MANAGEMENT OF STRESS

Stress is the opposite of Relaxation. Both positive and negative aspect of life can be equally stressful.

We can look at stress as external forces in our lives that push our buttons and provoke extreme emotions.

Most people think of stress coming from the frustrations and low points in life forgetting that high points and achievements are stressful as well.

Typical examples include:

Marriage & Divorce, Ups & Downs, promotion & Termination, Birth & Death, etc.

Each of these has one thing in common – Stress

Uncertainty can cause stress; stress can result from something as minor as breaking a shoestring or something as major as your child ruining his new expensive shoes.

Stress raises your level of adrenaline, which results in an increase in heart rate, respiration and blood pressure. These increases make bodily organs work harder.

Stress Management Tips is all about helping you develop an effective stress management strategy. Explore the causes of stress and its symptoms. Find out how stress affects us and what you can do to reduce stress. Learn how some stress management tips, stress reliever games and stress relieving exercises can help improve your stress management skills and help you cope with stress.

Causes of Stress

Simply put, stress has one cause— our perceptions of and reactions to the situations that occur in our lives. Stress can be caused by something as simple as breaking a fingernail or by something as serious as losing a finger. In addition, the positive events in our lives can be as stressful as the negative ones.

For example, the birth of a child can be stressful both in positive and negative ways.

“It’s a boy! It’s a girl! It has all of its fingers and toes! It’s healthy! It’s wonderful!”

First of all, adrenaline flows and we beam with pride as our hearts fill with jubilation and overwhelming emotion! However, often anxiety follows.

“Will I be a good parent? Can I provide for my newborn? Will I wake up at 2:00 a.m. when he begins to cry?”

In the above example, the first reaction is called eustress, or positive stress. The second is the all too familiar distress, or negative stress. While coping with eustress is easier than dealing with distress, the truth is that whether positive or negative, stress is stress!

Moreover, what may be a stress reliever to one person may be a stressor to another. For instance, a divorce may be relief for one party and a calamity for the other or an employment lay-off may give one individual a much-needed vacation while spelling only financial disaster for another.

While anything that causes stress is called a stressor, generally the stress we worry about most is distress. This negative stress can be caused by either processive stressors or systemic stressors.

Processive stressors are those that elicit what is called the “fight or flight” reaction. When we believe we are in danger, the pituitary gland automatically sounds an alarm by releasing a burst of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which in turn signals the adrenal glands to release the “stress hormones” adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones are actually a safeguard that help us focus on the situation at hand, speed up reaction times, and temporarily boost our physical strength and agility while we decide whether to retreat or stand firm.

Systemic stressors are our bodies’ automatic physiological responses to stress, such as the loss of equilibrium (dizziness) that you feel before you faint or the release of acid that turns and churns your stomach during a stressful situation. Systemic stressors may be released simultaneously along with processive stressors and can cause even more stress as they create a greater sensation of danger to your well-being.

Although everyone suffers from stress at one time or another, research indicates that children who live in a stressful home environment are at greater risk to become stressed by life’s challenges. In addition, some research suggests that both the events that we find stressful and our ability to manage the stress caused by those events may be partly genetic, governed by the genes that control our endorphin levels. (Endorphins are the hormones that regulate our moods and also act as a natural “pain killer”).

Though events may seem stressful, it is important to remember that stress is created by our reactions to situations, rather than the events themselves. In reality, stress is “all in our heads”. Putting life’s ups and downs into proper perspective is the key to coping with stress and the effects that it has on both our health and our lives.

Stress Symptoms

The symptoms of stress are our physical, emotional, and behavioural reactions to life’s situations.

• The pounding of our hearts as the home team scores the winning point
• The feeling of frustration when the other team scores the winning point
• The boisterous hooray when we win and the angry curse when we lose

Levels of stress are categorized as acute, episodic acute, and chronic. Stress symptoms are often indicative of our level of stress.

• Acute stress is the temporary type of stress we feel when we step back to the curb out of the path of an oncoming vehicle or when the home team wins (or loses).

This type of stress is the most manageable. Our heart rates jump, blood pressures raise, tension headaches may ensue, we become momentarily angry, elated, boisterous, or resentful. We cry in joy, in relief, in frustration. The moment passes and we go on about or business.

• Episodic acute stress occurs when life’s situations get the best of us, when Murphy’s Law seems to be the rule of the day. One example is when we believe we deserve a raise or promotion, but don’t act on our feelings. Another example is when life spins out of control with one disaster after another— an illness, a divorce, and loss of employment within a short time span.

Symptoms like recurring headaches, indigestion, fatigue, and insomnia are vivid warning signs of episodic acute stress. We can avoid episodic acute stress by recognizing its warning signs and coping with stressful situations as they occur. Without attention, this level of stress can lead to chronic stress.

• Chronic stress is that which literally wears us out, grinding us down until our bodies and minds react with serious long-term physical and/or mental disorders. Chronic stress occurs when situations become impossible to deal with, when there’s “no way out” and we give up trying to overcome adversity.

Unfortunately, once stress becomes chronic, long ignored symptoms become invisible. Grinding teeth, tremors, confusion, forgetfulness, over-eating, and alcoholism are just some of the symptoms that appear to be habits that are as unbreakable as the situations that caused them.

Stress warning signs can help us gauge our level of stress. However, stress symptoms often overlap from one level to another. More importantly, many signs of stress can be caused by physical illness or mental disorders. Recognizing stress symptoms can help us keep stress from snowballing from acute to chronic, prompt us to seek medical help when we need it, and keep us from suffering the debilitating effects of stress.

Effects of Stress

The effects of stress can dramatically impact our lives for better… or worse.

That extra rush of adrenalin, released during acute stress gives us a needed burst of speed when we flee from danger or an extra surge of power when we decide to stand and fight. However, when we fail to release stress by coping with life’s situations, it builds up until we either explode or collapse.

The consequences of stress can cause specific disorders in both mind and body. In addition to raising levels of the stress hormones, adrenaline and corticosterone (lately much talked about as cortisol), a build up of stress can cause headaches, digestive problems, eating disorders, insomnia, fatigue, and lower our resistance to other illnesses like colds and flu.

When we are deluged by a sequence of stressful situations, our bodies don’t have time to adjust and our minds don’t have to make the decisions necessary to deal with stress in a healthy manner. This is episodic stress. Over time, unrelieved stress, like episodic stress, can result in increased heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure, which in turn put undue stress on bodily organs such as the heart and lungs. Eventually our body gives up the fight; unable to flee from our problems we develop more significant problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and other illnesses.

Emotionally, stress can near literally burn us out. Long-term stress becomes chronic stress. Stress becomes inconspicuous, hiding behind feelings of hopelessness, constant anxiety, depression, and in severe cases serious mental aberrations such as paranoia and delusions. Of course, the worst-case consequence of stress is suicide.

Just as each individual differs from the next in his or her responses, there is no set limit as to how much stress each of us can endure. Each of us seems to be endowed with our own stress “thermometer”. When the mercury rises or plummets, in order to stay healthy we need to have a planned strategy to manage stress. Knowing and using a few stress management tips can make all the difference in the consequences of stress.

Stress Management Tips

All stress isn’t bad. Stress can initiate change, help us focus on the task at hand, and in some cases even save our lives. Yet, when stress builds up, it can result in the opposites— and cause us to spin our wheels, keep us from concentrating, and cause bodily injury and even loss of life.

The first tip in managing stress is to recognize your stressors. The next step is to put each of them in their place. The following stress management tips, based on some old and some new adages, can help you do just that!

Take a Deep Breath and Count to Ten—

Taking a deep breath or two adds oxygen to your system, which almost instantly helps you relax. In addition, taking a moment to step back can help you maintain your composure, which in the long run, is what you need to work rationally through a stressful situation.

Start with “take a deep breath” and…

1. Count to ten (or more or less as the situation warrants!)
2. Stand up and stretch. Remember relaxation is the opposite of stress.
3. Stand up and smile. Try it! You’ll feel better!
4. Take a short walk. If you’re at work, take a bathroom break or get a glass of water. Do something that changes your focus. When you come back to the problem, chances are it won’t seem nearly as insurmountable.
5. In the book Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’hara says, “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.” Good advice!

Stop and Smell the Roses—

“Things happen” and sometimes “bad things happen to good people”. If we let them, stressful events can build up, wall us in, and eventually stop us from enjoying the good things in life.

1. Take the time. Too often we put the pleasantries of life on the back burner, telling ourselves we don’t “have time” or can’t “make time” for them. However, actually, time is the only thing we do completely own. While we can’t “make” a day that’s longer than 24 hours, each of us starts the day with exactly that amount of time. Take a part of your time to recognize the good things in your life.
2. Sleep on it. Every coin has two sides and every issue has both pros and cons. List them both then put the list away and take a second look tomorrow. Sometimes “sleeping on” a situation changes the minuses to pluses.
3. Every cloud has a silver lining. After all, rain makes things grow! Ben Franklin found good in a bolt of lightning. Find the good in your stressful situation by listing the negative surges and determining what it will take to make them into positive charges!

“A Man's Got to Know His Limitations—”

Knowing yourself and your limits may be the most important way to manage stress effectively.

1. Dare to say no. One more little thing may be the “straw that breaks the camel’s back”. It’s okay to say “No”, “I can’t”, or “Later”.
2. Acquit yourself. Sometimes events really are out of control and you really are “Not Guilty”. Quit blaming yourself.
3. Be pro-active in finding peace. Those who unsuccessfully use the crutches of drugs and/or alcohol to alleviate stress often find themselves in a twelve-step program like A.A. where one of the mainstays is the Serenity Prayer:

“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; The Courage to change the things I can; and the Wisdom to know the difference.”

4. When you need help, get help. Even Atlas couldn’t bear the weight of the world on his shoulders forever. Whether you need help from kids or spouse in hauling groceries into the house, help from a colleague to solve a work-related problem, or professional help to find the causes of and effectively manage your stress, getting the help you need is in itself a major stress management tip!

Other Tips

• Get a good night's rest.
• Eat healthily.
• Listen to your favorite music.
• Exercise, participate in a sport or engage in fun activity.
• Plan out your time and prioritize.
• Talk to a friend about your problems, don't hold it in.
• Get a massage.
• Take a nap.
• Take a warm bath.
• Read a book or watch TV.