Can you give me concrete tips for stress management that I can integrate into my life?
Additional Concrete Tips for Stress Prevention and Reduction:
If you find that your stress level has reached unhealthy levels, it is time to incorporate tools of stress reduction into your everyday life. As a counselor with 20 years of experience, I have been teaching stress management skills for many years. In part two of my series, I talked about the benefits of quality sleep, healthy eating, and physical movement. The third article went into stress-busters like paring down your workload and changing your expectations. In my final part of this stress management series, I will address some additional concrete tips for stress prevention and reduction. They are:
*Building an Emotional Support System
* Learning to Incorporate Regular Stress Relieving Activities into our Lives
* Adding Consistent Doses of Fun into our Existence
As Human beings, we were created to be social creatures. We are designed to need relationships, conversations, and attachments to enrich our lives. Stress is like a poison building up and flowing throughout our whole body. One of the best ways to relieve this toxic imbalance is to get together with people and talk out your problems or just laugh, play, love or joke with someone else. Therefore, social relationships should become a primary avenue for stress reduction. Here are some forms of building up your communal connections:
Building an Emotional Support System
- Stay in regular touch with friends and family (make a point to call, write or get-together)
- Find a Counselor (you can even have a supportive telephone conversation at supportivetalk.com )
- Join a sports team/club or organization (Think outside the box: there are knitting, card, book, community, scrapbooking, game, fantasy football, and computer clubs) Check out your church, school, community or computer for ideas of groups.
- A religious advisor will meet with you to help you through an obstacle.
- Look for a support group. They are normally free and developed for all kinds of issues.
- Develop a legitimate computer relationships (you need to check out the background or personally know someone on the internet before ever getting into a relationship for your personal safety or find a website that protects your identity, and you can just talk)
Next, learn to incorporate regular stress relieving activities on a daily basis. I say a joyful statement before I climb out of bed, have a quick breakfast out in my garden, tune into a funny talk radio program as I prepare for the day and listen to audio books as I apply my makeup and curl my hair. It starts my day off on the right foot. I exercise daily and read before bed to maintain a more calming mood. Another tip would be to stay in tune with your body. If it is telling you that your stress level is too high….purposefully add some activities to reduce this problem. Check out article 8 in this series to learn more concrete ideas’ at www.supportivetalk.com.
If you would like to learn more about this subject from other authors like 10 Steps to Mastering Stress by David H. Barlow, Ph.D., Ronald M. Rapee, Ph.D., Sarah Perini, MA or The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living by Amit Sood, MD and Mayo Clinic. If you’d like to read more by this author, you can go to www.suportivetalk.com and read Part 1: Understanding your Stress or Part 2: Stress-Reducing Healthy Initiatives.