Dealing With Stress

What is your style of Stress?

Read on for 3 Aproaches To Dealing With Stress!

Thank you for reading this article,

Dealing with stress is an inevitable feature of contemporary life. Schools would be well advised to integrate into the curriculum since it is so pervasive. Recent studies found that one-third of all teenagers in America are stressed out daily; two-thirds face high stress once a week.

Stress isn’t just emotionally uncomfortable, it has a significant impact on our physical health, lowering our immune system and increasing our risk of heart disease and stroke among other illnesses.

Information abounds on dealing with stress; gardening, exercise, hypnosis are among the activities frequently listed. What if these approaches don’t work for you? Have you given up searching for an effective way of dealing with stress and reconciled yourself to being a Type A personality?

Don’t throw in the towel. Instead, take a look at your personality and characteristics to determine which of the following three approaches will help you combat stress. 

1. Are you task-oriented? If so, you need to analyze the situation that is causing the stress and take action.
2. Are you emotion-oriented? Then you need to address the feelings that are causing the stress and seek social support.
3. Finally, are you distraction-oriented? In this case, you are best served by seeking activities that engage you and take your mind off whatever is causing stress in your life.

 As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with stress. Your friend can de-stress by sipping a cup of green tea and writing in her journal; you may need to take a kick boxing class or throw yourself into a new project at work.

 Following are some ideas on dealing with stress effectively. Experiment until you find something that works for you. According to various studies, the sooner you can nip stress in the bud, the better your chances of avoiding stress-related ailments. Besides, you’ll enjoy life more.

 Stress relief for task-oriented people: 

• Read some of the classic literature on stress.
• Take a free stress management course online.
• Meet with a friend for a brainstorming session; try to come up with a solution to the problem.
• Explore the situation and potential solutions in your journal.
• Come up with a plan for dealing with stress. Use a system like SMART in which you identify goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and tangible. 

Stress relief for emotion-oriented people 

• Explore the situation and your feelings about it in your journal.
• Join a support group or seek counseling.
• Try hypnosis, meditation, yoga or any other relaxation technique.
• Reach out to good friends and family members.
• Connect with your partner or another significant person in your life; this can help put the issue that is causing you stress into perspective.
• If you don’t already have one, get a pet or volunteer as a dog walker with the SPCA.  

Stress relief for distraction-oriented people 

• Channel your negative energy into a physical activity like running or a long bike ride.
• Lose yourself in an absorbing activity like gardening, house cleaning or work.
• Laughter is potent medicine and has been proven to counteract the physical and emotional effects of stress. Play with a child or rent a favorite comedy.
• Plan a dinner party for friends.
• Read a good book.
• Focus on an area of your life that is going well or something you can look forward to like an upcoming vacation.

 For more ideas on how to deal with Stress read our articele on the Worry Buster!

Thanks again for reading

Orlando Ramos on Behalf of Glenn Magas and The CreateYourMinddotcom Team. 

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