How to Deal with Stress

We all are facing various challenges in our lives especially after the pandemic of covid-19. They can be overwhelming, stressful, and have a strong emotional impact. Things masking, social distancing, vaccination, and other protocols have changed social norms across the world. I’m not going to discuss whether they’re right or wrong, you all know it better. However, all of these changes can be stressful. Today, we’ll discuss how to deal with stress. 

Symptoms of Stress 

Before jumping into the discussion of how to deal with stress, it’s important to know and understand the symptoms of stress. Any traumatic experience can have a strong reaction, the right support, care, and coping mechanism would help you to hand stress. The stress could have emotional or physical symptoms; some of them are as follows; 

• Increasing the usage of alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics
• Aggravating mental health conditions and other chronic health issues 
• A reaction like skin rashes, stomach problems, body pain, headaches, etc
• Difficulty in decision making, focusing, having nightmares, and sleeping disorder
• Change in interests, moods, desires, energy, and appetite 
• Feeling of frustration, numbness, worry, sadness, anger, shock, fear, etc 
• State of disbelief 

After a wave of the pandemic, natural disaster, mass-shooting, or any other traumatic experience, the feelings of worrisome, grief, anxiety, and stress are natural. The reaction and symptoms towards it vary from person to person. 

How to deal with stress 

It’s time to discuss how to deal with stress, some of the main tips and suggestions for managing stress are as follows; 

Take Care of Yourself 

The self-care habit plays a significant role especially when you’re dealing with stress and anxiety. It’s because your body has specific needs, when you meet those needs, then you start seeing the results. However, many people treat themselves very poorly, and no wonder why they’re exhausted, worn out, and struggling all the time. Therefore, it’s important that you should develop a self-care habit that works for you. There’s an old saying: 

“Worship your body like a temple” 

It means your body would respond well when you treat yourself with love, care, and respect. It requires a deep sense of compassion and love. Therefore, you should develop a relationship with your mind, body, and soul; and pay attention and listen to their signal.

Avoid Negative Thoughts 

You should avoid and break down negative habits and negative thoughts. It is usually unintentional; you should be aware of self-criticism and negative self-thoughts. It’s important to pay attention to your feelings, thoughts, behavior, and how your mind is operating. For instance, when your mind is telling you that you are stressed, frustrated, and fed up in certain situations. 

Have a picture of yourself as a child, keep it in your mind, and remember that this little child is talking to you. You should talk to yourself with compassion and love like you’re speaking to a little child. 

Love & Parent yourself 

Being an adult means that you take the power and responsibility of your parents. It means that the company of yourself should make you feel safe and loved, and you should develop such feelings within yourself. However, the ultimate step of mental health is when you take complete responsibility for yourself. It’s the realization that you’re completely within you and everything you need you’ll find within yourself. You should have the feeling of respecting, loving and caring for yourself, and it’s the most important relationship you have with yourself. 

Implement Positive self-approach 

Know that you’re the creator of your own life story. How you describe your work, home, family, and yourself has a great impact on your life. However, the words you use for yourself have significance in terms of creating a framework of the life you have created and the way you feel. In other words, it’s your life story; use the appropriate words to describe yourself. 

You should practice visualizing your life the way you wanted, and then starting behaving and feeling the same way. Human beings have a remarkable ability to respond to their imaginations. However, when you imagine and acknowledge the goodness in your life and tell yourself/friends/family the same things. The repetitive actions and experiences would fill your life with good memories to remember. 

Learn the Power of the Sub-conscious mind 

We have got a lot of control over our mind and our subconscious mind is open towards suggestions. In fact, you have complete control over anxiety and stress if you remain confident and keep your mind calm. Therefore, you should learn to talk with your mind. 

For instance, your conscious mind acts as a parent, and the subconscious mind is like a child. Your reaction and response towards feelings like hate or love; you should calmly approach your subconscious mind. 

Following the positive approach doesn’t mean that you should change yourself. It means that you should rightly access your best higher-self, a part of your brain that lives in the moment and free. However, it means training your mind to focus on positivity and love, instead of anxiety and fear. 

Know Anxiety isn’t your fault 

The root cause of stress and anxiety are blaming yourself, and you always remember that it’s not your fault in order to move away from the crippling effect. Just like everyone, you have the instinct of negative bias and fear, and it helps you to survive. However, the strength of negative bias helps you to face traumatic experiences and danger with strong energy. 

Remove Triggers

You should create a list of things that are causing stress in your life, and they could be schoolwork, traveling, job, etc. Once you recognize those trigger points, then you can easily overcome them. However, if it’s difficult to find out the causes of the stress, then you should remember the situations when you feel stressed. It’s a very good technique to avoid the trigger points that cause stress. 

Talk About your Issues 

If certain things are irritating you, then you should talk about them with your friends, relatives, therapist, or doctor. It would help you to reduce your stress level. However, self-talking is a great technique to reduce. You should make sure that self-talking is positive, and not negative. 

You should pay close attention to your thought when you’re under stress. It means changing the negative message into the positive one. For instance, you shouldn’t tell yourself what you can’t do. You should tell yourself that you’re doing the best you can. 

Develop Interest & Passion 

You should make time for time and do things that you like which make you happy. Your passion, interest, and hobbies would decrease your stress level. 20 to 30 minutes are sufficient daily, some of the main interests are as follows; 

• Boardgame & playing cards
• Doing puzzles 
• Watching movies 
• Playing golf 
• Art project
• Knitting 
• Reading 

Take a Break/How to deal with stress 

You should take a break from the busy stressful routine and give yourself time off. If you prefer to work on goals and projects, then you should stay focused on your objectives. Some of the break time activities are; 

• Spending time in nature
• Listening to the music 
• Prayers
• Video making
• Yoga
• Meditation 

Slow Down

Digital media and tech work speed up everything and everyone is busy in today’s world. In such an environment, you should slow down things like; 

You should divide the work into smaller tasks. 

• For instance, instead of answering all the emails at once, you can answer a few, and leave them for later. 
• When you’re traveling, move your vehicle to the slow lane to avoid heavy traffic. 
• You should set the time of your watch 5 minutes ahead; it would help you to be on time

Balanced Diet 

If you’re eating a balanced diet, then it would keep your mind healthy and your mood in control. Your diet should comprise of protein and energy-oriented food like grains, fruit, and vegetable. However, if you’re eating food that is not good, then it would impact your mood, and increase your stress level. 

Deep Breathing

You should pause for a moment, and take deep breaths. It would help you release the tension and pressure. It has a surprising impact, follow these steps; 

• You should sit or lie down comfortably, keep your hands on the lap, and your feet on the floor. 
• Close your eyes 
• Imagine that you’re in a peaceful place 
• Take deep breaths, inhale and exhale 
• Repeat it for 5 to 10 minutes 

Ease your Muscles 

Stress can tense your mind and pull your muscles. However, you can relax your muscles in the following ways; 

• Deep sleep at night 
• Hot shower
• Massage 
• Stretching 

Exercising 

Exercising is a very good way to relax your mind and body. Some of the main exercises are; 

• Sports 
• Jogging 
• Swimming 
• Brisk walk (2.30 hours)
• Exercise (75 minutes)

Conclusion: how to deal with stress 

After an in-depth study of how to deal with stress, we’ve realized that stress and anxiety have an injurious impact on our health. If you’re facing stressful circumstances, then follow and practice the abovementioned suggestions and tips on your life to manage stress.