Your Stress Doesn’t Have to Own You

April 29, 2020 John Uncategorized No comments

What do you do when the constant stress of staying tethered to your house all day feels unbearable? Try some suggestions from this GenuLines list to help you “chunk-down” the job of de-stressing.

Your Stress Doesn’t Have to Own You

Stress is unavoidable in life, but we don’t have to feel stressed around the clock. We can often prevent stressful incidents and decrease our negative reactions to them.

As a result, many times all we have to do to reduce our stress is to acknowledge that it’s there. Also, there are steps we can take to do an effective job of stress management.

Managing time

Time management skills can allow you more time with your family and friends. Furthermore, they can help with performance and productivity.

This will help reduce stress.

To improve your time management:

· Save time by focusing and concentrating, delegating, and scheduling time for yourself.

· Keep a record of how you spend your time, including work, family, and leisure time.

· Prioritize your time by rating tasks by importance and urgency. Re-direct your time to activities that are important and meaningful to you.

· Manage your commitments by not over- or under committing. Don’t commit to what isn’t important to you.

· Deal with procrastination by using a day planner. Break large projects into smaller ones.

And set short-term deadlines.

· Examine your beliefs to reduce conflict between what you believe and what your life is like.

Build healthy stress coping strategies

It’s important that you identify your coping strategies. One way to do this is by recording stressful events, your reaction, and how you cope in a journal.

With this information, you can turn unhealthy coping strategies into healthy ones. Those that help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life.

Lifestyle

Some behaviors and lifestyle choices affect your stress level. These may not be direct causes of stress.

But they can interfere with the ways your body seeks relief from stress. Try to:

· Balance personal, work, and family needs and obligations.

· Have a sense of purpose in life.

· Make sure you get enough sleep since your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you are sleeping.

· Eat a balanced diet for a nutritional defense against stress.

· Get moderate exercise throughout the week.

· Limit your consumption of alcohol.

· Don’t smoke.

Social support

Social support is a major factor in how we experience stress. This is the positive support you get from family, friends, and the community.

It affirms to you that you’re cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued. And research shows social support can support better mental and physical health.

Ways of thinking

When something triggers negative thoughts, you may experience a range of problems. These include fear, insecurity, anxiety, depression, rage, and guilt.

Add to those a sense of worthlessness or powerlessness.

Emotions like these trigger the body’s stress, much like an actual threat does. Dealing with your negative thoughts and how you see things can help reduce stress.

· Thought-stopping helps you stop a negative thought to help do away with stress.

· Disproving irrational thoughts is good practice. You’ll avoid exaggerating the negative thought and anticipating the worst. And you won’t give it an incorrect interpretation.

· Problem solving helps you identify all aspects of a stressful event and find ways to deal with it.

· Maybe it’s time to change your communication style. You want to make sure others won’t feel put down, hostile, or intimidated.

This reduces the stress that comes from poor communication. Use the assertiveness ladder to improve your communication style.