Managing Stress
Stress. Something we all face at one stage in our life. It’s unmeasurable, and yet affects us all. To manage stress, we first need to accept that not all stress is bad. Especially now more than ever, faced with a pandemic, the fear and anxiety of the unknown can feel overbearing and overwhelming. The anxiety and fear can range at all levels of our life, fear of socialising, the need for social distance, the fear to do normal things, has also left many feeling isolated and lonely.
Minor stress helps keep us safe; it also works alongside the fight or flight response within us, filling us with adrenaline. Our body firing us with adrenaline may make us sweat and increase blood flow, but it’s our body’s way of preparing us for danger and allowing us to cope with situations which may prove difficult.
Good stress can help focus and motivate you to complete jobs or tasks. If you are feeling increasing pressure about an upcoming interview, for example, this is good stress as it is aiding you to prepare and provide the opportunity to give a good meeting.
Which is why it is essential to ensure when we are feeling under pressure, why it is we are feeling this way. Working out what is causing us stress, can help to know whether this is due to a short term event such, as an interview, new job, or if this is unexplainable.
Bad stress is when you cannot stop worrying, stress, or anxiety. When a momentary feeling of being overwhelmed turns into something more substantial.
Stress in the short-term isn’t a problem, even if it feels unmanageable. However, when stress turns from short-lived—or not often occurring—to more regularly, that’s when stress becomes a problem and has a detrimental effect on your body.
Signs of this can be emotional outbursts, low energy, withdrawing and frequent headaches or upset stomachs. It’s essential to differentiate these from your usual behaviour. For example, if you usually have an upset stomach not brought on by stress, it doesn’t mean when you are stressed and have an upset stomach, the two are connected. But stress can also rear its head in many other ways, for example:
Dizziness, abdominal pain, and difficulty sleeping—which are all things we humans do not need. A lack of sleep, for one, makes us more irritable and unlikely to make the right decisions all around. We are also more likely to become ill, as our body will be unable to fight off infection as well as it would be on an uninterrupted sleep.
Stress can also mess with our reproductive system, which can lead to worrying thoughts and hormonal imbalance, adding to the pressure we are already facing. It can all quickly snowball into something unmanageable, which is why it’s crucial to speak to a medical professional if you feel you are not able to cope with it.
While everyone, at various moments in their life, will encounter stressful times—such as buying a house, planning a wedding, or welcoming a new child as some examples—there is no measurable scale. You are the only person who will know what you can handle, and when you feel unable to cope—or find the stress becoming long term, speaking to a professional is always advised.
Exercise or Yoga
Both of these have been proven to lower stress. Taking the time to exercise, and stretch out your muscles, allows your mind to slow down—listening to each inch of your body.
Exercising releases good endorphins which can help us feel happy; it also can improve the way we think of ourselves and develop confidence, making some of the negative thoughts we experience fade away. For example, we may not feel as though we can do our job, but after a run—or bike ride—we may feel more confident and assertive in ourselves. At this point, we can then begin reframing our thoughts and lowering our stresses.
It’s important to remember that showing up for ourselves, i.e., finding the time to exercise, can remind us we are important too. Often, in times of increased stress, the first thing we begin to let go of is our own self-care.
Yoga has been linked to lowering stress, providing us time to listen to our bodies and lower our heart rates. There are several very helpful info graphs you can find online with easy to do exercises that can take you five minutes. An excellent example of one is by Darebee called Good Morning Yoga. (https://pin.it/wUBwwjz)
Keeping A Journal
Journaling or Bu-journaling can be great for managing stress. Some examples of Bu-journaling can be found on Google, but this branch of journaling allows you to create your own spread and track precisely what you wish to. It will enable a lot of freedom to customise it entirely to yourself. For example, you can create a colourful to-do list or track your stress, or feelings, each day.
Journaling as a whole has been widely used to manage stress, and has excellent benefits, including reflection and noticing patterns to stop stress from building again. It also allows you to get out your feelings in a healthy manner, rather than letting them fester inside of you.
You could also use your journal to write down any particular thoughts that reoccur, and possibly help you to figure out what’s really bothering you. Especially when, with stress, we can find ourselves worrying about a lot of things, but when we first begin investigating, only one thought comes to mind.
Schedule
Scheduling your time can lower stress if you’re feeling overwhelmed, or worrying you aren’t achieving as much as you think you are.
Often, creating yourself a routine—like, getting your clothes out the night before—can help relieve some stress. Often, we carry stress from one day to the other, never shifting it off from us. But, making small adjustments, and prioritising and planning your day out can really help see the accomplishments you achieve. You will also see how moving a job—like picking your clothes—can help free extra time for yourself.
Similar, though, to journaling, you may begin to notice unhelpful patterns, like procrastinating your evenings, when you start scheduling your time.
Squashing the Voice
We all have it, that little voice in our head. Well, in times of stress, this voice is more rampant than ever. It either needs a telling off or reforming and reshaping into something more positive and helpful.
Often, we go to the worst possible situation or thought, in times of stress, but merely reframing your mindset and think of the moment as an opportunity to overcome something, rather than a negative attack, can improve mood—and how you handle things. It is hard, and takes time. We also need to be aware of when we are slipping down that path, which can be hard to notice.
In CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), you are asked to unpick a thought by understanding what feeds it and where it comes from. You can do this with stress, how has this come into your life and what small, measurable steps can you put in place to overcome it. Reframing your mindset in this way can really help to make the task or daunting thoughts seem more comfortable to handle.
Talking
In times of heightened stress, talking to someone will always help as we find ourselves becoming more emotional and prone to outbursts when we are under pressure.
Short temper and agitation can be linked to signs of stress due to the lack of sleep and pressures we are under. Talking through with someone about these can help make you feel less on edge and less isolated in how you are feeling.
Initially, if you feel your stress is manageable, talking to someone you’re close with and can trust can really help. Allowing yourself to unload may also present you with a chance to see it from another angle. Therefore, finding a new way in which to get over the stress-hurdle.
Often, we find ourselves venting to those nearest and dearest to us anyway but asking them if you can have a moment of their time will always feel different than when you simply unload without realising. Mindfulness-venting, so to speak. Asking, and choosing to unload is a different mindset altogether, allowing you to phrase your wording in a way more subjective than an outburst.
Managing stress is never going to be easy. It takes time to find the right practise and balance. Also, it is worth keeping in mind that you don’t need to be afraid to say goodbye to things that no longer bring you happiness. While short-term stress from your job cannot always be helped, you can try to find ways to limit that stress reoccurring by opting to share the workload or find ways to manage it better next time.
However, if you come to realise you have been managing your stress for an extended period, or it’s become unmanageable, it is always best to seek professional medical help. There they can advise you on what is available to you and what will be most beneficial.
Remember, while everyone does suffer from stress and has stressful moments in their lives, your time is no less important than someone else. Seeking help is a strong choice to make, not a weak one, and taking the opportunity to gain new tools to handle your stress is admirable.
