Is Your Stress Controlling You . . . Or Are You Controlling Your Stress?
Simple Techniques to Cope with Your Stress
Looking for effective ways to manage stress? Perhaps you’re already aware of your body's stress symptoms but need some help on analyzing stress patterns that aren’t obvious to you. You'll learn five simple skills designed to draw information from you about the source of your stress and to help you to problem solve.
Of course, these skills will take time to learn. It’s not easy to become comfortable and confident with your ability to learn from the messages your mind and body send to you about stress. The only way to do it is with focus, persistence and patience. Let’s begin. Here are five coping skills to master:
FIVE TO THRIVE: Tools to Conquer Stress
1 - Stress Brainstorming
Is stress making you feel as glum as a droopy pot of plants? Or does stress make you feel as nervous and panicky as a jumping bean? Don’t let stress wear you down. Here’s a technique that may help. Whether work, relationships, finance or your environment is the cause of your stress, you can use stress brainstorming to help yourself. Stress brainstorming can help you better understand your problem and guide you to a personal solution.
Instructions:
1. At the end of the day, sit down and review your activities to see whether there were any stressful situations.
2. In a notebook, list all the signs of stress you remember having during the day.
3. Remember each stressful situation you had. Your recall doesn’t have to be perfect. Just jot down whatever you remember about what happened before and after the event. If you don’t like writing, brainstorming with a tape recorder works just as well. Talk into the recorder and describe the same information about your stress symptoms and what happened before and after the event.
4. Brainstorm on a daily basis. After a few days, review your notes and look for patterns of stress by noting your stress symptom(s) and the sequence of events that seem to trigger that stress. Are there particular times in the day or certain days when you always feel stressed?
5. Observe yourself carefully during those times and ask the following questions:
How do you feel?
What messages are you sending to yourself?
What physical signs of stress are you experiencing?
What is it about the situation that makes it stressful?
6. With more awareness of your stress patterns, what steps can you take to solve your problem or improve the situation?
7. Decide on the best solution—maybe discussing the problem with whom you’re having a conflict with, changing your own perspective, change of environment, talking to a friend, exercising, going for a walk, seeking more advice, and counseling.
In your notebook, repeat this brainstorming process for each of your stressful events.
You’ll be able to pick up obvious stress patterns quickly while others will require more observation. The patterns are there! Your mind is identifying the stressors and triggering a stress reaction from your body.
Tips:
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get immediate results! Many of us are not used to carefully examining our behavior. It takes time to become comfortable and confident about our ability to learn from the messages our mind and body send to us about stress.
Continue this exercise regularly for at least several weeks. Careful and repeated observations help you understand your stress patterns. Brainstorming gets you into the habit of reflecting on your behavior and problem solving to reduce your stress.
2 - Keeping a Stress Journal
Writing in a stress journal is similar to stress brainstorming, but the process is more structured. Both techniques give you a better understanding of your stress patterns and guide you to possible solutions. Choose whichever method you feel comfortable with.
Instructions:
1. At the end of the day, sit down and review your activities to see whether there were any stressful situations.
2. In a notebook, jot down the following items and leave space for your answers:
Date and Time:
Signal(s) of Stress:
Duration of Symptom:
Event(s) prior to Symptom:
Event When Symptom Stopped:
Comments:
3. Fill out the above information for each stressful event that happened to you during the day. Your recall of the details doesn’t have to be perfect.
4. Write in your stress journal on a daily basis. After a few days, review your notes and look for patterns of stress by noting your stress symptom(s) and the sequence of events that seem to trigger that stress. Are there particular times in the day or certain days you always feel stressed?
5. Observe yourself carefully during those times and ask yourself these questions.
How do you feel?
What messages are you sending to yourself?
What physical signs of stress are you experiencing?
What is it about the situation that makes it stressful?
6. With more awareness of your stress patterns, what steps can you take to solve your problem or improve your situation?
7. Decide on the best solution—maybe discussing the problem with whom you’re having a conflict with, changing your own perspective, adjusting your work schedule, changing your environment, talking to a friend, exercising or meditating to take your mind off the situation or seeking more advice and counseling.
In your notebook, repeat this process for each of your stressful events. You’ll be able to pick up obvious stress patterns quickly while others will require more observation. The patterns are there! Your mind is identifying the stressors and triggering a stress reaction from your body.
Tips:
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get immediate results! Many of us are not used to carefully examining our behavior. It takes time to become comfortable and confident about our ability to learn from the messages our mind and body send to us about stress.
Continue this exercise for at least several weeks. Careful and repeated observations help you understand your stress patterns. Brainstorming gets you into the habit of reflecting on your
3 - Language Association
Common expressions in our language often refer to a body part in tension. Some examples are "Her heart ached," "He’s a pain in the neck," and "I can’t stomach that." It’s not surprising these expressions exist since we often connect our feelings metaphorically with the body. We communicate our emotions non-verbally through posture, facial expression, tone of voice, and gestures. These common language expressions provide a powerful tool for interpreting patterns of stress. Here’s how you use this tool to cope with your stress:
Instructions:
1. Think of the part of your body that is involved in your stress pattern or stressful experience.
2. Try to think of a common expression that refers to the body part involved in your stress reaction. Consider whether the expression works for your situation. If you have neck pains, you might come up with the expression, "He's a pain in the neck."
3. If you can’t think of a common expression, using the body part in a simple sentence works equally as well (i.e., "Her head is about to explode," or "His back pain is killing him").
4. Reword the phrase to apply it to your situation (i.e., "I have a pain in my neck," "I can't stomach that," or "My head is about to explode").
5. Using word play, ask yourself some questions to see what fanciful connections you can make between your stress symptom and stressor.
"Who is a pain in the neck?"
"Why does my neck hurt?"
"When does my neck hurt?"
6. From this self-questioning, the specific circumstances that trigger your stress may become more apparent to you. You may become aware of feelings of anger, frustration, resentment, grief or disappointment, which may be contributing to your stress. These insights can guide you to an appropriate solution. From this exercise, you may discover that the solution may be to change your behavior, problem solve or to avoid the stressful situation altogether.
7. Decide on the best solution—maybe discussing the problem with whom you’re having a conflict with, changing your way of doing things, expressing your needs better, talking to a friend, going for a walk, seeking more advice, or counseling.
4 - Free Writing
Free writing is a variation of the previous exercise, Language Association. You are free associating words with the body part that is involved in your stress pattern. It’s important to remember that you’re not doing fancy or formal writing but a loosely structured exercise in self-discovery.
Instructions:
1. On a sheet of paper, jot down the body part or sensations that are involved in your stress pattern or stressful experience.
2. For five or ten minutes, jot down whatever comes to your mind about the body part or sensations involved. Write spontaneously, and concentrate on getting your thoughts down quickly without being too critical and reflective.
3. If you have trouble writing freely and spontaneously, you might want to make a contract with yourself that you will write without stopping for five or ten minutes. Don't remove your pencil or pen from the paper (or your fingers from the keyboard), or make any corrections. Just write whatever comes into your mind about the body part that is involved in your stress pattern.
4. For best results, continue this exercise over several weeks. Stress patterns may emerge from the writing and give you valuable insights, often making the right solution more apparent to you.
5 - Self-Questioning
Self-questioning is another tool that can help you understand the meaning of your stress pattern and guide you to an appropriate solution to reduce your stress. This technique is direct and straightforward, and you may find it easier to use than Free Writing. The self-questioning technique works best after you have used either of one of these tools, Stress Brainstorming or Keeping a Stress Journal. After you have a clear picture of that pattern in mind, ask yourself the following questions:
1. What am I doing when I get the stress symptoms? Who am I with?
2. Is it always the same person? Or the same activity?
3. If different situations are involved, do they have common characteristics?
4. To which common characteristics do I react?
5. Does this person or situation remind me of someone or something that I have felt negative about in the past?
6. What is it about the context of the stress pattern that sets off my stress reaction?
7. When the stress reaction occurs, what are my primary feelings?
8. What do I tell myself that keeps me from expressing those feelings? (Or: What personal rules keep me from expressing those feelings?)
9. If I could express those feelings at the time I felt them, what would I feel like?
10. What alternatives do I have?
For best results, practice the self-questioning technique regularly. You'll be in the habit of reflecting on your behavior and problem solving to reduce stress.