Finding your best stress-relieving strategies can take a little experimentation. Action-oriented approaches enable you to take action and modify a stressful situation. It is not always possible to avoid the stressful situation or to escape from a problem, but you can work on decreasing the amount of stress you are feeling.
Learning healthier ways of coping, and getting appropriate treatment and support, may help to decrease your feelings of stress and symptoms. Learning what causes or triggers stress for you, and which coping techniques work well for you, can help decrease your anxiety and improve your everyday life. Read this informational fact sheet to find out whether stress is the reason for it, or if it is the anxiety, and what you can do to manage it. If you are struggling to cope, or the symptoms of stress or anxiety are not going away, it might be time to speak with a professional.
If you are feeling stressed, whether from work or something more personal, the first step toward feeling better is identifying the cause. Assess if it is possible to change the situation that is causing your stress, maybe by taking on less responsibility, relaxing standards, or asking for help. Take control over the parts of your life you can change that are causing you stress. Instead of getting stressed about a lot of things in your life, focus on those things you can control, like how you choose to respond to problems.
There is not much you can do to prevent stress, but there are plenty of things you can do to more effectively manage stress, such as learning to relax, getting regular exercise, and implementing good time-management techniques. Taking the time to relax each day helps you manage stress and keeps your body safe from stress-related effects. Exercise Regularly exercising is one of the best ways to keep your body and mind relaxed.
Not only is exercise excellent for stress reduction, sometimes simply getting out and taking a walk, finding some fresh air, and unplugging from email and phones is truly powerful. Exercise does more than take our minds off of stress; it releases chemicals in the brain that help us feel better.
It may sound paradoxical, but physically stressing our bodies with exercise relieves psychological stress. Many people find exercises that emphasize breathing and relaxing muscles helpful for relieving stress. Deep-breathing exercises may help trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the relaxation response.
Relaxation techniques like yoga, meditation, and deep breathing trigger your bodys relaxation response, which is a state of relaxation, which is the opposite of a fight-or-flight stress response, or mobilized stress response. Progressive relaxation involves tightening muscles one part at a time in order to reach a state of peace. Slow-paced instrumental music may trigger a relaxation response, helping lower blood pressure and heart rate, and reduce stress hormones. It decreases stress hormone norepinephrine and may induce feelings of relaxation.
Research has shown that mindfulness meditation may lessen the effects of stress, anxiety, and other associated problems, such as insomnia, poor concentration, and lower mood, in some individuals. Studies have found that Mindfulness courses, in which participants are taught simple meditations over the course of a number of weeks, may also help to lower stress and improve mood. There is evidence that as little as two brief sessions of silent meditation per day may alleviate stress and depression. That is why it is important to have effective stress relievers to soothe both the mind and the body.
Long-term stress exposure may cause mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression, or it can worsen physical health problems. When the stressor is negative and cannot be countered or avoided--such as job loss or medical crises for loved ones--or the stress experience becomes chronic, our physiological responses to stress may harm our physical and mental health. Because individuals react to stress situations in different ways, a situation one individual may find bearable may be a chronic source of stress for another. When stress becomes overwhelming, or it is chronic, it may have an impact on your wellbeing.
How your body reacts to stress, and reacts to it, can be good in the short-term (like helping you to get around that huge pothole on the street, or finishing that last-minute paper), but prolonged stress takes its toll on your body and your mind. We mentioned before that moderate amounts of stress can help us function better when faced with challenging situations, but excessive or long-term stress can cause physical problems. When stress is frequent and intense, it puts strain on the body, making functioning impossible. Acute stress can be extremely painful, but it passes quickly and usually responds well to coping techniques such as breathing deeply and taking up a quick exercise.
Exercise does not make stress go away, but it does decrease some of the emotional intensity that you are feeling, clearing up your thoughts, and allowing you to tackle problems in a more peaceful way. Getting away from everything may reboot your stress tolerance, increasing your mental and emotional outlook, making you a happier, more productive person when you come back.
Effective stress management helps you break the stranglehold that stress has over your life, so that you can be happier, healthier, and more productive. Reframing the way you think about the source of your stress helps manage emotions, decreasing feelings of pressure. Once you understand the source of your stress--relationship, kids, work load, a health issue--you can sometimes lessen or avoid stress. Learning to manage your stress takes practice, but you can do it -- and you have to.
Learning to manage stress means developing the skills of how to deal with challenges, which allows you to handle daily challenges with ease. While there may not seem like much you can do about work-life stresses, there are steps you can take to reduce stress and take back control. Taking brief walks a few times per day is a powerful tool to de-stress. Getting out of bed and stretching briefly relieves tension in your muscles, which helps you to unwind from your busy workday.
These exercises can be done anywhere, and are designed to help you feel more relaxed overall, and also help you feel more at peace if you are feeling stressed. This behavior technique helps you learn skills for reducing stress while providing insight into your muscle tension, heart rate, and other vital signs while trying to relax.
Sort possible causes of stress into ones with practical solutions, ones that are going to improve regardless given time, and ones that you cannot do much about.