Talk To Your Children
Children may feel afraid or anxious about the new coronavirus. Its important to validate feelings of worry and not dismiss them outright, advises McGuire. He offers the following tips:
- Listen. After hearing their children out, parents can fill them in with correct information to calm their worries.
- Provide accurate information. Determine what your children already know about the virus and give them accurate information to reduce their risk of catching it. This might include asking children about specific concerns or what they know about the coronavirus, and providing practical solutions to help them minimize any risk, explains McGuire.
- Focus on prevention. Keep discussions focused on preventive actions. Set up and praise healthy hand-washing habits, and maintain regular routines for playtime, meals and other activities.
If someone in your family is sick with COVID-19 or another illness, it can be hard for children to understand. This is where it is important to have an established plan to minimize the worries and keep focused on proactive solutions, says McGuire. You know your child and how they learn best make sure that your explanations are clear and helpful.
Coronavirus Self-Checker and COVID-19 Vaccine FAQ
Check symptoms. Get vaccine information. Protect yourself and others.
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.
Stop Overloading Your Schedule
When we are too busy, even if the schedule is filled with exciting things, we can feel more stressed, simply from a lack of downtime. If the schedule is cluttered with stressful or unnecessary activities, it becomes even more draining. Learning to say no to demands on your time and cutting out the things in your life that stress you are great strategies for cultivating inner peace.
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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 Support Someone Who Is Stressed
We will all have different responses to the pandemic as it has affected each of us in a number of different ways. As well as learning to support yourself at this time, you may find you need to support your loved ones who are feeling the strain.
When someone close to us is feeling overwhelmed or anxious, it can be difficult to know how to help. Sometimes we may even find ourselves avoiding that person for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. But withdrawing like this can actually make things worse.
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Up Your Avoidance Of Caffeine Alcohol And Nicotine
We previously said that it was a good idea not to have too much caffeine, alcohol and nicotine as a way to avoid stress. If you are already feeling stressed, this becomes even more important. Caffeine and nicotine are stimulants and so will increase your level of stress rather than reduce it.
Alcohol is a depressant when taken in large quantities, but acts as a stimulant in smaller quantities. Using alcohol as a way to alleviate stress is therefore not ultimately helpful.
Swap caffeinated and alcoholic drinks for water, herbal teas, or diluted natural fruit juices and aim to keep yourself hydrated. This will enable your body to cope better with stress.
You should also aim to avoid or reduce your intake of refined sugars – they are contained in many manufactured foods and can cause energy crashes which may lead you to feel tired and irritable.
There is more about this in our page What are Carbohydrates?.
Call Someone Who Doesnt Make You Stressed
If you dont have time to get together with someone, pick up the phone and call someone who doesnt make you stressed.
I say this because its important to call someone who you know will be a comforting presence on the other end of the line, not the friend who is so frantic herself that youll spend the entire time listening to how her world is falling apart.
Reaching out for that social connection can be the last thing we want to do when were stressed, but the chances youll feel a lot better afterwards and less alone in your stress are high.
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What Happens When We Dont Manage Stress Effectively
In small doses, stress can actually be useful as it helps you to stay focused, alert and increases energy. But when stress becomes chronic though, it can damage your health, mood and relationships. Basically, your overall quality of life!
Stress is sneaky! It can easily creep up on you so that being frazzled and overwhelmed starts to feel normal. You may not even recognize how much it is affecting you so it is really important to recognize the signs and symptoms of stress and then take steps to stop feeling so overwhelmed.
What Is The Sign Of Anxiety Disorder
If the feeling of anxiety is severe, intense, and impacts the life of any person, it may be called anxiety disorder. Only a doctor specialist in the respective field can diagnose an anxiety disorder.
However, some symptoms of anxiety disorder are as under
- Cardiac symptoms In anxiety patients feel an increase in heart rate, increased breathing rate, trembling, feels shivering, sweating, and shortness of breath.
- Irrational fear or worry about different situations.
- Feels extreme fear and anxiety.
- Avoiding the source of fear or only enduring it with great anxiety.
- Withdrawn from social activity or isolated from friends and family.
- Remain irritate or agitate.
- Always remain uneasy or worried.
- Unable to remain concentrate on a specific work.
- Unable to perform daily activity.
- Feeling of suicide.
- In extreme anxiety he can do panic attack.
- In addition to the above patient may feel rapid heart rate, nausea, trembling, choking sensation, feeling of losing control, going crazy, or dying.
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Staying Busy Is Your Antidepressant
Many people are either afraid or unwilling to address the true causes of their suffering and unhappiness.
This is partly because its not always clear. Depression, for instance, has many partial and interactive causes, from genetic vulnerabilities and inflammatory autoimmune responses to ruminative thinking styles and social stressors. So it can be understandably hard to completely understand all the causes and contributors to your suffering.
But for many of us, despite this complexity, there are at least some reasonably clear causes of unhappiness that we could work to improve:
- Nearly everyone with depression or anxiety would benefit from more regular exercise.
- Most people with low self-esteem and self-worth issues would benefit from working to improve their habits of negative self-talk.
- Almost anyone who struggles to regulate their emotions would benefit from better sleep habits.
- Nearly everyone with anger issues would benefit from a regular mindfulness practice.
The point is, there are usually plenty of reasonable ways to address the underlying causes of our suffering. The problem is, theyre hard:
So I get it. There are real challenges.
But its how we respond to these challenges that matter. For many people, the challenges of addressing core causes feels like too much. And so they resort to coping mechanisms and treating the symptoms:
When youre constantly busy, you but a tremendous toll on both your body and mind.
Accept The Things You Can’t Change
Changing a difficult situation isn’t always possible. Try to concentrate on the things you do have control over.
“If your company is going under and is making redundancies, for example, there’s nothing you can do about it,” says Professor Cooper.
“In a situation like that, you need to focus on the things that you can control, such as looking for a new job.”
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Reduce A Worrys Power Over You
One very effective way to reduce a worrys power over you is by getting the negative thoughts out of your head and on to paper. Being able to see the worry in black and white helps give you more perspective.
Study your worries by keeping a Worry Diary.
Write down what you fear might happen and then later write down if what you were worried about actually happened, whether it was as bad as you expected, and what you did to cope with the situation.
This will help you understand your worries better, distinguish between worries that are useful and those that are useless, and help you realize that you can cope no matter what happens.
- Set aside some time during the day to worry your worry time. Select a time every day that is convenient for you and pick a suitable amount of time to worry . Use this time to think about your worries and about possible resolutions. It can be helpful to write things down. It will take time to train yourself not to dwell on worries at other times of the day or night.
- Practice is key here. What you can do if you worry outside of the set aside time is to write the worry down and put it in a worry box . Then, when its your official worry time, you can look at your worries and deal with them appropriately.
I hope you find these 6 tips useful. If you would like to read more about ways to overcome anxiety and worrying please take a look at my free booklet.
When clients first come in to see me, the main concerns that come up again and again are:
Signs And Symptoms Of Stress Overload
The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You dont notice how much its affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll. Thats why its important to be aware of the common warning signs and symptoms of stress overload.
Cognitive symptoms:
- Other mental or emotional health problems
Physical symptoms:
- Chest pain, rapid heart rate
- Loss of sex drive
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Withdrawing from others
- Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax
- Nervous habits
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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.
Talk Yourself Through It
Sometimes calling a friend is not an option. If this is the case, talking calmly to yourself can be the next best thing.
Dont worry about seeming crazy just tell yourself why youre stressed out, what you have to do to complete the task at hand, and most importantly, that everything will be okay.
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Difference Between Normal Anxiety And Anxiety Disorders
Normal anxiety is not bad, it helps you to prepare yourself for the situations to have arrived, such as before the starting of the examination, students feel anxiety, How will be the paper, how to prepare. So This anxiety makes them alert. We may call it temporary anxiety or normal anxiety. At the time of marriage of son or daughter, their parents feel anxiety by thinking about how to complete the various works related to marriage. But these are temporary anxiety and go away with the passing of time.
On the other hand, due to various reasons anxiety remain to continue for a longer period. It may disturb the day-to-day working of individual or social life. It can create severe distress that may cause to avoid the work that is likely to trigger feelings of anxiety. The patient isolated himself from social life. It is called extreme anxiety.
Spend The Whole Day Alone
Introverts, unite!
If you get recharged by spending time alone, youre going to have to eventually just give yourself the space to recuperate and work through your stress alone.
Send the kids to their friends house for the day, kick the husband out to go play sports with his friends, whatever you need to do to get that one day of solitude.
And when you have it, plan for it.
Are you going to lounge around all day in your pajamas?
Are you going to get something done that has been stressing you for out forever?
Are you going to indulge in all of your favorite foods that your family isnt invited to share?Do what you need to do and enjoy the time spent alone.
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Put Relaxation And Self
A fully packed schedule would make a lot of people feel stressed. Make sure you take time out each day for at least one thing you enjoy doing whether its spending time on a hobby, watching a Netflix episode, or chatting with a friend. It can also help if you schedule the activity into your day, so that you dont feel guilty about not doing something else. Read our guide to relaxation for more ideas.
If youre feeling overwhelmed, dont be afraid to say no to things when you need to.
Path To Improved Well Being
Stress can cause health problems or make existing problems worse. Talk to your family doctor if you think your symptoms could be caused by stress. Its important to make sure they arent caused by other health problems.
Learn to recognize when youre feeling stressed. Early warning signs of stress include tension in your shoulders and neck or clenching your hands into fists. Try to avoid the event or situation that leads to your stress. If thats impossible, change how you react to stress.
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Recognising Your Stress Triggers
If you’re not sure what’s causing your stress, keep a diary and make a note of stressful episodes for two-to-four weeks. Then review it to spot the triggers.
Things you might want to write down include:
- the date, time and place of a stressful episode
- what you were doing
- a stress rating
You can use the diary to:
- work out what triggers your stress
- work out how you operate under pressure
- develop better coping mechanisms
Doctors sometimes recommend keeping a stress diary to help them diagnose stress.
Questions To Ask Yourself
Whos in my support network? Everyone should have people in their life who are positive influences, support providers, and role models for healthy living. They can be friends, family members, mentors, spiritual leaders, colleagues, and mental health professionals.
What activities do I enjoy? Your work might be enjoyable, but everyone needs hobbies that arent about competition or personal accomplishment. What helps ease your worries and makes you more mindful about your body? These activities might include reading, dancing, gardening, board games, crafts, etc.
What are my sleep habits? If youre getting roughly 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night, youll be able to think more clearly, boost your immune system, and concentrate better on work and relationships. A simple step such as turning off screens an hour before bed can make a huge difference in your sleep quality.
Am I saying no to unnecessary tasks? Ideally you should be able to pass on tasks that demand too much of you, arent your responsibility, or dont fall in line with your personal values and objectives. If youre not sure where to start, take a look at your schedule and to-do list, and see what can be delegated or removed completely.
Am I organized? Start to declutter your life. When you can manage tasks with an accurate schedule and prioritized to-do list, you reduce the unnecessary anxiety that can accompany a cluttered and confusing agenda.
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Find Satisfaction In Your Jobor Find A New One
If you know that its not your personal life thats getting you down, then it might be your job. Work-related stress can be physically and mentally exhausting and can make your life feel like a train wreckespecially during these troubled times.
If you find yourself going straight home from work every day, plopping down in front of your computer or binge-watching TV shows so that you dont have to think about your dayexamine that. Think about what realistically you can do to improve your situation.
If its a coworker issue, try talking to your boss or HR about it If its you who may the cause of the problems, try a different approach toward people try doing the opposite of what you have been doing so far. If youre working in a toxic environment, consider changing companies. Easier said than done sometimes, but finding a new job is a lot less stressful than allowing a black kigyo to potentially kill you with work.
Start by polishing your resumethis action alone will boost your confidence, let you realize how far youve come and what you could possibly do next. Then simply start contacting recruiters and create your profile on job search sites. New vision, new opportunities will immediately start brightening your day because youll know that you are moving forward.
