How To Relieve Psychological Stress

Develop Your Conflict Resolution Skills

Conflict is an almost inevitable part of any relationship. People are going to have disagreements and are going to want different things. The way we manage conflict can create significant psychosocial stress but if you can work on your conflict resolution skills, that can help at least half of the equation: You can change what you bring to the situation, you can diffuse some of the negativity, and you can model healthier behavior. This can greatly minimize the stress felt by all involved.

Finding The Roots Of Your Stress

Sometimes finding the source of your stress is easyit’s the job, the romantic partner, the kids, or the financial issues. But usually, the roots of your stress are more complicated, hidden, and, therefore, difficult to resolve. So start to investigate whats causing your stress until you get a clearer picture of the complexities of your own unique stress-profile.

Once you can see where, why, and how you get stressed, and you can acknowledge the patterns your stress follows, then you can concoct methods for avoiding stressful episodes, practice ways of dealing with them better and clear your body of leftover stress hormones.

To start, explore some possible ways to decrease stress:

How Your Dog Knows Youre Stressed

If your kids need some diversion, you and your kids can take your pet for a walk or sign your kids up for a neighborhood project, camp, or art class.

If your spouse is creating stress for you, ask yourself: Is he/she over-worked and taking it out on you as the closest person who wont get him/her fired, or is there an underlying relationship issue that needs to be resolved?

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Highly Effective Tips For Relieving Stress

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all option when it comes to stress relief, however. What works for one person might not work for another.

And what works for you at home might not be an option when you’re at work or in the community .

So it’s important to have a variety of stress relief tools at your disposal. Then, you’ll be able to pick a strategy that works best for your current circumstances.

Scientifically Backed Methods Of Reducing Stress

Many cultures normalize and even glorify stress, but the health risks associated with chronic stress should be taken seriously. Of course, dealing with stress is easier said than done. Most of us can’t take a semester off of school or quit our jobs to spend more time relaxing.

“The key to reducing stress is to deactivate the fight-or-flight response by resetting the nervous system. The adrenal-HPA axis is part of the sympathetic nervous system ,” Peterson says. “When we’re chronically stressed, the SNS is constantly on. We can override it by activating its counterpart, the parasympathetic nervous system .”

The PNS, nicknamed “rest and digest,” reverses the effects of the stress response. It slows down your heart and respiration rates, lowers blood pressure, and returns blood flow to your core. It also stops the production of cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.

All of the following help your body “rest and digest.”

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Are You Ready To Discover Your College Program

It should come as no surprise that stress levels have increased over the last two years because of the pandemic. But even after the introduction of vaccines and less restrictions, there are no signs of stress levels slowing down in fact, quite the opposite.

A study that began about a year after the onset of the pandemic shows that stress levels actually increased between January 2021 and the previous April, when the pandemic first ravaged the U.S.

While respondents cited the pandemic as a significant stressor, they also reported concern about the “future of our nation” and political unrest as factors.

In these uncertain times, what can we do to find some stress relief? To find out, we talked to Tanya J. Peterson, a mental health educator, author, and a diplomate with the American Institute of Stress.

A Comprehensive Stress Management Technique

Apart from calming a busy mind, where you apply the techniques physiologically to reduce thoughts and calm the mind, here we need deeper expertise and the application of subtle energies to create specific thoughts to reduce and eliminate mental stress.

For fast results, one thing is to keep the mind calm and reduce stress, but more importantly you need to train the mind to stay busy and efficient. We will work with a two-in-one technique here.

Step 1

Identify the stressor . You can discover this by being aware of your surroundings and of your reactions to it is it the person and her/his actions/behavior that are causing my stress? Is it the idea I have about how things are happening around me ?

Be realistic with yourself in identifying the root-cause of your stress. No one can do it more quickly.

After you have identified the stressor, generate specific thoughts, such as, I am grateful for this challenge, and I will find a way to accept it as is and work on changing my approach and reaction to it. Once you achieve this, the stressor has no longer the same level of influence on you.

Step 2

Develop/apply the stress relieving activity together with the tool, and approach the stressor when youre ready .

Apply gratitude and practice breathing exactly when the stressful situation is happening and not only when walking in the park or when you know that you are safe from the mental stress.

Step 3

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The Science Of Stress

We all know the tell-tale signs of stress: upset stomach, body aches, sweating, nausea, trouble sleeping, etc. But what happens in your body that triggers this physical response? It actually starts in the brain.

Scientists originally believed that our “fight-or-flight” reaction started with the hypothalamus. “But what researchers are recently discovering over the last few years is that it is actually the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain, that tells the hypothalamus to freak out,” Peterson says.

The amygdala is our emotional center, which processes negative emotions like fear. The significance in this discovery lies in the relationship among thoughts, emotions, and stress.

“There’s a cyclical relationship between thoughts, emotions, and stress. Our amygdala registers a stressor which can be an external situation or a negative thought and instantly starts the fight-or-flight reaction by sending signals to the hypothalamus and on down the line,” Peterson says.

“We then feel what we subjectively call stress, all the physical and emotional symptoms that are part of fight-or-flight. This unwanted experience deepens our negative emotions and often drives negative thoughts and ruminations. These feed on each other, all the while keeping the stress response active and in high gear.”

When Rituals Go Too Far

Individuals who have obsessive-compulsive disorder also engage in rituals. With OCD, ritual behaviors feel compulsory, interfere with daily responsibilities, and do not provide sustainable relief from anxiety .

When rituals interfere with your relationships and daily life and intrusive thoughts torment you, it’s best to seek help from a licensed psychotherapist. You can obtain referrals from your physician, the Psychology Today Therapy Directory, or your insurance provider list.

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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.

What Is The Fastest Way To Relieve Stress

There are countless techniques for managing stress. Yoga, mindfulness meditation, and exercise are just a few examples of stress-relieving activities that work wonders. But in the heat of the moment, during a high-pressured job interview, for example, or a disagreement with your spouse, you cant just excuse yourself to meditate or take a long walk. In these situations, you need something more immediate and accessible.

One of the speediest and most reliable ways to stamp out stress is to engage one or more of your sensessight, sound, taste, smell, touchor through movement. Since everyone is different, youll need to do some experimenting to discover which technique works best for youbut the payoff is huge. You can stay calm, productive, and focused when you know how to quickly relieve stress.

Social interaction is your bodys most evolved and surefire strategy for regulating the nervous system. Talking face-to-face with a relaxed and caring listener can help you quickly calm down and release tension. Although you cant always have a pal to lean on in the middle of a stressful situation, maintaining a network of close relationships is vital for your mental health. Between sensory-based stress relief and good listeners, youll have your bases covered.

Affordable Online Therapy for Stress

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Create Obstacles And Rewards

If you tend to pick up your phone when youre supposed to be working, turn off your phone and put it somewhere out of sight before you get started with the day.

Make sure to reward yourself for your efforts, too. After you get a good chunk of work done, take a break to watch a funny video, catch up with your friends, or swap selfies with your partner.

Thinking in terms of rewards rather than punishments can help you encourage yourself, too.

• Instead of: If I dont work out tonight, I cant watch the next episode of Lucifer.’
• Try: Ill go for a jog after work, and then Ill watch an episode of Lucifer before bed.

If youre a long-time procrastinator, breaking the habit may require a little extra support.

Connecting with a therapist may be a good next step when procrastination:

• affects your performance at school or work
• creates problems in your personal relationships
• leads to feelings of stress, anxiety, or depression, or makes existing symptoms worse

A therapist can help you identify and explore possible emotional triggers. They can also provide more insight into any underlying mental health concerns contributing to procrastination.

In therapy, you can also learn strategies to challenge negative self-talk and reframe unhelpful thought patterns.

Physical Activity Reduces Stress

Stress is an inevitable part of life. Seven out of ten adults in the United States say they experience stress or anxiety daily, and most say it interferes at least moderately with their lives, according to the most recent ADAA survey on stress and anxiety disorders. When the American Psychological Association surveyed people in 2008, more people reported physical and emotional symptoms due to stress than they did in 2007, and nearly half reported that their stress has increased in the past year.

Its impossible to eliminate, but you can learn to manage stress, and most people usually do. According to a recent ADAA online poll, some 14 percent of people make use of regular exercise to cope with stress. Others reported talking to friends or family sleeping watching movies or TV , as well as eating and listening to music .

While all of these are well-known coping techniques, exercise may be the one most recommended by health care professionals. And among ADAA poll takers who exercise, a healthy percentage is already on the right track: Walking , running , and yoga are their preferred strategies.

Exercising Body and Mind

Scientists have found that regular participation in aerobic exercise has been shown to decrease overall levels of tension, elevate and stabilize mood, improve sleep, and improve self-esteem. Even five minutes of aerobic exercise can stimulate anti-anxiety effects.

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Psychological Strategies For Reducing Stress

Biofeedback and Neurofeedback Training

Stress reactions involve the coordinated interaction of numerous bodily processes which usually operate automatically at an unconscious level. People do not choose to allow these processes to function they just happen. People may be able to exert some control over some of these functions , but in general, most of these processes are not easy to influence. With training, however, individuals can learn to consciously control many of these otherwise automatic processes, and by so doing, gain better control over their stress levels.

Biofeedback and Neurofeedback training refer to a collection of techniques which are designed to teach people how gain conscious control over different body functions that are normally controlled quite unconsciously by the autonomic nervous system. Biofeedback is a general term for the use of any sort of monitoring hardware to teach such conscious regulation of a body process. Neurofeedback is a more specific term that refers to the use of sensors to specifically monitor brain activity so as to teach people how to gain control of that component of their bodies.

Biofeedback can be useful in helping people learn how to recognize and control the physiological aspects of stress. It is used most often to relieve stress-induced problems related to blood flow such as headaches, high blood pressure, sleep disorders or chronic pain. The most common forms of biofeedback are:

Learn To Avoid Procrastination

Another way to take control of your stress is to stay on top of your priorities and avoid procrastinating.

Procrastination may harm your productivity and leave you scrambling to catch up. This can cause stress, which negatively affects your health and sleep quality .

A study in 140 medical students in China linked procrastination to increased stress levels. The study also associated procrastination and delayed stress reactions with more negative parenting styles, including punishment and rejection .

If you find yourself procrastinating regularly, it may be helpful to get in the habit of making a to-do list organized by priority. Give yourself realistic deadlines and work your way down the list.

Work on the things that need to get done today and give yourself chunks of uninterrupted time. Switching between tasks or multitasking can be stressful in itself.

Summary

If you find yourself regularly procrastinating, staying on top of your to-do list may help ward off related stress.

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Best Ways To Manage Stress

Goal setting and relaxation techniques reduce stress and ease the physical and emotional burdenit can take.

Stressful experiences come in many forms, such as a demanding job, a chronic disease, or an argument with a loved one. But all types of stressorseven stress from positive experiences,such as planning a partycan result in the same physical and emotional burden on health, especially when you’re an older adult. “As we age, our immune systems are less efficient, and adding stress to that can lead to disease progression or the onset of disease,” says Dr. Ann Webster, a health psychologist at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

Why Is Relieving Stress Important

Itâs no secret that stress is bad for us.

Stress is a destabilizer and a catalyst for other health problems because it messes with the optimal state of balance in our bodies, also known as homeostasis .

Stress can be intense for a short period, or it can simmer away over weeks, months, or even years. The most crucial reason to prioritize stress relief is to stop it from building up.

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Stress Relief Tips From The Experts

Posted January 28, 2013

I asked 17 psychology experts to share their best stress relief tips. You can also find these experts on Twitter using .

Physical

“Stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system because this relaxes the mind and the body. There are several ways to do this, such as breathing from your diaphragm. My favorite method is to lightly run one or two fingers over my lips. Parasympathetic fibers are spread throughout the lips, so touching them stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s remarkable how this simple gesture produces an immediate sense of calm in the mind and the body.” –Toni Bernhard, J.D.

“I go outside. There’s something about natural light that’s tremendously soothing to me. Any weather will do, except maybe pouring rain. But sun, clouds, snow…all good. I try to be mindful of my surroundings, noticing the trees against the sky, grackle on a lawn, the patterns of clouds. It just takes the edge of.” – Sophia Dembling, Psychology Today Blogger.

“First take a deep breath, or two. Remember, even if you can’t control the event causing the stress, you do have some control over your response to it. As an old Yiddish saying goes, “You can’t control the wind but you can adjust your sails.” – Mindy Greenstein, Ph.D.

Interpersonal

Interpersonal

Behavioral

“Don’t rush into problem-solving mode. Whenever you feel the need to go faster, think of that as signal to slow down.” – Barbara Markway, Ph.D.

Tips For Reducing Stress

• Get OrganizedPlan, schedule, take notes, and keep good files. Make lists. Organizing reduces stress. Find the scheduling method that works best for you.
• Break Things DownWhen tasks seem overwhelming, figure out what would be a useful first step toward completing the task, and start with that.
• Set Realistic ExpectationsMaybe doing just “good enough” is plenty: strive for excellence in another area.
• Plan on Making MistakesEveryone makes mistakes – learn from them.
• Keep Life BalancedBalance social life, work and school. Too much of any one will create stress.
• Learn AcceptanceWe all have things in life we can do nothing about. Continually fighting loosing battles is tiring, demoralizing, and takes our time and energy away from things we can do something about.
• Get PerspectiveWhen you feel distressed about something , ask yourself, “What difference will this make in ten years?”
• Focus on GoalsConcentrating on your future goals can help you get through the rough spots that are an inevitable part of achieving something worthwhile.
• Learn to Say No!Say “No” when your schedule is full to activities you don’t enjoy to responsibilities that aren’t yours to emotional demands that leave you feeling drained to other people’s problems that you can’t solve.

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