We will see the stress management techniques and it’s reduction but first let us know about stress. Stress is basically a human reaction physically and mentally against changes occurring in your life regarding lifestyle or certain situation. Good thing about stress is that it is a body’s own defence system against any serious dangerous changes in your ecosystem and to make you adjust with the changes our own body produces hormones to evade or confront danger. This is called Fight or flight syndrome. Either face it or run away from it.
Stress management techniques used by Our body
In response to the stress our body activates symptoms according to type and severity and our nervous system gets flooded by the hormones to fight with it or to catch a flight to run away from the situation. This psychological response against emergency situation by our nervous system is called “Fight or Flight” response. Actually, a chain of reactions appears rapidly inside our body to use the resources to deal with the emergent situations. The sympathetic nervous system gets activated because of release of hormones stimulating adrenal glands just above our kidneys which triggers the release of harmones called catcholamines. This complete mechanism is responsible for the response against stress.
There are physical signs which indicate the response of body against stress such as pale skin, dilated pupils, trembling, rapid heart rate and breathing.
Stress good or bad and when it is alarming?
We tend to understand stress in our life always bad but let me tell you the truth. Might not have heard it but yes, stress is good too. It allows you to handle your daily life chores more effectively. I will give you some small examples.
Suppose you have to reach office for an urgent meeting an hour before you reach daily and stressed out to wake up in the morning. So, you change your mindset and hence your body clock accordingly and sometime more often than not you will find yourself getting up before you’re your alarm clock making sounds.
You can be stressed out for a surprise visit to your daughter’s birthday party much earlier than expected and here you will find your body giving signals for the same.
So, on a positive note let’s find out it’s negative aspects and how do we train ourself for that. When situation leads you to experience too much of content stress, it will make you function less.
You might feel:
- Not able to concentrate
- Poor or very little sleep for a prolonged period
- Feeling isolated, withdrawn or worthless
- Headaches almost regularly and severe also
- Weight loss or gain for not known reason
- Fallen to continuous Worries or obsessive thinking
- Feeling isolated, withdrawn or worthless
Above are the signals and can drag you to alarming condition if not taken care of in time. Effects of stress are serious.
- Your blood pressure can rise
- Rapid heartbeat
- Muscle tensions or jaws clenching
- Digestive problems
- Pains and aches
- Sleeplessness
- Depression
- Irritability
Repeated stress can be a cause of cognitive issues and hence it becomes alarming if getting any such indication.
Methods to diagnose Stress
Identifying stress with symptoms
It’s very subjective and different for different persons. What is alarming for me is not the same for you. Because it all depends on the mindset. No specific tests. Not easily measurable but there are methods and techniques to deal with stress and train yourselves to live with it. Let me briefly explain this aspect.
Most effectively it is diagnosed by one-to-one interview of the patients by medical practitioners, counsellors and psychotherapists. cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and self talk is very important tool for this.
There are different therapies and questionnaires used by psychotherapists and counsellors. Medical practitioner can help you with treatment of underlying medical symptoms say for example anti-depressant medicines. They can diagnose high blood pressure and treat it. They can also pinpoint the traumas due to many reasons and also can treat it. Recently world population passed through heavy stress because of the trauma created by pandemic after corona effect.
You can use the services of experts for your stressed mindset and reason can be pinpointed. But most important point is that you only have to wake up for all this.
Different stress management or busting techniques
The very first step is to get ready to get rid of stress. Stress is subjective — not measurable with tests. Only the person’s own experience can determine the presence of it and amount of severity. They categorize the stress symptoms pertaining to specific group of students, teenage, adults, women, elder people etc.,
For example, high blood pressure can be diagnosed and treated.
With the help of NLP, the neuro linguistic programming of your brain and say mindset will also help you to take the control of your life, your stress.
Coping strategies with stress
Apart from medical treatment and psychological counselling or psychotherapy , one should bring changes in lifestyle. There are small changes which can bring great results. Some examples are below.
A good number of daily exercises make you feel great.
Guided Meditation specially mindfulness meditation is another very well accepted method to slowly bring you out of stress. Yoga, relaxation methods for stress reduction are very helpful. You can do deep breathing anywhere anytime to get relief from stress. These are holistic approach towards mitigation of stress from your work or school or from daily life.
Various kind of activities of your choice can bring feeling of satisfaction and are real stress buster. Activities can be your hobby like reading, sports, painting, music or going out, cooking and so many.
Stress buster techniques are basically training yourself to take good care of your mental and physical health.
Keep meeting people or groups of your liking to come out of your isolation.
Avoid on alcohol. Have nutritious food.