5 Strategies For Coping With Stress
Stress is felt in our body and our minds. You can feel stress in your stomach, you feel like your stomach is doing flips. You can feel stress in your temples as they throb. This body stress is a result of a challenge in your life.
Our mind is affected by overthinking and trying to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
Stress is assisted by our flight-or-flight response. We can manage to use this alert system in our body to get us out of a situation that needs our immediate attention.
Chronic stress can lead to the overuse of our flight-or-flight response. This response was made to be used during emergencies. If you are stressed, this could mean you feel that everything in your life is urgent and you are not able to regulate the responses to your stressful situations.
We humans are not made to be on high alert all the time. The stress affects our energy levels causing difficulty for our body and our minds.
Some health issues that can arise from stress are high blood pressure, weight gain and digestive issues just to name a few.
Our emotional health is affected as we can develop anxiety, depression, panic attacks and insomnia. The ability to concentrate, forgetfulness and the ability to make decisions are all affected as well. Let’s now take a look at 5 strategies to help you cope and manage your stress.
Strategies for Coping with Stress
1. Reflect on your day to day
Take a pause in your life to reflect on what you are doing through the day that may contribute to your stress. You may be trying to juggle too many things at once not leaving you any time to regroup or refresh your body and mind.
Recognizing your stressors is key to being able to manage your stress levels much better. If you are an overachiever, try to recognize what you can do differently to manage your workload. If you are volunteering your time with projects that are weighing you down with time and energy, reconsider taking a break from that project.
Prioritizing yourself will be hard to do at first, but if you change or leave one thing behind, you may see some instant relief.
2. Ask for help
If you are overwhelmed and stressed, reach out to others for support. If you are a caregiver for example, lean on some friends or neighbours to take your dog for a walk as you fulfill your caregiver duties. This will help with your overall stress levels.
Meeting with friends and people that you connect with will help you take your mind off of your responsibilities and bring down your stress levels.
3. Explore Mindfulness
Mindfulness has been proven to reduce stress levels and as well can lower your blood pressure which will ease your anxiety. By breathing and taking time to be present, you can better tackle your tasks. Mindfulness can be practiced as often as you see fit in your day. Ideally, you can be mindful in the morning and then at night.
4. Introduce Self-care
Self-care is often heard as a coping strategy for many different mental health and physical health issues. Stress responds well to self-care as often we overlook our needs to manage other tasks and expectations from others.
We cannot be there for others if we are not there for ourselves. This is a true statement!
Physically trying to stay active with some exercise is key to clearing your mind. Yoga, or Thai Chi are also recommended for body and mind restoration.
Our diet plays a big role in how we manage our stress. If we eat more mindfully, chewing our food and taking our time to drink liquids with our food, we are creating a better connection with food and we are more apt to make more healthy choices.
5. Seek help from a therapist
If you have tried to do all that you can in the areas previously mentioned, you may need someone to talk to.
A therapist can help you manage your stress by empowering you to move closer to recognizing what is causing it. We have resilience, and we can adapt and grow in our most difficult times. Working on figuring out what is best for you is the first step in finding your peace.
Feel free to book a free consultation to learn more about how Stress Management Therapy can help.
