Minding your Mind- Techniques to cope with stress.

“Mentally strong people are like dam on a river. Life keeps on overwhelming them with multiple challenges but they know when to open the vault to let the stress flow out and close the vault when the burden subsides.” — Anonymous

We have all juggled coping with stress and anxiety in our own manner. 2020 came with its own set of challenges for many of us. Starting the lockdown period I was overwhelmed with the tasks at hand. During that time personal and professional challenges were so daunting I had no idea where I am leading myself to. It was then when I researched a lot on the issue of mental health and how to cope up with stress. Here are few relevant pointers that I came across online and offline to manage stress and anxiety. Hope they are helpful for anyone needing this.

Coping With Stress:

There are two parts to coping, one is being able to tolerate stress: to function reasonably well in stressful situations and get through them. The second part is recovering: getting back to normal when the stressful situation is over.

Good coping skills prevent stress from getting us down and help us thrive, even in challenging times.

Here are some proven coping methods that are both effective and low-risk. Some of them are “first aid” — strategies that help us manage stress in the moment. Others are “stress maintenance” — strategies that build our ability to deal with stress or help us recover from it.

Take a break

There’s an old saying, “A break is as good as a rest.” When it comes to stress, a break actually is a rest. Taking a break to do something that gets your mind off of stress — reading, having coffee with a friend, or going for a walk — gives your stress response system a much-needed rest. That refreshes you physically and mentally, which can help you break a pattern of “stressing about your stress.”

Relaxation breathing

For centuries, people who practiced yoga and Buddhism have used breathing to relax and think more clearly. They were right. Research shows that slow, deep breathing — exhaling slowly is particularly important — lowers the heart rate and blood pressure, and has other effects that help people to feel calmer and more focused. Relaxation breathing is easy to learn and can be can be done almost anywhere.

Humour

Everybody loves to laugh. But laughter is actually a stress fighter. It helps us release tension, gets our minds off of our troubles and it also causes physiological changes in the body that are similar to the changes we experience when we exercise.

Reaching out

Getting support from other people is one of the most important ways we have of coping with stress. In fact, humans are wired to receive and give social support. Social support sometimes has a physiological impact that makes us feel better right away. Think of how quickly a crying baby often calms down when his mom or dad picks him up and holds him close. Our need for support from others continues throughout life.

Physical activity

Physical activity is one of the best things you can do for your health and it has been shown to improve people’s physiological response to stress. Physical activity causes the release of brain chemicals that make you feel good ,so it can help you recover your sense of well-being after a stressful experience.

Stress Maintenance

Learning to think differently about a stressor we can’t change

When we’re dealing with stress, the way we think can either help or hinder us. Negative thinking patterns can add to our stress by making an already stressful situation seem worse than it really is. Therefore changing the way we think about a stressor can make it easier to cope.

Changing the way you think about a stressor involves learning:

• to accept and adapt to stress you can’t change
• to recognize and “turn off” negative or catastrophic thinking that can increase feelings of stress
• to think about stressors in less negative and flexible ways

Changing your thinking patterns is by no means easy. But it’s a skill that can be learnt.

Maintaining a stress-friendly lifestyle

Everyone knows that if you don’t take care of yourself ,you can get run down and become more vulnerable to illness. It’s similar with stress. Taking care of yourself — getting enough sleep, eating well, being physically active, making time for activities that you enjoy, and avoiding the overuse of alcohol and or “recreational” drugs — will improve your ability to tolerate stress better and recover from stress.

On the other hand we have immediate band aids that are needed to fix us when a stressor strikes.

As American Psychological Association’s, 2014 Stress in America survey identifies:

• listening to music
• physical activity
• reading
• meditation
• praying, going to a place of worship
• yoga
• getting a massage

All of these strategies were rated as effective by more than half the people who used them immediately after a traumatic event. However we must be conscious of some of the coping strategies that many people use that aren’t quite as effective. For example, lots of people use screen time — watching TV or movies and surfing the net — to distract themselves from stress. But in the Stress in America survey, relatively few people said screen time was truly effective as a stress management strategy.

Another harmful coping strategies which might give people temporary relief, but can cause other problems. For example, people may feel relief from stress after eating junk food or having a few drinks. But both can cause health problems if they become habits.

That doesn’t mean you should never watch TV or eat the occasional bag of chips to distract yourself from stress. Almost everybody does things like that sometimes. But it’s a good idea to learn about other coping strategies that may be more helpful.

Always remember your mind is a powerful tool which can take you places, help you fulfil all your desires but at the same time if not taken care of, it’ll cage you for ages. Keep your mental health in check and unleash the best versions of yourself.