Ways To Prevent Stress Buildup
There’s no avoiding the stress of everyday life. Schoolwork, responsibilities at home, busy schedules, other people’s expectations, disappointments, deadlines, social drama: all of these can create tension.
Everyday stressors have a way of piling up if we don’t keep them in check. Adding these 5 simple actions to your regular routine can help you avoid that “bogged down by stress” feeling. The key word is “routine.” You need to make sure you keep doing these to enjoy the benefits:
1. Balance responsibilities with activities you enjoy . It’s all about balance: all work and no play is bad. But if your schedule is so crammed with activities that there’s no time for homework, that’ll stress you out too.
2. Manage responsibilities. Use a calendar or planning app to keep track of assignments, chores, practices, and other obligations. Of course, planning is no good if you don’t actually do what you plan: Managing stress also means regular studying, keeping on top of assignments, and overcoming procrastination. Take time to reflect a bit every day and think about how things are going. What do you need to work on? Do? Make time for?
5. Make time to exercise every day. It’s hard to feel anxious when you’re taking deep breaths on a run, feeling the rush of a downhill bike ride, or playing a pickup game with friends. Exercise doesn’t just take our mind off of stress it releases chemicals in our brains that make us feel better.
Handy Pdfs & 1 Ppt About Stress Management
Now that weâve covered the various stress management solutions, here are some handy downloadable PDFs for creating your personal stress management plan:
For adults and teens, this PDF Stress diary is an excellent template put together by Mindtools.com. It helps make us aware of when we stress, how we stress and how often we stress. Download the diary and make regular entries to start increasing the awareness surrounding your stress.
Itâs easy for stress to come and go, with us accepting itâs just part of our lives instead of something that needs addressing. Once we bring our awareness to these key stress components, we can start taking steps to manage it.
Once youâve identified how you show stress, you can start fleshing out a plan that works best for you. This Stress management PDF will help you to put in place some solid solutions, such as social support, emotional skills, ideas for a healthy life balance, and how you can best attend to your basic needs.
Specifically for teens, this PDF is an easy to use 10-point plan put together by www.fosteringresilience.com to help manage stress. It has been broken down into four digestible parts for you to work through including:
If youâre looking for a handy PPT, this Reducing Stress Presentation explains how we can best manage our stress by changing our health behaviors.
Reach Out For Social Support
Social interaction is a key component of good mental health. Staying connected helps lessen feelings of isolation and decrease the effects of stress, and can give us a feeling of purpose and fulfillment. Make sure to spend time with the people you care about, even if its just a few hours at a time.
Read Also: How To Handle Stressful Situations At Work
Six Stress Management Techniques For Healthier Living
So, how do you reduce stress? Its not like you can just snap your fingers, and everything stressing you out will disappear. Coping with stress and managing symptoms of stress can be somewhat of a skill you have to experiment and fine tune to see what works best for you.
Here are some simple adjustments you can make to your lifestyle that may help.
Embrace A Healthy Diet
Healthy eating can help strengthen your immune system and lower blood pressure. Focus on whole foods rich in vitamins C and B and healthy fats. We recommend fatty fish, whole grains, and fibrous fruits and vegetables. Although convenient, its best to avoid salty, sugary processed foods which can increase inflammation.
Don’t Miss: How Does Stress Affect Your Work Life
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.
Getting Help With Stress Relief
Stress management is an important aspect of both your mental health and overall health, and its perfectly okay to need a little help. If you need support with managing stress levels, schedule an appointment with your primary care doctor. Together you can determine next steps and what kind of care will work best for you.
Don’t Miss: What Do You Do When You Feel Stressed
Ways To Cope With Chronic Stress
“Its key to recognize stressful situations as they occur because it allows you to focus on managing how you react,” Dr. Stoll says. “We all need to know when to close our eyes and take a deep breath when we feel tension rising.”
Use these tips to prevent or reduce chronic stress.
1. Re-balance Work and Home
All work and no play? If youre spending too much time at the office, intentionally put more dates in your calendar to enjoy time for fun, either alone or with others.
2. Build in Regular Exercise
Moving your body on a regular basis balances the nervous system and increases blood circulation, helping to flush out stress hormones. Even a daily 20-minute walk makes a difference.
3. Eat Well and Limit Alcohol and Stimulants
Alcohol, nicotine and caffeine may temporarily relieve stress but have negative health impacts and can make stress worse in the long run. Well-nourished bodies cope better, so start with a good breakfast, add more organic fruits and vegetables, avoid processed foods and sugar, and drink more water.
4. Connect with Supportive People
Talking face to face with another person releases hormones that reduce stress. Lean on those good listeners in your life.
5. Carve out Hobby Time
Do you enjoy gardening, reading, listening to music or some other creative pursuit? Engage in activities that bring you pleasure and joy research shows that reduces stress by almost half and lowers your heart rate, too.
6. Practice Meditation, Stress Reduction or Yoga
Check In With Yourself
Looking inward and checking in with yourself daily by naming and noticing your thoughts and emotions is helpful, says Tanya J. Peterson, a certified counselor and mental health educator based in Oregon.
Peterson adds that pausing when you experience distressing thoughts or emotions can help deactivate your fight, flight, or freeze response and calm you down.
Doing this activates the part of your nervous system that signals the body to rest and digest, Peterson says.
You May Like: How Can You Tell If Your Cat Is Stressed
Different Stress Management Techniques & Strategies
These tips are thing we can all benefit from doing more of. The techniques are categorized into three groups:
Explore the below options and find what combination works best for keeping your stress levels under control.
Mindful Ways To Manage Stress
We all know that stress isnt good for us. The effects of stress can be debilitating, and for millions of people, stress leads to all sorts of symptoms and ailments, including headaches, muscle tension, difficulty sleeping, irritability, and lowered immunity. Chronic stress suppresses the bodys ability to regulate the inflammatory response, which can promote and advance disease. With demanding, hectic schedules, you may not always be able to control what happens in your daily life, but you can practice healthy habits to manage stress. Here are six stress management tips to cope with stress mindfully.
Don’t Miss: Am I Anxious Or Stressed
Tip : Practice The 4 As Of Stress Management
While stress is an automatic response from your nervous system, some stressors arise at predictable times: your commute to work, a meeting with your boss, or family gatherings, for example. When handling such predictable stressors, you can either change the situation or change your reaction. When deciding which option to choose in any given scenario, its helpful to think of the four As: avoid, alter, adapt, or accept.
How To Observe Emotional Wellness Month In The Workplace
Stress at work is inevitable and, if not managed, can lead to employee burnout. Today, most corporate wellness programs include a more holistic approach to addressing employee wellness.One of such is the Vantage Fit Wellness Program which covers almost all the dimensions of wellness. Incorporating mental health programs has become mandatory through employee assistance or wellness programs.
A well-structured wellness program can aid employees when they are on the verge of burnout by providing strategies to stop the cycle of negative and obsessive thoughts.
A wellness program that helps develop emotional resilience will equip employees to deal with disappointment, failure, or crisis, learn from it, and continue to move forward. This skill is not only valuable in the workplace, but it also helps staffers cope with personal crises or challenges.
Let’s explore four ways emotional wellness can help employees thrive in the workplace and how employers can help make it a priority:
Read Also: How Do I Get Rid Of Stress
Why Is Stress Bad For Us
We need the bodys stress response to get us through tough times. When you sense a threat or danger, your body rises to the challenge by releasing stress hormones, tightening your muscles, making your blood pressure rise and your heart and lungs work harder, and releasing a surge of fat and sugar to give you energy. When danger subsides, your body goes back to normal operations.
If you get stressed out frequently, however, the stress response can become constant and cause ongoing harm, including chronic inflammation the persistent activation of the immune system, which sharply raises the risks for many diseases such as dementia, heart disease, and stroke.
How Can We Handle Stress In Healthy Ways
Stress serves an important purpose it enables us to respond quickly to threats and avoid danger. But lengthy exposure to stress may lead to mental health difficulties like anxiety and depression, or increased physical health problems.
A large body of research suggests that increased stress levels interfere with your ability to deal with physical illness, says Dr. Borland. While no one can avoid all stress, you can work to handle it in healthy ways that increase your potential to recover.
1. Eat and drink to optimize your health
Some people try to reduce stress by drinking alcohol or eating too much. These actions may seem to help in the moment, but actually may add to stress in the long run. Caffeine also can compound the effects of stress. While consuming a healthy, balanced diet can help combat stress.
2. Exercise regularly
In addition to having physical health benefits, exercise has been shown to be a powerful stress reliever. Consider noncompetitive aerobic exercise, strengthening with weights or movement activities like yoga or Tai Chi, and set reasonable goals for yourself. Aerobic exercise has been shown to release endorphins natural substances that help you feel better and maintain a positive attitude.
3. Stop using tobacco and nicotine products
4. Study and practice relaxation techniques
5. Reduce triggers of stress
6. Examine your values and live by them
7. Assert yourself
8. Set realistic goals and expectations
9. Sell yourself to yourself
Don’t Miss: Can Stress Cause Multiple Sclerosis
Talk It Out With A Friend
When youre feeling stressed, take a break to call a friend and talk about your problems. Good relationships with friends and loved ones are important to any healthy lifestyle.
Theyre especially important when youre under a lot of stress. A reassuring voice, even for a minute, can put everything in perspective.
Tip : Maintain Balance With A Healthy Lifestyle
In addition to regular exercise, there are other healthy lifestyle choices that can increase your resistance to stress.
Eat a healthy diet. Well-nourished bodies are better prepared to cope with stress, so be mindful of what you eat. Start your day right with breakfast, and keep your energy up and your mind clear with balanced, nutritious meals throughout the day.
Reduce caffeine and sugar. The temporary highs caffeine and sugar provide often end with a crash in mood and energy. By reducing the amount of coffee, soft drinks, chocolate, and sugar snacks in your diet, youll feel more relaxed and youll sleep better.
Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs.Self-medicating with alcohol or drugs may provide an easy escape from stress, but the relief is only temporary. Dont avoid or mask the issue at hand deal with problems head on and with a clear mind.
Get enough sleep.Adequate sleep fuels your mind, as well as your body. Feeling tired will increase your stress because it may cause you to think irrationally.
Recommended Reading: Can Stress Cause High Blood Pressure
What To Do If You Have Trouble Sleeping
Sleep is often sacrificed when youre overwhelmed with stress. You may experience insomnia because of discomfort, stress from personal concerns, or side effects from your medications. If you cant sleep, try these tips:
- Establish a regular sleep schedule: go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
- Make sure your bed and surroundings are comfortable. Arrange the pillows so you can maintain a comfortable position.
- Keep your bedroom dark and quiet.
Practice Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Progressive muscle relaxation involves relaxing all the muscles in your body, group by group. To practice, you can start with a few deep breaths.
Then, practice tightening and relaxing each muscle group, starting with your forehead and moving down to your toes.
With practice, you’ll learn to recognize tension and tightness in your muscles and you’ll be able to relax more easily. Each time you practice, however, you should experience a feeling of relaxation sweeping through your body.
Read Also: What To Do For Stress Relief
Creating A More Inclusive Work Environment
The goal of every employee is to be valued and appreciated, regardless of their emotional flaws. But emotional health can still be a sensitive topic among many, and many of your employees might struggle to open up about it as they are concerned about what their colleagues or supervisor might think of them.
To cope, they may disengage, do the bare minimum, and interact with coworkers and managers as little as possible. Some employees cope with their emotional health struggles in unhealthy ways, turning to drugs or alcohol for relief.
Around 49% of employees think their line managers could not relate to them even if they spoke to them about a mental issue.
Positive work cultures that promote openness and acceptance can help your employees feel safer and more supported at work. The more they feel heard and seen, the more likely they are to seek help.
If you incorporate emotional health screenings into your employee wellness programs, you can help your employees feel more comfortable sharing their struggles or concerns.
Building Habits For Healthy Stress Management
Humans are hard-wired to react to stress in ways originally meant to protect us against threats like predators or other dangerous situations. Thankfully, these days most of us dont have to worry about dangerous animals. However, the world is still full of stressful situations that impact our bodies and mental health every day. Thats why its more important than ever to understand stress and discover your own healthy ways of dealing with it.
Don’t Miss: Can Stress Cause Your Blood Sugar To Drop
Spend Time With Your Pet
Having a pet may help reduce stress and improve your mood.
When you cuddle or touch your pet, your body releases oxytocin a hormone thats linked to positive mood .
Plus, studies show that pet owners especially those who have dogs tend to have greater life satisfaction, better self-esteem, reduced levels of loneliness and anxiety, and more positive moods .
Having a pet may also help relieve stress by giving you purpose, keeping you active, and providing companionship.
Summary
Although stress is an unavoidable part of life, being chronically stressed takes a toll on your physical and mental health.
Fortunately, several evidence-based strategies can help you reduce stress and improve your overall psychological well-being.
Exercise, mindfulness, spending time with a pet, minimizing screen time, and getting outside more often are all effective methods.
What Are Common Myths About Infertility
Infertility is a womans problem: Its medieval thinking that infertility is a womans problem, yet this myth continues. Did you know that as men age, their semen decreases in volume and motility? Probably notits not often reported. If youre considering visiting a fertility specialist, your partner should as well.
High libido will lead to fewer infertility problems: Your sex drive does not affect fertility. Its also perceived that men with a greater sex drive are more fertile but again, this isnt true. Theres no correlation between sex drive and fertility.
Couples should always try for a year before seeing an OB-GYN: While infertility is defined by unprotected sex for a year without conception its more a guideline than the rule. You should seek advice earlier, especially if youre over the age of 35 and have a history of:
- Irregular periods
- Fibroids are abnormal growths that develop in or on a woman’s uterus.
- Endometriosis is a painful disorder in which tissue similar to the tissue that normally lines inside your uterus grows outside your uterus.
- Pelvis adhesive disease is a condition in which scar tissue binds adjacent organs to each other. The organs in your abdominal cavity are coated in a slippery tissue that allows those adjacent organs to glide easily against each other.
- Ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the central cavity of the uterus.
- Multiple miscarriages
Recommended Reading: What Is The Best Natural Remedy For Stress And Anxiety
