomorrow, I'll try to have an alternate dinner plan so I don't have a panic attack when the grocery store is out of tomatoes. Plus, it'll be nice to not have fellow shoppers look at me funny.