How To Combat Stress

Most people are not aware that stress is necessary in our daily lives. This does not mean that any type of stress is beneficial, but rather that there is “good stress” and “bad stress.” The first is what is known as eustress and it is the one who helps us to be more productive. Thanks to it, people study for an exam, review a presentation at work, among many other aspects, that is, this stress mobilizes us.

However, it is common for a situation to go from being stressful at a controllable, healthy and useful level, to a level of stress that causes unproductivity, anxiety, irritability problems. This stress would be known as distress and it is the one that must be tried to combat.

In turn, stress can be acute or chronic. The first occurs sporadically in anticipation of a stressful event (a wedding, a busy day…) and can occur in the form of headaches, back pain, accelerated heart rate… For its part, chronic stress is a type of less intense but constant stress over time. It is a stress that wears you down day by day and that it is more dangerous than the acute one. It is the reason for many family breakups, work problems, personal relationships… People end up getting used to that stress, that is, assuming that it will be there, however, this accumulation of stress can lead to violence, suicide or illness. cardiac type. In this article we develop the types of stress in depth.

Work stress and burnout syndrome

In recent years, much emphasis has been placed on stress due to work. This stress not only affects the person on a personal, emotional level, in their family and in their daily life, it also creates various problems at an organizational level.

After a high period of work stress, people can develop burnout. Here we explain burnout syndrome in detail. This is made up of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization in dealing with clients and difficulties in achieving personal goals or work-related tasks. This emotional state is generated slowly so, on many occasions, it is very difficult to identify and people tend to deny it.

When it comes to coping with stress, there are various coping strategies There are two main types:

• Those that focus on proposing different solutions to the problem that stress generates, for example, reducing the number of daily activities, since we carry out an excessive number of them.
• Those that focus on the emotional part, that is, on reducing negative emotions without modifying the stressful situation since it is unchangeable. An example of this is learning to have healthy emotional relief.

Eliminating stress or removing stress completely is not possible, but we can combat stress. Below we will see relaxation techniques for stress, exercises to control stress levels, activities to reduce stress and strategies to manage stressful situations.

Mindfulness is one of the main ways to combat stress. Since stress is a form of anticipation or overthinking, Mindfulness helps our attention and thoughts be directed to the present moment. These types of exercises range from relaxation in which we focus on our own breathing to focusing on the taste of food when we eat, or focusing our attention on what you see around you when you walk, so that worries are left behind. a side. In this article we explain what mindfulness is and how to start practicing it.

As you may well know, healthy habits are essential to have low levels of stress. An example of this is the regular exercise since it facilitates the regulation of stress since it allows the tension that arises as a result of stress to be discharged in addition to regulating hormones by reducing the activity of those involved in stress and increasing those involved in happiness.

On the other hand, some good sleeping habits (regular schedules and with sufficient hours of sleep), good nutrition, reduce stimulant foods such as coffee and replacing them with more relaxing ones such as infusions, make it much easier to reduce daily stress.

To reduce stress, it is also important to dedicate time each day to activities that we like and relax us. In addition, you should try to share some of these activities with family and friends so that the social atmosphere is relaxed. Therefore, good time management is essential to manage stress. Limiting work time, organizing household tasks and giving ourselves time to relax and enjoy is the basis of experiencing a lower level of stress.

The cognitive restructuring It is a useful technique for managing stress. This psychological technique helps us modify those irrational thoughts that make us believe that they are useless or ineffective when it comes to facing problems. To do this, you can write a list of the thoughts you have when you are stressed and next to them write another one that is more rational, for example, instead of thinking “I am worthless”, we would modify it for another one that is “There are things that I’m good at and others that I’m bad at, like everyone else, and that’s okay”. It is important to repeat these thoughts to ourselves many times until they finally become integrated into our mind and occur automatically.

In short, although there are different situations that we cannot change and that a certain level of stress is appropriate, we have different strategies at our fingertips that can help us when a situation becomes excessively difficult, whether we can change it or not.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to How to combat stress we recommend that you enter our Clinical Psychology category.