Top 5 — Stress Management Strategies That Work For Everyone

“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” — Hermann Hesse.

Can you imagine that an estimated 120,000 people die every year as a result of a work-related type of chronic stress? And to make matters even worse there are plenty of other types of stress that we cannot even calculate properly and tell what impact they have on our life. I understand it’s a sad note to start this article but it’s an important one, that the next time you see someone stressed you know how to help them or at least show some empathy.

On that note, we all probably know someone who appears to have everything always under control, like his/her mind is in some calm zen type of state where stress cannot be found, right? For them, I say congratulations and keep up the good work. However, you would be surprised how many times many of the stress-free people are only good at not showing or recognizing what they are feeling. Which is quite common, especially in men. At the end of the day, stress affects us all and is extremely challenging to control without proper training.

While you can’t always control what causes the stress, you can always control how you respond to stress. Of course, it is not something easy to do, however, first, you need to recognize that from the smallest changes to major crises stress is a natural part of life that humans are not able to avoid completely, which is why it’s crucial to learn to control it. The stress of everyday life walks together with us in every moment and can show itself in many ways:

Example: ‘Angry reply to an innocent question; Blurry mind; Lack of concentration; Headache; Nail biting without even thinking, or overthinking everything; Feeling no motivation to do anything; Felling tired, however, cannot sleep; Constant snacking when you are not even hungry’.

This is just a basic form of our mind and body telling us that something is not right and we are experiencing stress, of course, you might ignore it or not call it stress, since the word stress has always been associated with weakness and not something people like to admit, understand or work on.

In the majority of cases, stress will be gone by the end of a day or you will stop feeling it by distracting your mind with some form of entertainment which we have abundant of nowadays. But the big question is what happens if the stress continues without any management for longer periods of time?

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” ― Sydney J. Harris

Long-term stress eventually grows into anxiety or/and depression if not managed properly. This can cause severe consequences to your whole brain, nervous system and body. For most cases everyday life stress alone is easier to manage, but combine this with loneliness, series of misfortunes or significant negative changes like losing a job or death of a loved one and you can easily fall into the dark pits of your mind.

With misfortunes like these happening, anxiety and depression is far easier to get stuck in. To make the matters even worse this ‘scenario’ is actually happening nowadays.

With COVID-19 virus so many people have been hurt or lost their families and this takes stress into a whole new level worldwide. This is probably one of the reasons why I’ve decided to write this and share the best ways I am trying to keep my stress at bay. But before we move ahead to the management techniques let me help you understand what stress is in a simple way.

Stress — Has always played a vital role in human evolution and survival. It’s an adaptation mechanism embedded into our amazing bodies which helps us overcome difficulties. Stress is responsible for making us who we are today as people when used for our advantage stress makes us better and pushes us past our limits. But what actually happens when you experience stress or to much of stress without stopping?

Well to put it plain and simple: Our bodies organ (Adrenal glans) which sits on top of our kidneys sends chemicals (Cortisol) to tell your brain that something is not right (something like: get ready to run or fight), then the body gets a little tense and your breathing starts to increase which causes increased heart rate which then makes you lose some of the oxygen and your brain starts suffocating slowly.

Of course this is not a medical explanation an much more is happening in your body at the same time, however, to keep things simple I tried to sum-up this explanation.

It’s important to understand that If stress becomes something you experience daily and often without relaxing your body gets confused at what is happening and keeps sending excessive dose of chemicals (Cortisol) to your brain and that’s when we start having problems that we discussed before.

When it comes to stress you need to understand that it’s always the brain telling the body how to react. The brain communicates with the body and explains how to react to certain stressors that are caused by the environment, events, emotions, and other components occurring at that moment and this is important since here is a part where we learn how to respond to those factors and learn to overcome stress since we now know that brain at the end controls and tells body what to do.

“Stress acts as an accelerator: it will push you either forward or backward, but you choose which direction.” ― Chelsea Erieau

Stress Management

I’ll be sharing active and passive stress management techniques that work for me. By saying active I mean techniques that can be used while you experience stress at that moment and by saying passive I mean overall management that helps to reduce short and long-term stress in your life. So lets begin!

1. Deep breathing — This is one of the best ways for anyone to control their stress level. There are several ways to do this, but the one we are going to discuss is called deep breathing which would go like this: First sit down with a straight back and face looking forward or (my favorite) lie down on the floor or bed and relax your neck, shoulders, and back. Next breath in deeply and slowly through your nose and exhale fully through your nose again (If nose is blocked do it through mouth), try to focus on 2–3 seconds inhale and exhale, but you will know what time works for you once you try this. Concentrate your mind on the inhaling and exhaling and think about it while you sit or lie down. Repeat this process from 6–10 times. It’s so simple, but it is magical what it can do to your mind. What actually happens while you are deep breathing? Well you are resupplying your brain and body with fresh oxygen that helps you reduce your stress, heart rate and even improves mood (Perciavalle, V., Blandini, et al. 2017).
2. Exercise — One of the oldest but essential techniques to reduce overall stress level in your body for long-term benefit. Exercising as sometimes unpleasant and difficult as it is, still remains one of the best strategies to get your mind and body reduce stress and overall susceptibility to stress. This doesn’t mean that you need to get to the gym an start lifting heavy weights, not at all, regular pace 20–30 minutes workout that will increase your heart rate and get that oxygen to your brain and body will do the magic. Overall best approach is to keep a regular schedule and exercise couple of times a week at least to keep your body and brain less potent to overall stress. Think of this as regular cleaning session for your body and mind, since this is the first place that you should get under control.
3. Active speaking — Another way to control your stress is having regular ‘reload’ sessions or ‘moment’ chat with someone you trust and have good relationship with to talk openly without being shy (and you can help them the same way) or find a professional therapist who wants to help you (since it takes time to find one that understands you but it’s worth it). These weekly, monthly or ‘moment’ (Moment is for particular event or problem) chat type of sessions are extremely beneficial for you to learn and unload all the feelings and speaking about things that bother you deep down. This will not only help you understand where the issues are at, but what you should work on first. However, it’s crucial to mention that a lot of people use this active speaking time to drop their problems on others without actually listening to what they are saying, and this is not good for you or the listener. Since then this becomes one sided help and you do not get better just get used to unloading everything that makes you stressed or sad on somebody else. That’s why please keep in mind to use these sessions as therapy and learning on what needs to be changed or worked on.
4. Safe house — What I mean by Safe house that you need to find a safe place where you can go at the moments of stress, some place where you feel safe and good. It can be a favorite park, or a coffee shop on a corner, anything that gives you good and safe feeling, there you will be able to calm down and work on your stress. Majority of the people don’t even realize how impactful our environment and where we are growing or living in is for our mental and physical health. The stress that you are experiencing or dealing with on daily basis consist of events happening around you. Because one way or another they will affect you and this is why it’s important to recognize in what environment you are living. Could it be that majority of your issues are due to the people, living conditions or other environmental stressors that you surround yourself with? Ask yourself where is the root problem? According to research by social psychologist Dr. David McClelland of Harvard, ‘people you associate with determine as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life’. This should be something everyone should look into as first problem and find out what should be change to help you reduce and manage stress?
5. Sleeping pattern — Last but not least we have SLEEP. As you may know human body required sleep, this is how we get energy and recover, and as with exercise sleep is one of the fundamental ways to reduce overall stress. Of course that’s why I am talking about sleep patterns since sleeping only couple of hours will not do the trick and having unbalanced sleep will also have negative affect. Which is why it’s important that you have a schedule and go to sleep regularly on the same time that your body would learn when it’s time to recover and rest. This will give you a head start when dealing with stress and anxiety. Of course stress can fill our head with thoughts and prevent us from sleeping at the beginning, instead we would be rolling in bed tired, however, the previous methods mentioned will help you calm your mind down so make sure you utilize them before going to bed to get a good night sleep. (P.S. Avoid exercise just before sleep since then your blood pressure will increase and you will be alert unable to close your eyes. Exercise earlier during the day or 3–5 hours before bed maximum).

“When you find yourself stressed, ask yourself one question: Will this matter in 5 years from now? If yes, then do something about the situation. If no, then let it go.” ― Catherine Pulsifer

Thank you for reading and I hope you found this useful. If you like the publication please don’t hesitate to like, comment and follow me to help others learn more about stress management and help me get the motivation to keep working on other articles. Stay safe!