Effectively dealing with stress

Effectively dealing with stress in a few simple steps. Yes, you can!

Being under stress is fast becoming a way of life for most everyone. So much so, that the term, ’stressed out’ is part of our vernacular. No doubt, there’s plenty of reasons to be stressed out. The question then becomes how to deal with stress. It’s first necessary to identify the type and sources of stress that plague you. You also need to assess the frequency and severity of stress you regularly experience, as well as your personality type.

Let’s say you’re always worrying about your finances, put more on your daily plate than you can possibly manage, or are just the nervous type who finds potential disaster around every corner. Any of these situations creates stress and does take its toll on your health and general level of happiness in life. Dealing with stress  becomes manageable when you apply a methodology and a few techniques.

While one personality may be so laid back that it takes an earthquake to elicit a stressful response, another may be so sensitive to stress factors that all it takes is a broken hair dryer or searching for their car keys to get them in a tizzy – stressed out. The mellow personality seldom experiences stress to the degree that their life is seriously affected. The sensitive, nervous types are usually feeling stressed out on a regular basis. While it’s entirely possible to be too laid back, if you’re constantly stressed out, you might want to take a page from the guy or gal you have to wake up when there’s an earthquake. Effective methods of dealing with stress require that you learn to put events and situations in the proper perspective. So, how do you do this?

One technique of dealing with stress, that is both instructive and effective, is to keep a ’stress diary’. A small, pocket sized notebook is sufficient. Every time you feel that adrenalin getting out of hand, jot down a note. Are you late for work? Did you just receive an overdue bill notice? Have a fight with your sweetie? Keep track of each incident for at least a couple of weeks. You’ll soon see the pattern of events which trigger your stress. Perhaps you’ll find that being late is prominent. Maybe interactions at work get you going, or you’re a chronic worrier.

Whatever the case may be, go through your notebook and assess which triggers are due simply to how you prioritize your daily tasks. For example, if you always get up at the last minute and are thus frequently late for work, there’s a simple remedy. Either get up earlier, or make preparations the night before, such as laying out clothes or making lunch, that gets you out the door on time. The person who spends half an hour a day finding their keys needs to put them in a designated spot, every day. Your ’stress diary’ can be quite revealing on points like this. We often create our own stress purely out of habit. Dealing with stresses of this type  are easily remedied.

If you find that your stress is mainly due to worrying about finances, it’s time to make a strict budget. If your obligations exceed your income, a debt consolidation service might be an answer to your major stresses. If you’re fighting with your sweetie every other day, consider counseling, get a self help book on relationships or effective communication. Dealing with stress requires that you be proactive in identifying major sources of stress and then brainstorm possible solutions.

You’ll be amazed at how fruitful your ’stress diary’ proves and how much stress can be eliminated in a hurry.

Your efforts in dealing with stress can be greatly enhanced by making time to chill out, doing something you enjoy. Rigorous physical exercise burns off energy and stress. Take a break. Don’t drive yourself too hard. Use imaging techniques – daydream on that island paradise, with you in the beach chair with an ice cold drink. Take a yoga class. Meditate. Dealing with stress means you need to learn how to relax. Do whatever it takes to master relaxation. That’s the key.

Christmas Stress Relief

Christmas can be the perfect time to get together with family, feast, share and celebrate. A lot of people celebrate it as a secular holiday and celebrate their family and those that are close. Others celebrate the Winter Solstice, while many have religious reasons for choosing Christmastime to celebrate, for most major religions have a religious ritual of some sort in late December, after the longest nights of winter have been and gone.

Unfortunately, all of this can bring a sense of dread to many people. Here are some suggestions on how to give you a little Christmas stress relief.

Stop all of the Comparisons

Many people try their hardest to recreate the holidays using movies, books or childhood memories as blueprints. This is the biggest cause of Christmas stress. Relief is simple – stop trying to compete! You do not have to be perfect, in fact nobody is; just do the best you can with what you have, everyone around you will appreciate that more. Having a happy, comfortable time is more important than decorations, gifts or the perfect gift wrap pattern with perfect bows and bangles!

Never Give Pets as Presents

This will give a lot of Christmas stress relief to you and your animal companions. Christmas can be a loud, unpredictable and messy time. Part of the fun is that you do things you don’t do everyday and this lack of routine can frighten an animal. Also, picking a pet is like picking the person you wish to marry – do you really want someone else making that decision for you? If the puppy or kitten at Christmas doesn’t get along with the intended new owner, that animal will most likely have to be given to a shelter by Easter, then how are you going to feel? You nor the animals need the stress of sad memories and believe me there will be sad memories.

Change the Date

There is no law that says you and your family HAVE to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Day. If you have family members who work in retail stores, food service or in the airline industry, they will be too tired to celebrate at the end of a long busy shift. If you feel you and your family are too pressed for time, you can choose to have Christmas on another day. Seriously think about having it in January if the majority of family members have to work overtime during the Christmas break. Stress relief is worth breaking the rules of tradition.

Do you have to Shop at Stores?

If shopping is your biggest cause of Christmas stress, relief comes in the form of mail-order catalogs and online shopping, this is becoming more and more popular and reliable. Sometimes, for a small fee, you can even get the presents gift wrapped, you can even get a choice of wrapping paper. There is the slight chance that the package won’t arrive in time, but that chance is a lot smaller than fighting traffic, squeezing between irritated strangers to find the shop is out of stock. Some people love being given a wrapped catalog under the tree with a note attached saying “One item on me!”

When you realize that the holidays aren’t about how to celebrate them, but that you celebrate them at all, Christmas stress relief just comes natural. Merry Christmas stress relief, everyone! and a Happy New Year!

Workplace stress

With the downturn in the economy, it is only natural that workplace stress is rising. It is becomming harder to cope with the challenges of your job and the added challenges of your home life.

When you get to work, does it seem like you are overwhelmed? Not feeling confident about your abilities at work? Finding your work less rewarding? Is it taking longer to complete tasks or are tasks not being completed at all? Are you irritable with your fellow co-workers or your boss? If you answered yes to any of these then you may be suffering from workplace stress.

There are two kinds of stress in the workplace, good and bad. The good kind of stress comes from pressure of deadlines. If you enjoy your job, then often you will have the good kind of stress that energizes and motivates you – some people even feed off of this. The bad kind of stress is a destructive type that causes disability, staff turnover, low productivity and absenteeism. In our current economic times, more and more employers are seeing the bad kind of workplace stress within their employees.

Work, whether paid or voluntary contributes to our sense of community connection and it is a source of needed routine and structure. Even though work offers these needed benefits, it can also be a big source of anxietry for many people. Studies in the United Kingdom have shown that many people attribute their cause of their health problems to their job. During the last recession, almost 25% of workers stated that their bigges fear and cause of workplace stress was the loss of their job. Employees roles in the organization were a major factor in the amount of workplace stress they felt. Manager and professionals reported the highest amount of workplace stress compared to workers in other industries. The amount of workplace stress also differs between men and women.

Women are stressed about working long hours or having too many demands on them, while men were stressed about workplace injury.

Top Ten sources of workplace stress are as follows:

1. Too much to do in too little time, getting nothing accomplished
2. Too many interruptions
3. Uncertainty – not sure of their employment security
4. Mistrust. Vicious office politics disrupt positive behaviour
5. Random company directions and policies
6. Ambiguity. Things are happening without the employee knowing why
7. Inconsistent perferomance reviews. Employees get raises but no reviews or get positive evaluation, but laid off
8. Employee feeling unappreciated
9. Lack of communication in the management chain
10. Too much or too little to do. The feeling of not contributing and having a lack of control

Workplace stress is a harmful physical and emotional response that occurs when there is a poor match between job demands and the capabilities of the employee. Now more than ever, employers need to be on the look out for workplace stress and try to help employees cope with it. Those that make the effort to deal with it rather than ignore it will be rewarded with a better functioning company, which should in turn translate in a more profitable company. With the downturn in the economy, workplace stress can have a very negative effect on a companies bottom line.

Symptoms of stress

Symptoms of stress

Stress can affect your body, your thoughts & feelings and also your behaviour. Often the effects of stress mimic other health problems. Below are just a few examples of the symptoms of stress.
- Changes in sleep patterns
- Negative thinking
- Restlessness
- Loss of interest in something you used to enjoy
- irritability
- weight change or appetite change
- Loss if concentration
- Memory problems
- Moodiness
- Aches and pains
- Procrastination

Stress can affect us in many ways and the symptoms of stress are often overlooked. Stress not only affects our mind, it affects us physically as well. It can cause a whole raft of physical symptoms that can be difficult to diagnose as they mimic other problems. People have come to live with the fact that stress is a part of modern life and as such many ignore the symptoms of stress, or choose not to deal with the underlying problems that cause the stress symptoms.

The reason that so many symptoms of stress are difficult to detect is because stress affects the body in many different ways. Of course each one of us different so we all react to stress with very different symptoms as well. Some symptoms of stress are easier to detect as they are obvious, others are not detectable until the problem becomes more severe. Add to this that many symptoms of stress resemble other health problems and it can be very difficult to determine if your are suffering from symptoms of stress or just have a headache.

There are many symptoms of stress that are shared by us all, these include many common ailments such as headaches, more susceptablility to flu & colds, sleep problems, anxiety, frustration, lowered libido, poor decisions, twitching, fatigue, dizziness and a generally agitated state.

The symptoms of stress can actually lead to other health problems! One example is sleep problems, if one suffers from this long enough, it can lead to depression, or even high blood pressure. Stress can also increase pre-existing problems such as migraines, ulcers, asthma and colitis.

The symptoms of stress can be broken down into four categories:
- Physical Symptoms
- Mental Symptoms
- Emotional Symptoms
- Behavioural Symptoms

Physical Symptoms
These symptoms can include lowered immune system, muscle tension, headaches, insomia, loss of appetite, dizziness, nausea, and fatigue

Mental Symptoms
These symptoms can include loss of concentration, loss of decisiveness, confusion or forgetfulness

Emotional Symptoms
These symptoms can include, depression, anxiety, irritability, apathy, indifference, loss of motivation, pessimism, worry, nervousness and general unhappiness.

Behavioural Symptoms
These symptoms can include, compulsiveness, nail biting, foot tapping, blaming, searing, crying, yelling, weepiness, teariness, pacing and general restlessness.

If you can learn to spot these symptoms of stress early on, you stand a chance of dealing with the symptoms long before they become serious. If you feel that you are suffering from any of these symptoms of stress, then you should consult your doctor immediately.

This article has been provided for informational purposes only on the symptoms of stress. It is expected that if you think you are suffering from any of these symptoms, that you seek proper medical advice and not try to diagnose them yourself.

You Can Find Anxiety and Stress Relief

Do you ever feel that life is out to get you? You have a stack of bills to pay, your loved ones are demanding a little too much of your time and there is nothing but bad news on tv- the worry and strain can seem overwhelming, it can at these times also feel like you are the only one having these fears; however, you’re not. You have a problem that is not that uncommon, it is a problem that many people suffer from and they rarely share it with others. But there are many people and organizations that can help you find anxiety and stress relief.

You should never feel too ashamed to ask your doctor for help. If you find it difficult to relax and you are consumed by worries that you struggle to lead a normal life, you need to see your doctor right away. There is a stigma about seeking anxiety and stress relief. You may think you’re crazy or lazy; but you’re not.

If you broke your arm or you leg then you would go see the doctor in a flash, wouldn’t you? Anxiety and stress relief should be sought after in the same way. If anybody teases you about being a ‘mental case’, ignore them. They are just voicing their own fears about their own sanity. Your doctor will understand; he or she sees patients with you similar problems almost every day.

The doctor might prescribe medicines for your anxiety and stress relief. That doesn’t mean you’re €˜lacking’ in some way for needing to take pills for a mental or emotional problem. Extreme anxiety and never ending stress can often be the signs of a treatable physical problem.

Take Time Out for You

You deserve at least fifteen minutes of fun and luxury every day; after all look at all you have to put up with! If you can find fifteen minutes a day to treat yourself and be comfortable with it, you can find twenty minutes, and so on. By no means does this make you selfish; you are just learning how to feel good about yourself. By experiencing some happy times, you can remember what it feels like. With time and practice, you can tap into that calm and secure feeling whenever you need it, believe me, everybody needs this at some time or other.

Many people take a walk during this ‘me-time’. Some people read a non-fiction book to gain anxiety and stress relief. Some people take a bath; others write a poem or engage in light exercise or take yoga classes. See what works best for you; you want something that takes you out of your normal drudgery and transports you into that little island of calm. Listening to music or meditating can bring this island about for a lot of people. Anxiety and stress relief is within your reach €“ you only have to make a little effort to get it.