Stress is a common part of life, but too much stress can take a toll on your mental and physical health. Understanding how to manage stress effectively can lead to a healthier, happier life. As a health expert, I’m here to share some simple and engaging ways to help you deal with stress.
Understanding Stress
Stress is the body’s natural response to challenging or threatening situations. It triggers the “fight or flight” response, releasing hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. While this can be helpful in short bursts, chronic stress can lead to various health issues, including anxiety, depression, and heart disease.
Recognize the Signs of Stress
Before you can manage stress, you need to recognize it. Common signs include:
- Physical Symptoms: Headaches, muscle tension, fatigue
- Emotional Symptoms: Anxiety, irritability, sadness
- Behavioral Symptoms: Changes in appetite, sleep disturbances, withdrawal from social activities
What are some tricks you are using to deal with stress?
Modern day life is so fast paced that it leads to increasing episodes of stress. Be it the workplace or at home, it is quite common for each one of us to face stress
While it is not possible to eliminate stress altogether, we can cope by changing our reaction to stress and how we deal with it.
When you are constantly under stress, not only are you facing mental strain, your body also become dysfunctional and suffers physically.
Stress can have adverse effects on your health and your general health might go south. You might be easily affected by hypertension, heart ailments and problems like diabetes, eating disorders, etc.
For this reason, it is essential to take stress head-on, deal with it and manage to reduce stress levels. Let us now learn a few steps to help control and cope with stress.
Understand the Cause for Stress
Many people worry about anything and everything. Sometimes they do not even realize they are worrying and are getting stressed out.
If you are feeling stressed, understand why you are feeling stressed. Sometimes the cause is so trivial that you will understand that you need not be stressed for that cause.
So, by understanding the cause for stress, you may be able to eliminate the stress altogether.
Forget Your Worries
Sometimes it is essential to let go of everything and forget your worries. Find something else to do so that you are not worrying.
Find time to pursue a hobby, go on a vacation, play a sport, sing if you can, etc are some of the ways that people try to eliminate stress and cope with it.
Do not fret about Things You Have no Control Over
Some people are stressed because of some general occurrence, such as a calamity, the traffic situation while driving, how your local team performed in the annual meet, etc.
Understand that this is a situation where you have no say and avoid getting stressed due to such reasons.
Eat Right
Stress can cause severe disturbances to eating habits. While some might skip meals altogether, others might tend to overeat.
Eat complex carbohydrates rather than refined ones. This will really help you cope with mood swings.
Likewise, eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and keep sugar and salt intake low.
Also, drink plenty of water. It will rehydrate your body. Try to keep caffeine consumption to the minimum.
Eat right! This is essential to helping you cope up with stress and be able to deal with it.
Exercise
Exercise will help you relieve stress, as this is a major stress buster.
Sweating it out by doing something strenuous proves to be more beneficial than taking drugs or vitamins that might have some side effects on your system.
Most therapists and stress management experts would agree that physical exercise is considered the best stress reliever during this time and age.
Aside from changing your focus from your problems to something productive, physical exercise will help your body function at peak efficiency.
Benefits of physical exercise to your body
Since physical exercise involves a lot of body movements, this will improve your cardiovascular functions and greatly strengthen your heart.
This will practically free you from possible effects of stress like heart failure, stroke, high-blood pressure, and the like.
When your heart is attuned to the exercise regime, blood circulation will also improve, which in turn increases oxygen throughout the body.
Your cholesterol level and other harmful biochemicals will be reduced, which will lessen the chance of your body breaking down due to the negative effects of these substances.
Physical exercise also helps you mentally, aside from keeping your body in perfect shape.
Indulging in various forms of physical exercise will provide an outlet to stress-related emotions such as anger, fear, frustration, depression, and irritability.
Since exercise improves the circulation of chemicals in your body and brain, hormones that elevate certain responses in your body will be reduced as well; keeping you relaxed and in control.
Stress is a major problem that everyone faces in the course of their everyday lives.
Although we cannot eliminate stress from our lives, it is possible to alter the way we react to stress and thus not get into many health problems that are associated with increased stress.
 How to Deal with Stress and Cope
Every one of us faces situations of stress quite commonly, given the type of lives we lead nowadays.
While some of us might have stressful situations at the workplace, others might be experiencing such situations at home.
Stress might be common for many people but the way each one reacts to the situation of stress varies.
When a person is not able to manage stress levels rationally, it can cause adverse effects on health, both mentally and physically.
When a person is under stress, the quality of life goes down.
The functionality of the body goes down and it creates a strained situation wherever the person goes.
It can lead to friction with other people they encounter. It can cause a downward spiral to relationships.
For this reason, it is essential to understand how to cope with stress and deal it before it has deleterious effects on the person’s life and the lives of people in and around them.
Talk It Out
One way to deal with stress is to try to talk to someone close to you and discuss your problems and what is causing the stress. By talking it out, you are relieving your mind of many tensions.
You also get to rationalize and see if you are unnecessarily stressing your mind and body with the particular problem you are facing.
Many times, you might even find an effective solution to your problem while you are communicating with the other person regarding your stress.
Think Positive
Did you know pessimism has been linked to a higher risk of dying before age 65?
On the other hand, expressing positive emotions, such as optimism, is associated with a variety of health benefits, like lowered production of the stress hormone cortisol, better immune function, and reduced risk of chronic diseases.
The Law of Attraction states that what you think and perceive is what you get. If you have positive thoughts running in your mind, the action that follows will also be positive.
For this reason, you should try and incorporate positive thinking habits so that the action plan that you will initiate will also be positive and helpful in eliminating the cause of stress.
Positive thinking also helps get rid of worrying too much about many situations that would have caused stress.
Stress Management Techniques
There are different techniques that a person can employ to avoid these manifestations of stress in their life.
The first technique, and the most important one, is learning how to relax when stress pays you a visit.
You can employ techniques like meditation, breathing exercises, aromatherapy, or music therapy to induce a state of relaxation to your mind.
Once you have achieved this step, you can proceed on how to deal with stress that affects your body.
Progressive muscle relaxing is a method where you alternate between tensing and relaxing some muscles of your body in order to relieve stress.
Some examples of this method include the use of a softball or a spring loaded device that you use in the palm of your hand to tense and relax.
Apart from this, the use of relaxation techniques like yoga and meditation has also benefited many people by getting rid of stress and changing the way they react to stress.
Relaxation activities such as Yoga or Tai chi can also eliminate stress by relaxing the mind and body, and thereby get rid of stress patterns around the body.
Yoga and tai-chi also help develop concentration and positive body awareness.
These Oriental arts have been practiced by millions of people for centuries, and medical research has documented the beneficial effects of these modes of exercise.
By moving slowly with ease and always in a state of relaxation, the person performing these activities will feel good, and soon the feeling of relaxation will follow.
Relaxation Routine
Your very first line of defense is to establish the habit of performing a regular relaxation routine.
Getting into a deep state of relaxation induces calmness to soothe your body, your mind, and your emotions.
And what is a state of calmness?
It’s the exact opposite of stress and anxiety. As a matter of fact, you could call it the antidote to stress and anxiety.
Start using this antidote. Take a time out at least twice every day to do the relaxation routine outlined below.
Treat this as your quality time; a time for you and you alone. Start thinking calm, feeling calm, and being calm.
Relaxation Routine
1. Lie down, or sit in a comfortable armchair or recliner.
2. Take a deep breath and hold it for about five seconds. Release that breath slowly, and imagine all feelings of stress and tension leaving your body as you release the air.
When the air has left your lungs, hold your breath once again for about five seconds before breathing in.
As you breathe in, imagine your body and mind filling with calmness.
3. Repeat this cycle of breathing a number of times until your breathing falls into a nice long, slow, gentle rhythm. Allow a comfortable pause at the end of each inhalation and exhalation.
4. As you maintain the relaxing rhythm of your breathing, bring your attention to the top of your head.
Imagine that all the tiny muscles in your scalp are being soothed and massaged by warm, invisible hands.
5. Feel the warm hands massaging around your ears and down along the back of your neck to the top of your shoulders.
6. Now, bring your attention to your forehead. Feel those invisible fingers smoothing away any wrinkles that may be on your forehead.
7. Next, focus on your eyes. Imagine the warm fingers gently massaging all around your eyes.
Feel the relaxing warmth from the fingers spreading throughout your eyes.
Feel your eyes relaxing and letting go of all the tensions.
8. Think of the soothing hands massaging the rest of your face.
Notice how your lower jaw relaxes and how this cozy, warm feeling of relaxation spreads into your tongue.
9. Check your breathing once again to make sure it’s rhythm is long and slow.
10. Now bring your attention to the invisible hands and imagine them massaging and loosening your shoulders and shoulder blades.
Imagine what it would be like if waves of relaxation were flowing down your arms and into your fingertips.
11. Those massaging hands now work on your back.
They soothe and loosen the muscles on either side of your spine, and then stroke smoothly down along the vertebrae.
12. Imagine what it would be like to feel a state of deep relaxation seeping downward into your legs and feet.
Imagine how all the muscles in your legs and feet would go loose and limp.
13. Allow feelings of deep relaxation and calmness to immerse your body and your mind.
14. Feel yourself drifting deeper and deeper into pleasurable feelings of calmness and tranquility.
Breathing
Breathing exercises are wonderful and effective way to reduce stress, regulate mood, and feel energized. One way to promote deeper breathing and better health is by exhaling completely.
The more you allow your body to be filled with deep breathing, the less stress you place on your body and mind.
The more you practice your deep and controlled breathing, the more natural it becomes and you can call on it at any time of the day to help you through those tired or stressed-out moments.
Here are some steps to do breathing exercise:
1. You can lie down, sit down, or stand up, as long as you are comfortable.
Breathe in slowly through your nose to the count of four. Breathe very deeply until all your body feel expanded.
2. Hold on that deep breath for four counts, and then exhale slowly through your mouth to a count of eight.
3. Repeat the breathing in, right down so your abdomen expands. Hold on to it and then exhale nine more times.
4. You can breathe deeper once you get used to the above steps by leaving one hand on your stomach and placing the other lightly across your chest. Breathe right down so your abdomen expands
5. When it cannot go any further, breathe in some more and fill the top of your lungs.
Inhalations and exhalations are the same lengths, eight counts each, without holding in between.
6. When you exhale, let the old air out from your chest and then from your abdomen. So, you are going to be relaxed.
Massage Therapy
Massage therapy also helps fight stress.
Massaging your scalp, putting pressure on your shoulders or even your eyes can really decrease stress in that certain part of the body.
Stress can be a huge problem if you allow it to go beyond control. By incorporating right techniques, you can help solve problems associated with stress by combating and changing the way you handle stress.