10 Practical Stress Management Steps

The World Health Organization labels stress as “the health epidemic of the 21st century.”  Stress which results to illness is the producing factor underlying more than 70% of all visits made to the family doctor, medical doctors suggest.  So what is stress?  Many of us talk about but what exactly is stress and how does it affect our body?

Dr. Hans Selye defines stress as “a non-specific response of the body to any demand made upon it.”.”  Stress is neither good nor bad.  The effect of the stress is not determined by the stress itself, rather it is determined by how we handle the stress.

Effects of Stress

1. “Emergency Response”  The emergency response mechanism activates with a physiological change when people believe they are in physical or mortal danger.  Pupils dilate, blood pressure increases, and the production of stress hormones increase.  The body prepares within seconds to respond, which is known as the ‘fight or flight’ syndrome. The adrenal glands pour out adrenaline and the production of other hormones is increased by the quickly reacting pituitary-adrenal-cortical system of the brain.

This is a healthy, adaptive response to immediate danger but if continually activated, this emergency response may cause a constantly higher-than-normal level of hormone production that can eventually cause physical wear-and-tear on the body.  Health problems related to this constant high level of response include hypertension, headaches, ulcers, heart disease, and increased vulnerability to diabetes and colitis.

2. “General Adaptation Syndrome”   In studies, Selye came to believe that diseases of adaptation such as hypertension could be produced by abnormal or excessive reaction to stress.  The body would increase its supply of hormones in order to be ready for action to stress.  Over a prolonged period of time, excessive stress leads to distress and the accompanying physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health problems.

Contributing factors to distress include a) your attitude to life and b) your mood (optimistic or pessimistic).  Both help to create the atmosphere that assists your defence system in repairing small wounds, bruises, and infections.  This is also the system that tries to destroy strange cells such as those of cancer, including leukaemia.

In mastering stress, you have to figure out what you are doing that contributes to your problem/challenge and change it.  The four categories of change include: change your behaviour, change your thinking, change your lifestyle choices, and/or change the situations you are in. Symptoms of overstress include fatigue, aches and pains, anxiety, problems sleeping, depression, and lack of joy in your life

Practical Steps to Stress Management and Creating Balance

1. Make your life regular like ‘clock work.’  Go to bed and get up at the same time each day.

2. Give yourself a break today.

3. Say ‘No’ more often when other people want your time. This includes social engagements, the family dinner on Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.

4. Postpone making any changes in your living environment if you have been coping with undue stress.  Change of any kind is stressful and limiting it until later is a good strategy if you are under a lot of pressure.

5. Reduce the number of hours you spend at work or school.  If you are a work-a-holic or school-a-holic you need to reduce the energy drain on your body.  TAKE SOME TIME OFF.

6. Nutritional eating habits and eating small meals helps to keep your blood sugar stabilised.  Many people reach for something high in sugar content when feeling stressed which compounds the problem.  Eat more vegetables.

7. Rest your mind, as mind activities alleviate stress.  These mind activities include reading, working on a craft, listening to music, playing a musical instrument, meditation, self-relaxation, dancing, and biofeedback.

8. Have a worry time if you must worry.  When you find yourself worrying over a problem, set aside a time (I suggest to my students 7:30pm on Tuesday night) and then put off worrying until that time.  Chances are you will not even remember what you were stressing yourself about.

9. Book time for yourself.  In your daily or weekly schedule book time first for yourself and then the other activities you are involved in.  Don’t let anything, except an emergency, usurp your commitment to yourself.

10. Have a massage or another form of self-care activity.

Effective Techniques for Stress Relief

Too much stress can ruin your day, and sometimes it seems like it’s just unavoidable.  However, there are a few things that you can do to help prevent those really awful, stressful times.  The first tip to manage your stress is more of an overall lifestyle change.  The second, for when you can’t seem to avoid that stress, is to apply a few stress relief techniques in order to attempt to provide a more immediate reduction in your stress levels.  Here are a few stress relief techniques that you can easily do on your own, for those days where you need more than just your usual stress management.

Deep Breathing

One of the simplest stress relief techniques is to practice deep breathing.  Part of the problem with stress is that it tends to make you take shallow breaths, which in turn deprives your body of oxygen and leads to muscle tension.  Taking just a minute to breath deep is one of the stress relief techniques you can do anywhere.  Simply concentrate on breathing in deep enough to make your stomach rise, then let the air out slowly.

Muscle Relaxation

Other stress relief techniques focus on your entire body instead of just your breathing, such as muscle relaxation, which has been used by yoga practitioners and even hypnotists to help relax the body and remove stress.  With muscle relaxation, you first cause your muscles to get a little tension, flexing them, and then you concentrate on relaxing them totally, which helps you to let go of both the muscle tension and your own personal tension.

Meditation

When people mention another one of the great stress relief techniques, meditation, others often think about the religious connotations, since meditation is important to religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.  However, meditation doesn’t need religion to work; a room that’s quiet or has soft music playing, a place to sit comfortably, and a few minutes are all that you need.  Simply sit back and try to just let your mind empty of thoughts, and you can help eliminate stress.

Even better, meditation combines with other stress relief techniques such as deep breathing and muscle relaxation, both of which can aid in your efforts to meditate.  So whether you attempt to use just one of the techniques discussed or you try to combine multiple stress relief techniques, these activities can all work to help you reduce you stress and prevent your day from getting ruined.

Behaviors Causing Stress

Do you believe in predictions? Well, if you were educated you would know that no man or woman could predict our future. However, we all have the ability to predict our future. Sounds contradictory does it. Behaviors help us to determine how our lives will turn out. Behaviors are the manner in which we conduct our self on a daily basis. Behaviors are organisms that react to stimulus producing action and response.

Behaviors are formed when we first arrive in the world and the more we practice a certain behavior the more attached that behavior comes. How does behavior cause us stress? It depends on the person and the teachings the person endured throughout his or her lifetime, but many of us lack in development in one way or another. Since, we have religion, law, parents, teachers, siblings, employees, employers, peers and so forth playing a part in our life we often become confused since all of us have our own beliefs.

The best teacher in the world is your self. If you take the time to study, learn, listen, hear, practice good, and so forth you will have the ability to see your future is successful. You have a stress management that is surpassing any other management scheme, since no one can lead you if you choose to reject. It is good to take other people’s beliefs into consideration, however, investigating and collecting evidence that proves a fact is more beneficial than accepting everything your are taught or told.

For example, I am a logician. I take extremely complex problems and break them down to simplicity. This means I analyze each problem carefully weeding through the pile and eliminating any areas that produce negative results. I also collect and gather evidence to support my claims when I am finished, and this is a healthy practiced behaviors, since I do not lie, steal, or do anything that will cause another person harm.

As you can see from my example, my problems were minimized, since my behaviors are positive and my stress level is not controlling my life. We can review behaviors and teachers to grasp hold of a better understanding how behaviors cause stress. For example, his or her parents teach a child that speaking out of term in inappropriate. The child is punished each time he or she disobeys the parent.

We see a series of problems developing, since this teaching will tell the child during his or her development that it is not ok to speak up when someone hurts, violates, or induces other types of fears on this person. The person will go through life with the fear of punishment if he or she asserts self. How can we help this poor wrongfully taught individual find a way to reduce stress and avoid stressors? First, our parents are important people in our life that we believe in most cases that will not lie to us and believe these people have our best interest at heart. Now we see another problem, since this person will trust the parents before listening to someone else that tells him or her that they are safe and it is ok to speak your mind.

We can teach this person to practice self-talk first since self-talk is an approach that helps us to rely on self, rather than others. Self-talk is a method that tells us that we have control and that we have a right to determine what we think, feel and believe. The method teaches us to take responsibility and learn communication that is effective, since our thinking habits are in the process of change. We can also help the person by offering him or her the tool known as visual display.

Visual display is helpful since it allows us to stroll back into the past and review our learning so that we can sort through the facts and eliminate the lies. It teaches us to display a pictorial event in our mind and then role-play to see if what we were taught is true.

Think of a time in your life that you spoke up and no one hurt you or punished you for your action. Think about how many times this happened and what the consequences of your behavior led to. Practice these techniques daily to learn a new method that benefits you and your life. If you do not see prediction by now in behaviors, then you probably never will.