We all feel stress sometimes; it’s natural to feel overwhelmed on occasion by life’s challenges. When you’re feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders it can be difficult to know how to deal with it in a healthy manner and get stress relief. Fortunately, by learning some simple stress relief tips you can develop the skills needed to relieve your stress.

Here at Psychology Wales, we have some stress relief tips to help you manage life’s everyday challenges in a constructive way.

What is stress?

Firstly its important to acknowledge that stress is not always unhelpful, sometimes stress is the factor that calls us to action and our beliefs about stress also influence its impact.

Stress is initially a physical response to an internal or external stressor. It may be caused by workplace issues, problems at home, or just generally feeling overwhelmed and overworked. Stress can be a natural instinctive response to danger, as the hormones released such as adrenaline prepare the body for what is known as the fight or flight response.
The fight or flight response is the brain’s reaction to danger. It controls whether a person fights a situation or escapes from it. This can be effective in a dangerous situation, and effective in sparking us to act and problem solve difficult situations. However sometimes when you feel overwhelmed it is difficult

What happens as a result of excessive stress?

Stress can begin with a thought. This thought may be ‘I have so much to do – I may never get it done in time!’ This thought may cause you to feel stressed, and the resulting action may be to respond by over working yourself, or even avoiding the task altogether. This can have some obvious disadvantages, such as overexertion and fatigue, anxiety, irritation, anger, or feeling hopeless. It can also affect the work itself, as you may feel the need to rush the work so it isn’t done to a high standard, causing your work performance to potentially suffer.

Some less obvious side effects are the ones it may have on the physical and mental state. In responding in a certain way to a thought, the brain is more likely to respond in such a way in future unless the thought – behaviour cycle is altered.

Stress can cause numerous side effects and possibly result in mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, panic, irritability, catastrophic thinking among many others.

Physically, excessive stress in the long term can result in health issues such as high blood pressure, chest pain, rapid heartbeat, among other effects and can impact physical health conditions in the long term. This makes techniques for stress relief absolutely crucial to both physical and mental wellbeing

6 Stress Relief Tips to Help You Relax

There are ways that you can deal with excessive stress when it arises in order to reduce the symptoms and stop the behaviours. It can be extremely helpful to utilise these techniques in order to train the brain to assess the threat. Here are stress relief tips to help you cope with life’s difficulties.

Practice positive thinking

It can be difficult to break free from unhealthy ideas and behaviours. However, it can help to examine the thoughts and assess them, to see if the interpretation is helpful. Firstly, try to allow negative thinking patterns to pass. Attending to negative thoughts trains the brain to place importance on them. This simply keeps the cycle of thoughts and behaviours going.

Try writing down your thought patterns. Then, all the reasons the thought is right. Write a separate list stating all the reasons against it. This can be helpful because it rationalises the thought, making it less of a threat to the anxious mind.

Remind yourself that a thought is just that. It has no power or control over you and it is possible to be altered. If you still find yourself unable to shake the negative thinking patterns or continuing to suffer with stress, get in touch with a psychologist who can help.

Getting Exercise

Exercise releases hormones that can counter the effects of stress, such as endorphins. They’re called the ‘happy hormones’ for a reason! Even something as simple as a quick walk outside, or going swimming can lift your mood. Whilst this won’t completely eradicate the stress, it can certainly help in reducing the intensity of the emotions and helps massively with stress relief.

Mindfulness

You may have heard of mindfulness due to its growth in popularity over the past few years. Mindfulness can be incorporated into a daily routine, and can even be practised in lesser known ways such as through listening to or playing music. It could be done at your desk at work too! This makes it the ideal stress relief tip, no matter what the situation.

To begin, start by inhaling for a few seconds, and then exhaling. Notice the breath as it courses through your body, notice the sensations. When a thought arises, recognise that it’s there but don’t look into its meaning.

Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment, and acknowledging what is happening at that moment regardless of whether it is negative or positive rather than focusing on the past or future.

Give yourself a break

You may have a million things to do, but it’s difficult to get things done when you’re highly stressed. Even just taking 5 minutes a day to yourself is something.

Perhaps try scheduling in an activity that you really enjoy for yourself each day – it’ll give you something to look forward to! How about trying some of our everyday wellbeing tips?

This also applies to technology. Make sure you’re spending some time away from the tech!

Make connections

Human beings are highly social, so it can help to make sure you spend time with people. Perhaps try a new hobby you’ve always wanted to do, or go to some local events and meet some new people. Socialising can help boost your mood, and you may even make some new friends along the way!

Accept

Uncertainty can be difficult to deal with, as can situations that are out of our control. It may seem difficult to do, but acknowledging that some things cannot be changed can help you to move on.

Stress can be reduced by following some simple tips such as these, but you may have your own. How do you deal with stress? What are your best stress relief tips? Let us know in the comments!

If you are struggling to deal with excessive stress, it may help to get help from a trained psychologist. For more information check out our website for options or visit your GP or workplace wellbeing service.

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