Managing and reducing stress

Written by: Georgia Dossis

Stress serves the purpose of reacting and avoiding danger, which is great but too much can have a negative effect on you. Life is full of major and minor challenges and it’s completely normal to sometimes feel inundated with these issues.

According to Champion Health, one in 14 UK adults feel stressed daily and I guarantee if you ask your neighbour, your work colleague, a friend, or a family how they are, at least one of them will use the word ‘stress’ in their response.

Below are some suggestions on how to relieve and control symptoms when everything is getting a little bit too much:

-          Leave work at work. With the most common cause of stress being work related, I think one of the most important things is to leave work at work. I’m aware that not all job roles have this perk, but where you can you most definitely should leave work at the office. You psychologically associate your surrounding with your feelings. If you’re taking your work home you’re more likely to feel stress in your home and find it more difficult to switch off when you need to.

-          Be active. I can guarantee that this is the first thing you hear when you say that you’re stressed, and it often is the first question too “are you getting any exercise?” but they aren’t wrong. Exercise increases endorphins, which numbs pain receptors, allowing you to feel better and happier. Even if it’s a walk around your estate, getting movement in will reduce your stresses.

-          Take some time for you. Work holidays are given to be used. It would be unhealthy to work every single day of the year, no matter how much someone loves their job. Taking time off to catch up on you is not a bad thing. You can use this to get some of the life admin that you put off during the week done, take a holiday or even take a day to put your feet up.

-          Getting organised. By getting organised, you instantly feel better about the tasks that you need to do. Creating a to do list helps by having everything out of your mind, alongside being able to visually see what you’ve got to do.

-          Breathing and meditating. There are hundreds of apps and thousands of YouTube tutorials that can help with this. By focusing your attention on breathing it clears your mind of all the tangled thoughts. Meditating not only strengthens areas of your brain responsible for learning, attention and memory but also helps calm down your sympathetic nervous system. This improves your heart rate by slowing it down and causes you to feel more relaxed.

-          Activities. Whether it be apple picking, going shopping or using an adult colouring book, doing something you enjoy will allow you to take your mind away from what you’re focussing on that’s causing you stress. Colouring or reading for example help relax the fear centre of your brain which is what cause you to become calm.

-          Keep a journal. Journalling can allow you a safe space to express how you feel without fear of judgement. Here you don’t have to worry about grammar, punctuation, or spelling, just write whatever comes to mind.

-          Healthy Diet. There’s nothing more tempting when your stressed to eat badly, which is normal, and variety is good. But a healthy diet is key to keeping your body regulated and happy. We’ve all heard the term ‘hangry’, eating good healthy foods will help eliminate the ‘angry’ part.

Although stress is unavoidable it is definitely controllable, you just need to find what is right for you. Keeping stress at a manageable level is key to your overall well-being.