I don’t know about you but it seems as I grow older my life has grown busier. In the past I found that as my life got busier I began feeling overwhelmed by stress and its accompanying anxiety.
I’m sure that you understand that having anxiety and stress in your life is as normal as the sun rising in the morning, but when you don’t deal with it properly it can lead to severe physical complications and even mental disorders. Stress can come from your work or your personal life. When you’re stressed out for too long it can lead to nervousness, anxiety, irritability and even depression. These problems can lead to high blood pressure, digestive issues and lower immunity to disease. The long term affects of anxiety and stress also include insomnia.
Because stress is such a big issue in many people’s lives, especially now, I’d like to give you 10 quick anxiety and stress relief tips that I’ve found are excellent for dealing with stress . Hopefully you can use them to help lower the stress in your life too.
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In the past, stressful situations would make my palms sweaty, my heart race, my neck tight and my stomach hurt. When I first started getting these symptoms I could make them go away, but after a while I found myself less able to handle the stress, getting more aggravated and unable to sleep. Soon after I couldn’t handle the stress at all and I found myself tired and exhausted, barely able to navigate through my life on a daily basis. I was on stress overload.
Maybe you’ve felt like I did, so you decide to go to your doctor. What happens? Your doctor tells you that you need to relax. Relax? You don’t have time to relax, but I bet you don’t have time for a heart attack either. So you’re probably asking “How can I learn to relax?” Try relaxation training.
Relaxation training is made up of techniques you can learn and practice on your own. Once you learn them you can practice them anywhere. Here are some things that can help you learn to relax and stay calm.
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When I’m stressed out I either shut down or overreact. If my daughter comes home late I may raise my voice or talk without even trying to listen. If someone I care about psychically injures me, I may avoid her or carefully word any interaction I have with her to steer clear of confronting the situation and working it out. I do both of these things because, at times, my reaction causes a definite and immediate stress response. This reaction has a definite impact on my communications.
Let me ask you, are you having problems with your relationships at home and at work? Do even the smallest annoyances cause you to respond with angry “knee jerk” reactions like yelling or swearing? The facts are that the stress caused by your response to these events can immobilize you emotionally. This stress response can wear down the communications in all of your relationships.
Chronic stress affects you both physically and emotionally. It also wears you down psychologically. Stress can cause your mind to race and your sleep to suffer. As it wears you down your nerves get set on edge. Things that you used to laugh about can infuriate you. You suddenly find yourself exploding at co-workers and loved ones and remaining angry long after the incident is over. This can lead to a vicious spiral of avoidance followed by louder and even more violent outbursts. Left unchecked, this type of chronic emotional stress can ruin you both personally and professionally.
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What’s the great thing about work? You get to work with people. What’s the bad thing about work? You get to work with people. Work can generate lots of stress. From tight deadlines to irksome co-workers stress in the workplace is everywhere.
Now, a little stress is actually good. Stress can help you work harder and function at your best. Stress can help you focus, but too much stress can be bad for both your mental and physical health. In order to perform at your best, work and office stress should be managed to prevent other more severe problems from cropping up, like depression or anxiety.
Here are seven simple work and office stress relief tips that you can use to reduce your workplace stress and live a happier, healthier life.
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What happens when you are in a stressful situation? Does your head hurt or your back ache? Does your stomach start to get upset? One of the best ways to more easily relieve your stress is to know how to define the stress you are experiencing.
Psychologists tell us there are two types of stress. One is known as distress and the other is known of eustress. They are both a result of your fight or flight response and can have the same physiological affect on your body. Even though they have the same physiological affects, they are as different as two sides of the same coin. One is actually useful to your body while the other is harmful.
Eustress is an anxious feeling that feels more like anticipation than dread. You may experience eustress before giving a presentation at work, going out on a date, before a job interview or when preparing a gourmet meal from a recipe you’ve never tried to cook before.
Although all these types of activities can give you the feeling of uncertainty, the outcome isn’t fatal. A good way to look at eustress is when a man’s hands shake as he shows the engagement ring to the one he loves. It also manifests itself as the bride’s pre-wedding jitters while she prepares to walk down the aisle. While stressful, I am sure you would agree that both these would be “good” stress because they represent taking a step toward a positive outcome.
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I believe that Michael Jackson was one of the most talented entertainers of our era. In the 70’s I rode around blasting “I’ll be there”, “ABC” and “Got to be there” out of my AM radio from my Burgundy 1964 Chrysler New Yorker that my dad and I painted. I loved Michael’s stuff. Now I must admit it was probably largely due to the fact that the girls loved his stuff too, but Michael, to me, was living the life. He had it made. Little did I know, right?
As he and I grew older, although Michael continued to create and perform some fantastic hits, his personal life seemed to be in a tailspin. So did his health. He contracted lupus in the 1980’s. Lupus is an autoimmune disease where the immune system turns against parts of the body, destroying the very cells and tissues it is meant to protect.
Although there is no one cause for lupus, according to the Lupus Foundation of America some of the factors that contribute to it are exhaustion, injuries, emotional stress, illness, life complications as well as anything that causes stress to the body, such as surgery or physical harm. Scientist have also found that a person can also become more susceptible to the disease when they are taking a drug to treat an illness
Now let’s take a look at what happened to Michael. In 1984 he was burned while singing for a Pepsi-Cola commercial in Los Angeles. When this happened he was the number one recording artist in the world. I would imagine that this added a great deal of acute emotional stress to Michael’s life that eventually turned in to chronic stress.
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Some people talk about avoiding stress. There is no way to completely avoid stress. Stress is a normal and natural part of life. There is never going to be a time in your life when you are not dealing with some sort of stress. Even if you go on the perfect vacation you will still deal with at least a tiny bit of it.
Some people don’t realize that there is that there is both good stress and bad stress. The problem is that most of us have way too much of the bad type. This makes the affects of good type to be just as bad. If you are dealing with stress on the job, there are some simple ways to relieve stress to help yourself get through it without damaging your health or your relationships.
First let’s take a quick look at the types of stress. Good stress, also known as eustress, is the type that keeps us alive and provides us with the input to make good decisions. Eustress helps you do the best on the project you’ve been assigned, keeping you focused and preventing you from making mistakes. Eustress makes you think, and I’m sure you’ll agree that is something that everyone should do before they start any project or task, even when it is one that they do all of the time.
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Okay, you’ve figured it out – you’re stressed out. Now what? Now it’s time to notice how it’s affecting you. I’ll almost bet you that you’ll find your breathing is a lot shallower. In fact, if you’re like most people, you’ll probably find that you are holding your breath during stressful moments, like when you have to confront a family member or co-worker about their behavior.
As a martial arts instructor I can assure you that correct breathing is one of the easiest relaxation techniques you can practice to control your stress. If you can’t control your breathing you can’t control your stress.
Let me give you an example from the martial arts. An essential part of hard style martial arts training is known as sparring (using your skills to fight in a very controlled manner). This is designed to put a student under stress so that they can learn to respond to attack in a safe enviornment. This allows the student to learn how to use their skills without being physically harmed.
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