We all have stress, and stress is God’s way of preparing our bodies to act and do. Sometimes, we need to take a look at our lifestyle and choices to utilize stress to do that next thing, verses stuff it so that it becomes chronic and harmful to the body.

This blog post is all about looking at life, the values and lifestyle you currently have and maybe making a few changes to cope more effectively, regulate emotions, and develop resiliency skills.

The best way to manage your stress is to learn healthy coping strategies. Try one or two tips below until you find a few that work for you. Practice these techniques until they become habits you turn to when you feel stress.  This is how you build resilience, by learning daily practices to help you cope with life and elicit calm despite the circumstances of life.

 

 Ways to relax your mind

·         Journal.  It may help to write about things that are bothering you. Write or journal for 5 to 15 minutes a day about stressful events and how they made you feel. Sometimes it’s good to write it then rip it up or burn it. Another journaling technique can be tracking your stress - what precipitated it, how you felt and how you reacted. This helps you find out what is causing your stress and how much stress you feel. After you know, you can find better ways to cope.  Be a thermostat and not a thermometer that merely measures stress, learn how to cope, and turn it down.

Find an effective or positive coping skill to use when that emotion surfaces to regulate the reaction.

·         Let your feelings out. Talk, laugh, cry, and express anger when you need to. Talking with God, friends, family, a counselor, or a member of the clergy about your feelings is a healthy way to relieve stress.

·         Do something you enjoy. You may feel that you're too busy to do these things. But making time to do something you enjoy can help you relax. It might also help you get more done in other areas of your life. This might be a microbreak or:

o    Engaging in hobby, such as gardening or playing an instrument

o    Creating art, taking photos, doing a craft project or DIY project

o    Playing with and caring for pets, yours or at an animal shelter

o    Being active, exercising or moving

·         Focus on the present. Practice mindfulness and being in the present moment, verses going down the “what if” path and running through each scenario that might happen.  Focus on reality.  Focus by taking a breath and feeling it in your body.  Keep breathing and each time sensing more and more how your body feels and relaxing it as you go (also called a body scan)

 

Ways to relax your body

1. Exercise/Activity. Regular exercise/activity is one of the best ways to manage stress and release our body’s mood boosting chemicals . Walking is a great way to get started. Even everyday activities such as housecleaning or yard work can reduce stress. Stretching can also relieve muscle tension. 

Try techniques to relax. Breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, and yoga can help relieve stress.

Breathing exercises. These include roll breathing, a type of deep breathing.

Stress Management: Breathing Exercises for Relaxation   (Belly and Roll breathing instructions)

Progressive muscle relaxation. This technique reduces muscle tension. You do it by relaxing separate groups of muscles one by one.

Stress Management: Doing Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Yoga, tai chi, and qi gong. These techniques combine exercise and meditation. You may need some training at first to learn them.

YouTube is full of videos for each level of activity, watch some and find one that works for you.  Try it at home before joining a class.

 

2. Utilize Stress Management: Relaxing Your Mind and Body

In addition to practicing these skills, you might also try some other techniques to reduce stress, such as massage, humor, mindfulness, meditation on God’s Word, prayer or music therapy.

 

Ways to Cope with stress

Stress is a part of life, and you can't avoid it.  Watch this TED talk to learn more about why God created us with the emotion of stress.  It is a useful and helpful emotion we need to utilize and not stuff down or rid our lives of.  Stress is a GOOD thing when it motivated us to act and do.  Stress becomes unhealthy when we ignore it, push it down and let it become a chronic way of living. 

 

You can try to avoid situations that can cause unresolved and learn to regulate your emotions. The first step is knowing your own coping strategies (building these skills increases your resilience and ability to bounce back.  Practice these skills daily to learn better coping with life’s events). Try tracking your stress to record stressful events, your response to them, and how you coped.  If the coping was negative like, drinking alcohol, overeating, yelling, or other self-destructive measures; swap them out with positive coping methods like playing an instrument, using breathing techniques or exercise. 

What are some common coping strategies?

• Lower your expectations - unrealistic expectations on yourself, society or others are self-defeating

• Ask others to help or assist you. Then be open to their suggestions.

• Take responsibility for the situation. Stop blaming others!

• Engage in problem solving. Utilize critical thinking skills.

• Maintain emotionally supportive relationships.

• Maintain emotional composure or, alternatively, expressing distressing emotions in appropriate ways

 Here are a few other ideas to help you make positive changes in your life and help you cope.  

Manage your time

Time management is a way to find the time for more of the things you want and need to do. It helps you decide which things are urgent and which can wait. Managing your time can make your life easier, less stressful, and more meaningful.  Procrastination, avoidance, and poor time management can cause a lot of unnecessary stress.   Don’t expect others to help when your procrastination becomes your emergency – you created the storm, now it’s your turn to put on the big boy/girl pants and do the hard thing. 

·         Stress Management: Managing Your Time

 

 Look at your lifestyle

The choices you make about the way you live affect your stress level. Your lifestyle may not cause stress on its own, but it can prevent your body from recovering from it. Try to:

·         Find a balance between personal, work, and family needs. This isn't easy. Start by looking at how you spend your time. Maybe there are things that you don't need to do at all. Learn to say no by creating healthy boundaries.  Get help from a counselor if you are co-deponent.  Invest in the book Boundaries or take a class on setting boundaries.

·         Have a sense of purpose in life. Many people find meaning through connections with family or friends, jobs, their spirituality, or volunteer work. 

·         Get enough sleep. Your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you are sleeping. If your worries keep you from sleeping, keep a notepad or your cell phone by your bed to record what you are worried about—to help you let it go while you sleep. For example, if you are worried you might forget to run an errand the next day, make a note so that you can stop worrying about forgetting.

·         Adopt healthy habits. Eat a healthy diet, limit how much alcohol you drink, and don't smoke, vape, or chew. Staying healthy is your best defense against stress.

·         Exercise. Even moderate exercise, such as taking a daily walk, can reduce stress.  Yoga, stretching and lifting weights are other ways to reduce stress and release natural mood lifting chemicals.

 

Get support

Support in your life from family, friends, and your community has a big impact on how you experience stress. Having support in your life can help you stay healthy.

Support means having the love, trust, and advice of others. But support can also be something more concrete, like time or money. It can be hard to ask for help. But doing so doesn't mean you're weak. If you're feeling stressed, you can look for support from:

·         Family and friends.  (without co-dependency, manipulation or being needy)

·         Coworkers, or people you know through hobbies or other interests. Join a club

·         A professional counselor or certified health and wellness coach

·         People you know from church, or a member of the clergy.

·         Employee assistance programs at work, or stress management classes.

·         Support groups. These can be very helpful if your stress is caused by a special situation. Maybe you are a caregiver for someone who is elderly or has a chronic illness.

o    Quick Tips: Reducing the Stress of Caregiving

 

Change your thinking

Stressful events can make you feel bad about yourself. You might start focusing on only the bad and not the good in a situation. That's called negative thinking. It can make you feel afraid, insecure, depressed, or anxious. It's also common to feel a lack of control or self-worth.  If you feed your brain messages of self-loathing and expect others to feed you compliments to get you out of the negativity, you are caught in an attention seeking cycle of manipulation.  Take responsibility for your actions and thoughts, use positive affirmations, pray and God’s Word to transform your thinking and focus on what is good, right, and other things mentioned in Philippians 4:8.  What we feed grows!  It’s your choice!

 

Negative thinking can trigger your body's stress response, just as a real threat does. Dealing with these negative thoughts and the way you see things can help reduce stress. You can learn these techniques on your own, or you can get help from a counselor. Here are some ideas:

 

·         Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) helps you cope with a problem by changing the way you think. How you think affects how you feel. 

·         Problem solving helps you identify all aspects of a stressful event, find things you may be able to change, and deal with things you can't change.

·         Assertive communication helps you express how you feel in a thoughtful, tactful way. Not being able to talk about your needs and concerns creates stress and can make negative feelings worse.