Dealing with Stress

In my previous post I listed a bunch of different negative effects stress can have on your life. I’m sure you were able to relate to at least a couple of them. That being the case the big question is “what can be done about stress?”

Let’s take this in two parts, what is causing the stress and what will help alleviate it. First, you need to pin point the things that are stressing you out. This is pretty easy and you may find that you have a pretty long list once you really start thinking about it. Common culprits are things like: life changes, your environment, unpredictable events, family, work, social, fears, uncertainty, attitude, and unrealistic expectations. These are pretty broad so take some time to grind down to some of the specifics that really stress you out. Hopefully just thinking about them doesn’t cause you too much stress.

Secondly, now that you know the causes you can plan for reducing the stress. A handful of common stress relieving methods are: exercise, relaxation techniques, building healthy relationships, plenty of sleep, and counseling. I know these may not sound as specific or practical as you might like them to be, but you need to customize the actions to your specific stressor. For example, if you get to work everyday at 8:00 and right away your boss is on your back stressing you out, and you can’t get out to exercise or for some counseling until you get off work at 5:00 then you might need to develop a little bit more effective plan. You should have a good idea of the things that relax you and take your mind of things you don’t want to think about, those need to be incorporated into your stress relief plan.

Additionally I’d like to say that simply having a stress relieving response to every stressor is not quite enough. In some cases you may need to find a way to stop certain stressors from occurring. If you have a friend that stresses you out every time you interact with them something isn’t quite right with that relationship and it should be addressed. I’m not saying avoid your friends or end the relationship but maybe you could talk it out and resolve whatever is making the friendship stressful.

There’s a lot to say about stress and I don’t want to try and accomplish too much in a blog post. Just remember, there are professionals out there who are trained to help you with this stuff and for your health’s sake it is worth it to seek their assistance.