5 Ways to Manage Stress

Death, taxes and stress.

The optimal role stress plays in everyday life is a motivational one. Stress should help you function as a productive person. If you didn’t stress over deadlines or targets, than you would be more willing to put off or forgo hitting them completely. In reality, we all know first hand that’s not how it works.

Healthline reports 70% of adults feel stress on a daily basis. Regular or daily stress is considered routine stress which is the hardest type of stress to recognize in yourself. It just becomes a hardship you gradually become more and more conditioned to carry around with you. Unlike acute or traumatic stress, the body never receives a clear go ahead to stop producing stress hormones. With time, stress hormones suppress responses by immune, digestive, sleep, and reproductive systems and prevent them from working correctly. This may contribute to conditions and illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes as well as mental health issues like depression or anxiety.
 

Basically the impact of routine stress with time can cause an array of unpredictable health problems. However, there are many steps you can take to reduce routine stress. While these regimes and habits have been proven to work by many practitioners, it’s always recommended to seek professional help if you feel you cannot manage stress alone. 

Activity: 

Physical activity has a million and one benefits and it’s one of the best things you can do to keep your health in top shape. Activity helps metabolize stress hormones, and therefore, helps your body to eliminate them. While any and all activity works wonders, yoga has been widely studied to examine its relationship to mental health. Some of these studies have found it positively impacts the nervous system and stress response beyond any other physical activity practice. 

Set Limits and Boundaries: 

Limits and boundaries are all about learning to say no. It’s very important to say no to requests that create excessive stress in your life when possible. You must set appropriate limits with the world around you. Over time, you’ll feel stronger and more confident and likely feel more capable to deal with the stresses of everyday life. It’s also pretty likely people will come to respect you more and ease up on inappropriate requests.
 

Learn to Recognize your Triggers: 

Take a mental inventory of those around you and consider how they make you feel. You’ll quickly realize that certain people evoke your body's response to stress. While everybody is different, common signs of stress include difficulty sleeping, increased alcohol and substance use, being easy to anger, depression, and low energy. 

There’s typically a byproduct of social interactions. Some people will make you feel great, others will drain you, and some people create stress and anxiety. It’s not always their fault. Sometimes they can’t help it. However, by taking an inventory of your day to day and recognizing triggers, you’re better able to prepare yourself and elist tactics to prevent your health from being negatively impacted. 

Socialization: 

Strong social ties and a support system are extremely important to mental health and wellbeing in general. However, recent studies have found that for women especially socializing helps with the release of oxytocin, which is a natural stress reliever. Spending time with children and pets also triggers this release and promotes a more positive mood. Another study of female socialization found that women with weak social ties are most likely to suffer from poor health, depression and anxiety. 

Mediate: 

The best everyday benefit of meditation is that it teaches you to control your thoughts which results in an increased ability to control how you feel and react. This greatly enhances your ability to avoid stress from worry and anxiety. With regular meditation, you’re better able to push negative thoughts, worst case scenarios and unreasonable worries out of mind with ease.

Newbies: Apps are a great way to get started. They are very affordable and you can use them almost anywhere, even in bed. Almost all mediation apps offer free trials so you can try out a few to find one that works for you.