How Can I Cope With Stress

Limit Your Social Media Intake

On the one hand, social media is a great way to connect with others. On the other hand, it can amplify anxiety and stress with a constant flow of worrisome information. Therefore, be careful about your social media use: consider turning off push notifications, unfollowing or muting accounts which are triggering for you, muting WhatsApp groups and hiding Facebook posts and feeds that might overwhelm you. A lot of devices nowadays even offer a function to notify you once youve reached your daily time limit of social media use.

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Connect With Your Spiritual Side

For centuries, religious groups and native tribes worldwide have used prayer beads to guide their spiritual practice, and research shows that spirituality might boost happiness in times of stress. Buy a set of prayer beads or make your own, suggests Hall, and then create a positive affirmation or mantra that resonates with you. Then, next time stress hits, repeat your affirmation as you work your way around and touch each bead. “The more you go around, the more you’ll experience a sense of power and detachment from the source of anxiety as your brain switches into a meditative cadence,” explains Hall.

Managing Stress In Daily Life

Stress is not an illness itself, but it can cause serious illness if it isn’t addressed. It’s important to recognise the symptoms of stress early. Recognising the signs and symptoms of stress will help you figure out ways of coping and save you from adopting unhealthy coping methods, such as drinking or smoking.

There is little you can do to prevent stress, but there are many things you can do to manage stress more effectively, such as learning how to relax, taking regular exercise and adopting good time-management techniques.

Studies have found that mindfulness courses, where participants are taught simple meditations across a series of weeks, can also help to reduce stress and improve mood.

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How To Manage And Reduce Stress

Here, we would like to start, by giving you an introduction to what stress is, what the signs of stress are, what simple steps you can take when feeling stressed and provide practical advice for preventing it, to show why we are passionate about moving towards a less stressed nation.

What The Interviewer Wants To Know

The interviewer really wants to know whether you can handle job-related stress, and what you do in particularly stressful situations at work. This is especially important if youre interviewing for a position where stress is an integral part of the job. That’s because job stress can have a negative impact on workplace performance.

The hiring manager may also be wondering whether stressful issues outside of work can impact your job performance. Employers look for candidates who can deal with a range of stressful situations, whether these are personal or work-related.

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Can Stress Be Positive

Research has shown that stress can sometimes be positive. It can make you more alert and help you perform better in certain situations.2 However, stress has only been found to be beneficial if it is short-lived.

Excessive or prolonged stress can contribute to illness such as heart disease3 and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.4

Ways To Cope With Emotional Stress

Carly Snyder, MD is a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist who combines traditional psychiatry with integrative medicine-based treatments.

• Coping With Emotional Stress

Emotional stress can be particularly painful and be challenging to deal with. It can take more of a toll that many other forms of stress. Part of the reason is that thinking about a solution, or discussing solutions with a good friendcoping behaviors that are often useful and effective in solving problemscan easily deteriorate into rumination and co-rumination, which are not so useful and effective.

In fact, rumination can exacerbate your stress levels, so it helps to have healthy strategies for coping with emotional stress as well as redirecting yourself away from rumination and avoidance coping and more toward emotionally proactive approaches to stress management.

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Tips To Manage Stressful Situations

It might surprise you to learn that biological stress is a fairly recent discovery. It wasnt until the late 1950s that endocrinologist Hans Selye first identified and documented stress.

Symptoms of stress existed long before Selye, but his discoveries led to new research that has helped millions cope with stress. Weve compiled a list of the top 10 ways to relieve stress.

When To See Your Gp About Your Stress Levels

If you’ve tried self-help techniques and they aren’t working, you should go to see your GP. They may suggest other coping techniques for you to try or recommend some form of counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy.

If your stress is causing serious health problems, such as high blood pressure, you may need to take medication or further tests.

Mental health issues, including stress, anxiety and depression, are the reason for one-in-five visits to a GP.

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Set Limits Around News On Covid

Excessively checking updates of coronavirus news can leave you stressed and emotionally exhausted. Try to make a conscious effort to disconnect and build healthy news habits: turn off push notifications from news apps, seek factual information from trusted sources and set specific times for checking the news . Watch the news with others to discuss any worries you might have and to avoid anxious thoughts going unchecked. Another tip is to look for positive, uplifting stories and good news amid the pandemic. Celebrating positive stories can boost your mood and wellbeing.

Read WHOs tips on how to stop the spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 crisis > >

Simple Ways To Relieve Stress And Anxiety

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Stress and anxiety are common experiences for most people. In fact, 70% of adults in the United States say they feel stress or anxiety daily.

Here are 16 simple ways to relieve stress and anxiety.

Exercise is one of the most important things you can do to combat stress.

It might seem contradictory, but putting physical stress on your body through exercise can relieve mental stress.

The benefits are strongest when you exercise regularly. People who exercise regularly are less likely to experience anxiety than those who dont exercise .

There are a few reasons behind this:

• Stress hormones: Exercise lowers your bodys stress hormones such as cortisol in the long run. It also helps release endorphins, which are chemicals that improve your mood and act as natural painkillers.
• Sleep: Exercise can also improve your sleep quality, which can be negatively affected by stress and anxiety.
• Confidence: When you exercise regularly, you may feel more competent and confident in your body, which in turn promotes mental wellbeing.
• Try to find an exercise routine or activity you enjoy, such as walking, dancing, rock climbing or yoga.

Activities such as walking or jogging that involve repetitive movements of large muscle groups can be particularly stress relieving.

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Effects Of Uncontrolled Stress

Work-related stress doesnt just disappear when you head home for the day. When stress persists, it can take a toll on your health and well-being.

A stressful work environment can contribute to problems such as headache, stomachache, sleep disturbances, short temper, and difficulty concentrating. Chronic stress can result in anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system. It can also contribute to health conditions such as depression, obesity, and heart disease. Compounding the problem, people who experience excessive stress often deal with it in unhealthy ways, such as overeating, eating unhealthy foods, smoking cigarettes, or abusing drugs and alcohol.

How Can I Help Myself

There are things that you can do to help reduce your symptoms of stress. This is also known as self-care. There isnt a set process for where you should start, or what you should do, everyone is different. You may need to try different things until you find what works for you.

Stress diary

If you dont know what is causing your stress, it might help to keep a stress diary for a few weeks. It may help you to identify things that you may be able to change.

You could write down when you feel stressed. You should include what happens just before or after you feel stressed.

It could also help you to identify things which can make you unwell. These things are known as triggers. Identifying your triggers can help you to have more control over your stress levels.

There is a template for a stress diary at the end of the factsheet, which you can download by clicking the link at the top of this page.

Get practical advice

You may be able to take steps to change the cause of your stress. There are lots of places you can get practical advice on different issues. An advice service may be a good place to start. They may be able to support you to solve an issue. For example, you may want advice on:

• housing,
• money or
• employment.

You can find details of different organisations that give practical advice in the Useful contacts section at the bottom of this page.

Manage your money

Money can cause many different issues such as poverty, debt and relationship problems.

Plan your time

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Coping With Stress And Anxiety

Coping strategies and personal assessment tools to help you manage your stress and anxiety as we adapt the next normal.

• Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Coping with stress and anxiety

As COVID-19 restrictions begin to loosen in Canada and around the world, many are grappling to adjust to new norms for return to work and day-to-day life. At the same time, communities are coping with tremendous loss, grief, and trauma, while facing an uncertain future. to explore our section on grief, loss and healing.

Its normal to feel concerned about whats next and its important to continue using the strategies and tools youve relied on to support yourself and your family in this challenging time.

Here are some ideas that might be helpful. Some might apply to you and some might not or they may need to be adapted to suit you personally, your personality, where and with whom you live, or your culture. Please be creative and experiment with these ideas and strategies.

COVID-19 is a new virus and we are still learning about it. The uncertainty about the virus and the changes that are unfolding can make most people feel a bit anxious. This is normal, and it actually can help motivate us to take action to protect ourselves and others, and to learn more about the pandemic.

Stay informed by checking information provided by experts and credible sources. A lot of information is disseminated about COVID-19 every day, but not all of it is accurate. Some reliable sources include:

Helpful Organisations For Money Worries

It is important if you are worried about your finances and debts that you do not try to deal with them alone. There is a lot of help and support available to you through organisations such as Step Change and Citizens Advice.

You should also talk to your GP or a trusted health professional if you are worried about how debt is affecting your mental and physical health.

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Build Good Coping Skills

How well or how poorly we get through a stressful situation depends a lot on us. How we deal with stressful situations makes all the difference.

Here are some steps you can take to cope with a stressful situation.

1. Understand the Situation

• Take some time to think about the situation you’re facing. Try to describe your situation in a sentence or two. What’s stressful about this situation for you right now? It can help to write down your thoughts. For example: My family just moved, so I switched to a new school in the middle of the year. The stressful parts are not knowing anyone, missing my old friends, and dealing with all new schoolwork.
• Notice and name the feelings you have about the situation. Accept your feelings it’s understandable to feel the way you feel, given your situation. It can help to write down your feelings, too. For example: I feel lonely and sad because of missing old friends and my old school. I’m mad that we had to move, especially now. I’m worried about keeping up in math and social studies. I feel left out because I’m the new kid. I guess anyone would feel this way if they were in my situation.
• Learn more. Learn all you can about the situation you’re dealing with. This might include reading about it, talking to others, or finding out what others in your situation have done and what to expect. Learning helps you feel more confident and prepared plus it reminds you that you’re not the only one who has gone through this.

3. Take Action

Tip : Identify The Sources Of Stress In Your Life

Stress management starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. This isnt as straightforward as it sounds. While its easy to identify major stressors such as changing jobs, moving, or going through a divorce, pinpointing the sources of chronic stress can be more complicated. Its all too easy to overlook how your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors contribute to your everyday stress levels.

Sure, you may know that youre constantly worried about work deadlines, but maybe its your procrastination, rather than the actual job demands, that is causing the stress.

To identify your true sources of stress, look closely at your habits, attitude, and excuses:

• Do you explain away stress as temporary even though you cant remember the last time you took a breather?
• Do you define stress as an integral part of your work or home life or as a part of your personality ?
• Do you blame your stress on other people or outside events, or view it as entirely normal and unexceptional?

Until you accept responsibility for the role you play in creating or maintaining it, your stress level will remain outside your control.

Start a stress journal

A stress journal can help you identify the regular stressors in your life and the way you deal with them. Each time you feel stressed, keep track of it in your journal or use a stress tracker on your phone. Keeping a daily log will enable you to see patterns and common themes. Write down:

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Ways To Cope With Stress During The Pandemic

Without a doubt, 2020 has been a challenging year. Teleworking and imposed lockdown restrictions led to stress and isolation for many. Not only the second rise in infections is taking a new toll on our mental health. More than half of all workers in the EU report they are negatively affected by work-related stress. On the occasion of Stress Awareness Week , MHE is launching a guide on how to cope with stress during these testing times.

Look After Yourself Physically

When you are physically fit and well, it is much easier to cope with stress.

When you become stressed, it is harder to motivate yourself to care about what you eat, or whether you exercise. However, not doing so can also make you more stressed. Get into good habits while your stress levels are fairly low, and you may find that they never go up again. These good habits include:

• Taking regular exercise

  Stressful situations increase the level of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol in your body.

  These are the fight or flight hormones that evolution has hard-wired into our brains and which are designed to protect us from immediate bodily harm when we are under threat. However, stress in the modern age is rarely remedied by a fight or flight response. Physical exercise can be used as a surrogate to metabolise the excessive stress hormones and restore your body and mind to a calmer, more relaxed state.

  Try to incorporate some physical activity into your daily routine on a regular basis, either before or after work, or at lunchtime. Regular physical activity will also improve the quality of your sleep.

• There is more about this in our pages What is Sleep? and How to Sleep – The Importance of Sleep.

  You can assess your levels of daytime sleepiness with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.

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Ways To Cope With Stress

Of course, some stresses are natural. Like physical stress which is produced by the body as a warning or coping mechanism. And then there is the fight-or-flight response.

But mostly its the mental stress that disturbs us due to problems in interpersonal relations, in work-related or other situations. And you can control that by being aware of the choices you make.

Here are a few simple ways to cope with stress by making the right choices:

Stress: Coping With Everyday Problems

Everyone has stress. It is a normal part of life. You can feel stress in your body when you have too much to do or when you havent slept well. You can also feel stress when you worry about things like your job, money, relationships, or a friend or family member who is ill or in crisis. In response to these strains your body automatically increases blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, metabolism, and blood flow to you muscles. This response is intended to help your body react quickly and effectively to a high-pressure situation. However, when you are constantly reacting to stressful situations without making adjustments to counter the effects, you will feel stress which can threaten your health and well-being.

According to the APAs Stress in America study, nearly 70% of Americans experience physical and mental symptoms of stress, but only 37% think they are doing very well at managing stress.

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