Stress Management

by EJ Hanks, Reach Therapist Intern

Stress is all around us.  It can arise in many forms including dealing with monthly bills, coordinating family duties, handling school responsibilities, professional commitments, and major life events, such as births, marriages, divorces, and deaths.  Sometimes you may feel that you are losing control and cannot keep up with the demands of your life.  Stress can make you irritable, angry, and frustrated toward everyone around you.  Feeling anxious and emotional or having difficulty eating and sleeping can also be responses to stress. Without good stress management skills, our health and relationships with others will suffer. While certain stressors are ultimately unavoidable, we can minimize how we react to stress by finding a healthy and manageable balance. 

Managing stress is all about taking charge: of your thoughts, emotions, calendar, and the way you react to problems.  Stress management starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life.  While not always obvious, what are the regular stressors in your life and how you deal with them?  Keeping a stress log or journal can help you spot the things that cause you to feel stressed and how you responded to the event.  Once you recognize these stressors, you can begin to take action to lessen their impact on your life.

Successful coping with these stressful events requires rearranging our lives to decrease the demands on us and, more importantly, learning new coping skills to increase the resources available to us.  Some tips on helping decrease your reactions to stressful events:

• Lead a healthy lifestyle – Eat nutritious, well balanced meals; get plenty of sleep; exercise

• Avoid drugs and alcohol – May seem to help cope temporarily, but they cause greater long term and permanent harm

• Increase your social network – Talk to family, friends and others; participate in community or other social activities to make new friends

• Do something you enjoy -  Take up a hobby or try something new and exciting

• Relax – Take a break when you are feeling overwhelmed; try mindfulness, yoga, or get a massage

• Recognize when you need more help – When your methods of stress reduction do not seem to work or you are thinking about suicide, see your doctor or therapist. 

Some stress relievers may work better than others for your individual situation.  If one method does not work, try another one.  Keep a journal or a list of the types of events and the successful type of stress reliever that you used.

If you're looking for extra support and guidance through dealing with stress, another challenging situation, or you're just ready to move in a new direction in your life, Therapist Interns at Pfeiffer Institute Reach look forward to working with you, your partner, or your family to achieve your goals.