Is the stress in your life starting to become overwhelming? Do you long for some type of stress relief? We all experience some form of stress in our lives. Whether it comes from work, money frustrations, misbehaving children, or even letting another person negatively affect your thoughts and actions. How do you manage the stressful situations in your life? Finding positive techniques to cope with stress is the solution. You may never be completely stress-free but you will learn how to positively deal with the stressful factors that are bothering you. You will be able to provide yourself with different ways to relieve your stress enabling yourself to become a happier, positive, and productive person.
What Causes Stress?
Any factor that causes a person stress is known as a stressor. A stressor can be an event, a person, or an environmental condition. Simply, a stressor is anything that makes you feel anxious, worried, or overwhelmed, the main source of your stress. A stressor triggers the release of stress hormones which negatively affect a person’s mental or physical well-being. Every person will experience stress at some point. How you chose to manage your stress and give yourself stress relief is the most important factor.
Negative Stress Relief Methods
Everybody has a different way to relieve their stress. Although, some people choose to cope with their stress in a negative manner, unintentionally of course. If you are managing your stress in a healthy manner, you can ultimately cause yourself even more harm. Here are some unproductive coping methods that people use to temporarily give themselves stress relief.
- Withdrawing from society (Not associating with friends and family, staying to yourself)
- Smoking (People who smoke tend to chain smoke when something’s bothering them)
- Drinking alcohol or using drugs (Putting their self in an alternate state of mind)
- Overeating (Binging on comfort food)
- Sleeping too much (Trying to sleep their problems away)
- Aggression (Harmfully acting out on other people)
If you are using one of these methods for stress relief, you need to rethink your strategy. Causing harm to yourself or others is not fixing the original problem. It may make you feel better for the moment but, the stressor remains and now you have more problems to elevate your stress levels. The key is to learn healthy methods to relieve stress.
Positive Stress Relief Methods
If you have come to realize that you need healthier ways to manage stress or you simply do not know how to provide yourself with positive stress relief methods. You must first need to know where to begin. What is your stressor? Identify what the problem is, exactly what is causing you to feel this way. Once, you know what the problem is, you can then find a healthy way to cope with your stress. When you feel in control, you can better assess the situation.
Physical Activity
When you feel stressed out, especially when your stressor is a person that has had a negative impact on you. You can feel almost as if you are out of control. Your energy levels sky rocket. You want to lash out. This is when it becomes easy to harm someone else or yourself. Instead of physically attacking someone or something, redirect your energy. Do one of these physical activities.
- Go for a long walk
- Workout, exercise
- Dance
- Punch and kick a heavy weight bag
- Ride a bike
These are just a few physical ways to quickly redirect your negative energy. Now that you have taken out your aggression elsewhere, you will feel better. You have had time to truly think things through. Your mind was probably racing as you were using up your energy. You now know how to either eliminate the stressor or deal with it, both in a positive manner.
Keep A Journal
Another positive stress relief method is writing. People deal with different problems in different ways. Try keeping a journal. When writing in a journal, it gives you a way to openly express your feelings while still keeping them private. Keeping a journal allows you to write down all the stressors that you are experiencing. Once you put them on paper, they are easier to deal with. It’s almost as if a huge weight has been lifted off of your shoulders.
Write in your journal as if you are talking to someone. Discuss how you can cope with the negative, stressful factors that you are experiencing. Maybe you will find a way to turn the stressor into a positive factor, in turn, it will not make you feel stressed anymore. After writing it all down and reading it again. If you still can’t find a way to deal with the problem, then eliminate it. If it’s a person that is causing you stress, it might be time to say goodbye. Don’t let a person causing you grief and trouble take up space in your head. If it’s a place, don’t go there anymore. If it’s money, find a way to become financially secure. There is always a solution, you just have to find it. Keeping a journal can help you see things more clearly. Read what you wrote, you might realize something that you didn’t notice before. Writing is a very helpful and relaxing tool.
A Healthy Life
If you are living an unhealthy lifestyle, there is no doubt you feel stressed out, probably all the time. You need to change the way that you are living. If you are constantly under stress, that is a major sign that you are not living the life you should be. Changing the way you live is a lot easier said than done. So start small. Do one thing at a time.
- Sleep- Getting enough rest is one of the main factors in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. If you are tired, you will feel horrible. Stressors will affect you and change your mood much easier.
- Diet- Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Breakfast will give you the strength needed to start the day off on the right foot. Eating a healthy well-balanced diet will keep you focused and properly functioning. You will be ready to face the day and whatever may come your way.
- Self Medication- Don’t do drugs including alcohol. Not only are they bad for your body but, they can cause you to make bad decisions. It may be a way to temporarily relieve stress by masking the stressor. Once, the high wears off, you are back to where you started. It is pointless and will only make things worse. When you started off trying to forget about one problem that caused you stress, now you most likely added to it.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the most important form of stress relief. If you live a healthy lifestyle, you will feel better about yourself. You won’t get stressed out as often or as easily. You have a healthy, clear, and focused mind allowing you to be ready to cope with any stressors that come at you. I’m sure you have noticed that people that are healthy and active seem a lot happier and stress-free compared to those people sitting at the bar drowning their sorrows in alcohol.
Other Stress Relief Techniques
There are other ways to deal with stress. Every person deals with stress in their own individual way. Others use different methods to deal with the different stressors in their life. If it’s a person that causing you stress, you might go for a walk. If it’s financial trouble, you may need to express yourself by journaling. Here are some more methods people use to deal with the stressful factors in their life.
- Gardening
- Long, relaxing bath
- A nature hike
- Adult coloring books
- Reading a book
- Crafts
- Painting
- Listening to music
The list is endless, it can go on and on. A stress relief method is simply a positive way that you personally use to deal with a stressful factor. \
Final Conclusion
When it comes down to it, there is going to come a time when something will cause you to feel stress. If you live a healthy lifestyle, you will be better prepared to deal with the stressor. As long as you cope with stress in a positive, healthy way, stress will leave you just as fast as it came. It’s when you negatively try to deal with the problem, that the stress will hit you even harder. Most likely, creating a bigger problem causing even more stress. Every person has to deal with things in their life that they do not like or that “stress them out”. What matters, is how you choose to deal with it.