Life is stressful today due to many reasons. Whatever they are, most of them cannot be avoided. We cannot avoid work pressure. We cannot avoid traffic. We cannot avoid responsibilities. So, we cannot avoid stress. But with stress come most chronic diseases and ailments that we can avoid only if we know how to avoid some stress or handle the remaining.
Do you know how many diseases can you fall prey to if you are unable to manage stress? Sores, Headache, shingles, muscle spasm, thyroid, rosacea, hives, thrush, genital herpes, dermatitis, STDs, migraine, sty, psoriasis, heartburn, rhinitis, eczema, hypertension, vitiligo, TMJ, Roseau, dyspepsia, cancer, xerostomia, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, IBS, heart attack, diabetes, CVS, heart rhythm disorders and many more. Imagine how difficult can your stress make your life. Not just your life span would be shortened, but the small life that you live will also be full of pain and suffering. So, why not do something about it?
We know that stress cannot be avoided sometimes, but many of us also think that it cannot be managed or reduced which is not true. Stress can be tackled and here are some self-help techniques that you can use to reduce your stress and live a better life:
Avoid Stress: Prevention is better than cure. Everyone knows this, so, deal with your stress, even before it grows big using these techniques-
• Meditate: Meditation is a great way that gets rid of annoying and negative thoughts that can make you stressful. You may use a guided imagery while doing meditation to increase the impact.
• Exercise: Regular exercise can help you release stress with stretching exercises flexing your body and relieving pain areas where your stress hormones are piled up.
• Avoid Emotions causing stress: Most times, the causes of stress are some negative emotions such as fear, anger, irritation, restlessness, etc. So, if you want to avoid stress, nip the cause in the bud itself. Control your anger before it stresses you out. How to do that? Hold your breath at the first sign of anger and start counting your fingers. Go on till you feel the heat inside your body coming down. Then smile and your stress would be gone. You may also try a positive self-talk in your head like - “everything will be fine”, “you can deal with this”, “this is easy”, “it is OK”, “forgive and forget as it is not a big deal”.
Coping Strategies: You can use coping strategies when you are already in stress and you need to handle it to minimize its deteriorating effects on your body. But how do you do that? Here are some very simple ways to help you-
• Talk to people: Talk to people you can trust and tell your stress story. You will surely feel some relief when you open up with them.
• Write: We all know that our stress reduces when we can talk to a friend about it but what if we cannot? Write about your events that made you stressful and write how they made you feel for 15 minutes. Do this exercise daily and you will feel relaxed after the activity. You may even discover an idea to release your stress or solve your life problems in this process.
• Enjoy: Do something’s that can make you feel good. You may retort to your hobbies or travel with nature, play games, watch a comedy movie, etc. Do anything that makes you feel less stressful.
• Laugh: Laugh out loud so you start to feel happy. It is scientifically proven that just as our emotions generate a specific reaction in our body, if we make our body artificially behave the same way as the reaction, the related emotion also gets into our head automatically. So, when you are happy then you laugh and when you laugh, you become happy.
• Listen to Music: Keep whatever you are doing aside for a while and play your favorite songs or nature sounds. Spend a few minutes doing nothing but listening to them and you will slowly get into a meditative state where your mind would start to wander free in the air releasing the stress that was holding it tight.
• Quick Walk: A quick walk in the garden or any open space when you feel stressed can help you instantly. Try stretching exercises at that time, so you will release some stress that must have caused spasms in your body immediately.