Want to address and reduce your stress

Easy ways to address and reduce your stress

Easy ways to address and reduce your stress ___ Image by Pixabay

Are you prone to high levels of stress, and need simple strategies to help address and reduce it? I’m guessing that, like many of us, you get stressed to the max sometimes. Honestly,I know I get stressed out really quickly, so I feel for you if you do too.

Okay, let’s take a look at ‘what stress means’, what causes it, and the signs and symptoms. We’ll also explore tools that can help us understand how we experience stress and how to address our stress levels. Then we’ll delve into some simple evidence-based techniques to alleviate some of our stress.

What is stress?

Need ways to address and reduce your stress?
Need ways to address and reduce your stress? — Photo by Pexels.com

Stress is the degree to which you feel overwhelmed or unable to cope as a result of unmanageable pressures. Moreover, stress, at the most basic level, is our body’s response to pressures from a situation or life event. What contributes to stress can vary hugely from person to person. It also differs according to our social and economic circumstances, the environment we live in and our genetic makeup (Mentalhealth.org).

Stress isn’t always bad, and in small doses, it can help you perform under pressure and motivate you to do your best. But when you’re constantly running in emergency mode, your mind and body pay the price.

If you find yourself feeling frazzled and overwhelmed by stress, it’s time to take action to bring your nervous system back into balance. You can protect yourself—and improve how you think and feel—by learning how to recognize the signs and symptoms of chronic stress and taking steps to reduce its harmful effects.

What causes stress?

Understanding what causes of stress
Understanding what causes of stress -Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

Understanding what causes us stress and taking action to manage our stress levels is a key part of looking after our wellbeing. Take a look at MHFA’s Stress Container, an interactive tool that can help us understand how we experience stress and how to address our stress levels.

Some people (me included) are unlucky and have a high vulnerability to stress. Is it ‘nature’ (genetic) or ‘nurture’ (learnt behaviours) that causes stress? To be honest, it doesn’t really matter where it came from, it’s knowing what to do about it that’s important.

Different types of stressors

Moving house can be a huge stressor
Moving house can be a huge stressor –
Image by Bigstock

We all experience many and varied stressors at certain times in our lives and some stressors might include:

  1. The ones that we choose, like moving house, getting married or organising a family holiday.
  2. Although we love our family and friends, these relationships can also place us under a great deal of stress at times.
  3. Work stress is a common problem and can include things like workload, flexibility and relationships within the workplace.
  4. Financial stress including mortgage, bills and supporting our families, or even unemployment, job loss and redundancy.
  5. Environmental stress; including what we see in the news, our neighbours, or even the weather.
  6. Self-imposed stress such as negative attitudes and lifestyle choices like gambling, drugs or alcohol, alcohol that add to our stress

Stress bucket

If our stress bucket gets too full we can suffer from mental ill health. Certain life events such as unemployment, divorce, bereavement, or chronic illness can cause our buckets to overflow quite quickly. But sometimes, even small life stressors can build and accumulate also causing our buckets to fill.

When we have stressors we perceive we can’t cope with, our bucket becomes full and it starts to overflow. The Stress bucket reflects our capacity to cope with stress, and the water level is the stress load. The more demands or stressors in our life, the higher the water level and we start to feel stressed.

There are ways however, to reduce our stress and let the water flow out of our buckets. We can make better choices, problem solve, or ask for support. And you can grow the size of your bucket by developing resilience, and skills levels in coping with stress, to stop it overflowing.

For someone like me, with high vulnerability to stress, my bucket will fill up and overflow quite quickly. However, I can use my coping and problem-solving skills to reduce the amount of water (stress) in my bucket, stopping it for overflowing.

For someone who has low vulnerability to stress, their bucket never seems to overflow. You know — that person who never flaps, always remains calm and tells you to “chill out” or “relax”.

Signs and symptoms of stress overload

The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You don’t notice how much it’s affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll.

That’s why it’s really important to be aware of the common warning signs and symptoms of stress overload. Do you know anything about cognitive, emotional, physical and behavioural symptoms of stress can can warn us that we’re becoming or are already stressed out? Let’s take a look:

Cognitive symptoms:

  • Memory problems
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Poor judgment
  • Seeing only the negative
  • Anxious or racing thoughts
  • Constant worrying

Emotional symptoms:

  • Depression or general unhappiness
  • Anxiety and agitation
  • Moodiness, irritability, or anger
  • Feeling overwhelmed
  • Loneliness and isolation

Physical symptoms:

  • Aches and pains
  • Diarrhea or constipation
  • Nausea, dizziness
  • Chest pain, rapid heart rate
  • Loss of sex drive

Behavioral symptoms:

  • Eating more or less
  • Sleeping too much or too little
  • Withdrawing from others
  • Procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities
  • Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax

Coping strategies

Kick back an relax
Kick back and relax – Image by Pixabay

I often have to remind myself to use some of the evidence-based coping strategies I used to teach patients. Like this one:

  • let the shoulders drop (I’ve just realised right now, they’re up around my ears and they ache like hell)
  • unclench my teeth and relax my jaw
  • stop frowning (I do that when I’m concentrating)
  • unclench my hands (my balled fists look ready to punch someone)
  • get up, away from my laptop, stretch and pace the floor for a bit to loosen my limbs and knotted muscles
  • breathe (I tend to hold my breath when I concentrating too) slowly – out for the count of 6, then in for 6, for about 30 seconds
  • do some mindfulness for anything between 3 minutes (for a quick de-stressor) and 15 minutes (totally de-stressed). I get it; some people just aren’t into mindfulness, and that’s okay. Perhaps you can simply ‘be’.

I’ve just done all the above, and feel a bit better, despite having ‘flu’. If you’re prone to stress, you could try this coping strategy. The body can’t possibly be tense and relaxed at the same time so, it makes sense that if you’re relaxed – your stress levels will lessen.

You can use this strategy anytime, anywhere; say in your GP surgery, the dentist or on public transport etc. Sit (if possible) on a chair with a back on it, place your feet flat on the floor (no crossed legs – this creates tension in your muscles), rest your palms on your thighs, let your shoulders drop and ……………. de-stress.

I can’t say it enough, when learning any new skills/coping techniques, it takes practice. Practice the above technique over and over, and you’ll be able to summon it quickly when you actually need it.

More stress reducing activities

I loved having fun with family and 
friends - a great stress reliever
I loved having fun with family and
friends – a great stress reliever

There are many ways of reducing your stress levels, quickly and easily, some of which might be:

  1. Staying in contact with family and friends, even when you don’t feel like it. Whether you want to offload or listen to someone else offload, just hearing another voice or seeing someone smile, can help.
  2. Exercise is known to relieve stress and to help your mood/mental state. A light jog, or even a casual stroll in your local park will still help. Remember how action comes and motivation follows.
  3. Visit free places like museums, galleries, forests and lakes. These can offer a safe haven and positive distraction, while inspiring your creativity and reducing tension.
  4. Stop multitasking. No wonder we’re all super-stressed. I see family or friends replying to text messages, watching TV and simultaneously talking on the phone! Furthermore, multitasking isn’t only totally inefficient, it’s also linked to the increased production of stress hormones that can send your body into panic mode!
  5. Invite your girlfriends round, put facemasks on, sit back and relax for 10-15 minutes to look and feel rejuvenated. You might end up laughing hysterically at each other and that, together with the social connection, is always good for stress reduction.
  6. Organize ‘time to worry’. Worry can occur at any point in the day and release stress hormones that can cause anxiety and lower our immune systems. So schedule a 10-15 minute worry window in your day, where you can write down your worries, work through them and problem-solve.
  7. Turn up the music and dance! This can help forget your worries for a while, build self-esteem, lift your mood and reduce anxiety.
  8. Smell flowers or lemons — yes, they’re also known for their mood enhancing properties.
  9. Cuddling up and stroking a pet also has anxiety reducing benefits, through the release of oxytocin in your brain, and make you feel cared for, helping to boost your self esteem.
  10. Having a hot shower or bath relaxes your muscles, enabling you to unwind and help prepare you for a good night sleep too.

Last thoughts

Of course, there any many other ways to address and reduce your stress, and perhaps you have your favourites, which is great. However, if you’ve tried and found that something doesn’t work, yet work for you, don’t give up — keep trying to find something, and you will start to feel better.

Just remember, thoughts, feelings and your body, you might remember from previous posts, are all interconnected. So, if you feel better in one of these areas, you’ll feel better in the others too.

Like I mentioned in one of my recent posts, I’ve had both physical and mental setbacks, and I really thought I was on the mend. However, only this morning I’ve woken to a terribly high temperature, sore throat, aches and pains and headaches. I think it’s maybe a flu bug but I will have it checked out online or by phone to my GP.

AArrrrgghhh! I hate feeling so unwell and not being able to do basic things like walk from the sofa to the kitchen without feeling faint. Moreover, it’s taken me all day (lol) to write this post but I was determined to get it out today. Now I’m stressed out!

Over to you

Any questions

Are you feeling stressed to the max? I’d love to know what’s in your Stress Bucket right now? I’d love to know how you de-stress too. Any hints or tips for our blogging pals? I look forward to any comments and question, and please feel free to constructively criticise other aspect of my blog.

Caz 🙂

Improve your low self-esteem

How to have healthy self-esteem

Following my recent post What you really must know about self-esteem here, I took a short break before publishing this post on how to improve low self-esteem. I’d had a major issue with WordPress that took 2 full days and nights to remedy, so sleep didn’t happen and my mood plummeted! I’d been changing my URL and WordPress made a huge error so, anyone clicking on my old website mental health from the other side won’t find me.

That site is now a dead-end and I’d really appreciate if anyone with my old links would now change it to mentalhealth360, and thank you to those who already have. Even more infuriating is, in their wisdom, WordPress decided they’d add only the last twenty of my 139 posts to the reader of my new site. I could cry. Anyway, swiftly moving on:

How can we improve our low self esteem?

This is what we covered in my last post (here), ending with what

Vicious circle of low self-esteem
Low self-esteem circle
  • is self-esteem
  • is low self-esteem
  • causes low self-esteem
  • effect does self-esteem have on us, and
  • is low self-esteem a mental illness

So, I guess this is the bit you’ve been waiting for. For this part, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, so I’ve chosen to use the following exercise number 1 from our wonderful NHS:

1. How to have healthy self-esteem.

You’ll note my comments in green.

Expert help can improve low self-esteem
Healthy self-esteem — Image by pngfuel.com

This activity takes time and cannot be rushed. The purpose of this activity is to help you get into the habit of finding the positive in all things. It also helps you get in touch with the negative things you tell yourself. Remember, by constantly changing your thoughts, you will change the way you feel.

To boost your self-esteem, you need to identify the negative beliefs you have about yourself, then challenge them. You can do this by marking out two columns on a sheet of paper, at the top write Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) and Positive thought replacement.

Now, in the first column, write down a few of your ANTs.

An example might be, you messed up your presentation at work and your first ANT might be “everyone thinks I’m an idiot”, so in the next column, you challenge that by asking is that true? Probably not, now look for a positive thought i.e. “The rest of my presentation went well so, no, they didn’t all think I’m an idiot”

You may write you’re “too stupid” to apply for a new job in the first column, for example, or that “nobody cares” about you. Next, write some evidence that challenges these negative beliefs, such as, “I’m really good at cryptic crosswords” or “My sister calls for a chat every week”.

Write down other positive things about yourself, such as “I’m thoughtful” or “I’m a great cook” or “I’m someone that others trust”.

Also, write some good things that other people say about you i.e. “you’re kind and really funny – you’re my best friend.” Great, she wouldn’t have you as a best friend if you had no positive attributes, would she?

It will take time to change your long-held views and negative thoughts. Just think tho’ — you wouldn’t be able to pass your driving test after just one lesson, would you? You have to practice. Be patient with yourself and do your best. Repeat as often as you can to help develop a more positive outlook on life.

Aim to have at least 5 positive things on your list and add to it regularly. Then put your list somewhere you can see it. That way, you can keep reminding yourself that you’re Okay. I used to use little colour post-it notes and stick them on my bedroom wall, so they were always visible.

2. Low Self-Esteem and Self-acceptance

Book: Six Pillars of self-esteem -improve low self-esteem.
I have no affiliation with this book

“The greatest crime we commit against ourselves is not that we may deny or disown our shortcomings, but that we deny and disown our greatness — because it frightens us.”

Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

This next exercise “Big I, Little i” is about working on self-acceptance, another way to help boost your self-esteem.

Self-acceptance is not the same as self-esteem. Though it’s related, self-esteem refers to how worthwhile and valuable we are. Self-acceptance, on the other hand, is accepting ourselves holistically. For example, we recognize our limitations and weaknesses together with our strengths and capabilities, but in a positive way. We don’t let them interfere with how we accept ourselves.

A Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) technique, the Big ‘I’ and Little ‘i’ worksheet, acts as a tool to help you accomplish self-acceptance.

“Big I, Little i” technique (Arnold Lazarus), Journal of Human Development and Communication, Volume 7, 2018 [61-70] 63

Imagine your boss asked you to complete a task by the end of the week and you miss the deadline. So, you’ve made a mistake. What normally happens to us when we make a mistake, is that we make an over-generalised self-appraisal of ourselves like “I’m useless!” That “I’m useless!” is a negative self-statement that implies zero value in all areas of our lives. We’ve crossed out the whole of the Big I.

However, we only made a single mistake so that’s one little ‘i’ but what we do instead of crossing off that one little ‘i’, is cross our whole selves out. Essentially we’ve crossed out the whole Big I. We’ve made an over-generalised self-appraisal that’s self-blaming and self-damning. Eventually, this type of over-generalising will result in anxiety, depression, and guilt.

Your turn

Coloured image - five pairs of hands, making a heart shape with a small tree growing inside
Kind and caring nature — Image by Pinterest

Now, click on the Big I, little i picture above and scroll down ’til you see the diagram. You’ll note that it’s a Big I filled with hundreds of little i’s and this is your worksheet.

The Big I is you, in total. The hundreds of little i’s are all the various parts of you; your thoughts, actions or characteristics like your empathy, compassion, kindness, honesty, and caring nature.

So whenever you make a negative self-appraisal, cross out only one little ‘i’. You can continue in this way all day and for every ‘error’, cross out another little ‘i’. I doubt you’d even be able to cross out a whole line of little ‘i’s let alone the whole Big I, which is you. So the Big I (you) remains intact because you’ve only crossed out one line of little i’s.

Just think, lying to a friend once doesn’t make you a liar forever. This is you evaluating yourself based on your characteristics, thoughts or actions rather than overgeneralising. Whenever you refer the ‘I’ as yourself, you should remember that the ‘I’ is not totally you but it’s just a part of you.

3. Build Positive Relationships

There are certain people, certain friendships and relationships—that make you feel better than others. If you have people in your life who make you feel bad about yourself, try to avoid them.

Build new/other friendships with people who’ll cheer you on, encourage you, and make you feel good about yourself. Get rid of those friendships that pull you down.

4. Learn to Say No

This man was asked to do extra work. Learning to say no can improve low self- esteem.
self-assertiveness to self-esteem — Image by pngfuel.com

People with low self-esteem sometimes find it difficult to stand up for themselves or say no to others.

Have you ever felt over-burdened at home or at work, because you don’t like to refuse anyone or anything? Yes? Did you know that developing self-assertiveness will help to improve your self-esteem?

Trust me, I know this one’s never easy. I used to look after my niece two nights a week to give her single dad a break. She’d stay overnight and I’d take her to school with my sons in the morning. However, he’d taken to asking me to pick her up from school on other days, calling later to ask if she could stay.

Self-Assertiveness

I’d been reading about self-assertiveness and how when you say ‘no’, mean it and don’t feel you have to give any excuses for why you said it. I’d been building up the courage to tell my brother-in-law that I couldn’t keep his daughter overnight, again!

He called to ask one Friday evening and with my heart thudding and my mouth going dry, I said ‘No, not tonight Ron.” Silence….. Then he stuttered, “Oh.” The silence was palpable and painful, but he went on “Oh, okay. What time do you want me to pick her up then?” I gave him a time and we hung up.

Oh my word, I felt awful. I wanted to call him back and say, it’s okay and that I’d do it. But as I sat down I realised that he’d just accepted it. There was no harm done, the sky wasn’t about to fall down on me.

If I’d stuttered like “Um, er…” or given excuses like “I erm, I was going to……..”, he’d have been in there, recognising my usual people-pleasing and interrupt me with “Oh, go on, just this last time?” I didn’t, I said ‘No’, and he accepted it.

See, even small improvements help develop our self-esteem and help us live better lives.

Low self-esteem… Me?

Grey scale picture of two hands making the heart shape with the sun shining through
I accept myself as a human being who makes mistakes

I like myself.

No like I really like myself.

But it never used to be this way. In fact, I used to be my least favourite person. Like many of you, I’ve hated myself for long periods of time and I’d crossed myself out totally. I’ve felt worthless, useless, hopeless, ugly, bad and any other term I could degrade myself with.

Now, with techniques like “Big I, little i”, I’m able to maintain healthy self-acceptance and self-esteem. I accept myself as a human being who makes mistakes, who has bad days or bad moods and gets p’d off with people.

I spend lots of time practising techniques, blogging, clearing my mind, reading and self-reflecting in order to become the best me possible.

Over to you

What do you think about improving low self-esteem?
Clipart.com

Self-esteem is a huge area and I’ve only given you a few techniques that might help, so I hope you’ve been able to take something positive from this post. I look forward to your thoughts on the techniques for improving self-esteem and any questions.

Strategies to help relieve your stress

Are you prone to high levels of stress and need some simple coping strategies to help relieve it? Yes? Okay, let’s take a look at ‘what stress means’, what causes it, signs and symptoms and finally, some evidence-based simple techniques to alleviate some of your stress.

Stress can be defined as the degree to which you feel overwhelmed or unable to cope as a result of pressures that are unmanageable. 

Yummymummyclub.ca

At the most basic level, stress is our body’s response to pressures from a situation or life event. What contributes to stress can vary hugely from person to person and differs according to our social and economic circumstances, the environment we live in and our genetic makeup (www.mentalhealth.org.uk).

Stress isn’t always bad. In small doses, it can help you perform under pressure and motivate you to do your best. But when you’re constantly running in emergency mode, your mind and body pay the price.

If you frequently find yourself feeling frazzled and overwhelmed, it’s time to take action to bring your nervous system back into balance. You can protect yourself—and improve how you think and feel—by learning how to recognize the signs and symptoms of chronic stress and taking steps to reduce its harmful effects (Helpguide.org).

With the festive period upon us, no doubt many of us will experience some kind of stress; who to buy gifts for, what to buy them, how much will I spend, Christmas food shopping, writing cards and wrapping gifts……….

Understanding what causes us stress and taking action to manage our stress levels is a key part of looking after our wellbeing.

The Stress Container can help us understand how we experience stress and how to address our stress levels. Use this fantastic interactive tool to explore it (MHFA England)

Click to access stress-container-resource-download.pdf

Some people (me included) are unlucky and have a high vulnerability to stress. Is it ‘nature’ (genetic) or ‘nurture’ (learnt behaviours) that causes stress? To be honest, it doesn’t really matter where it came from, it’s knowing what to do about it that’s important.

If our stress bucket gets too full we can suffer from mental ill health. Certain life events such as unemployment, divorce or separation, bereavement, mental or physical illness etc. can cause our buckets to overflow quite quickly but sometimes small life stressors (having to write out 50+ Christmas cards and empty my suitcase, put a wash on………), can build and accumulate also causing our buckets to fill.

Looking at the diagram above – Vulnerability is shown by the size of the bucket so, for me with high vulnerability to stress, my bucket will be smaller, it will fill up and will overflow quite quickly – unless I use some coping techniques.

The large bucket would be used by someone who has low vulnerability to stress, you know – that person who never flaps, always remains calm and tells you to “chill out” or “relax”. Their bucket will never overflow.

Signs and symptoms of stress overload

The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It starts to feel familiar, even normal. You don’t notice how much it’s affecting you, even as it takes a heavy toll. That’s why it’s important to be aware of the common warning signs and symptoms of stress overload.

Cognitive symptoms:

  • Memory problems
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Poor judgment
  • Seeing only the negative
  • Anxious or racing thoughts
  • Constant worrying

Emotional symptoms:

Getty.com

Physical symptoms:

  • Aches and pains
  • Diarrhea or constipation
  • Nausea, dizziness
  • Chest pain, rapid heart rate
  • Loss of sex drive
  • Frequent colds or flu

Behavioral symptoms:

  • Eating more or less
  • Sleeping too much or too little
  • Withdrawing from others
  • Procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities
  • Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax
  • Nervous habits (e.g. nail biting, pacing). (Helpguide.org)

I often have to remind myself to use some evidence-based coping strategies I used to teach patients:

  • let my shoulders drop (I’ve just realised right now, they’re up around my ears and they ache like hell)
  • unclench my teeth and relax my jaw
  • stop frowning (I do that when I’m concentrating)
  • unclench my hands (my balled fists look ready to punch someone)
  • get up, away from my laptop, stretch and pace the floor for a bit to loosen my limbs and knotted muscles
  • breathe (I hold my breath when I concentrating too) slowly – out then in for about 30 seconds
  • do some mindfulness for anything between 3 minutes (for a quick de-stressor) and 15 minutes (totally de-stressed). I get it; some people just aren’t into mindfulness, and that’s okay. Perhaps you can simply ‘be’.
Feelinggreatnaturopath.com.au

I’ve just done all the above – I didn’t realise how tight my neck and shoulders were -and I really do feel better. If you’re prone to stress, you could try all or some of these coping strategies. The body can’t possibly be tense and relaxed at the same time so, it makes sense that if you’re relaxed – your stress levels will lessen.

You can use these strategies anytime, anywhere; say in your GP surgery, on public transport etc. Sit (if possible) on a chair with a back on it, place your feet flat on the floor (no crossed legs – this creates tension in your muscles), rest your palms on your thighs, let your shoulders drop and ……………. de-stress.

What’s in your stress bucket right now? How ill you cope over the festive period? I’d love to know how you de-stress too. Any hints or tips?

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