Welcome to part three.
In this section we’re going to look at strategies to cope with stress. How do we manage the stress in our lives? We’ve identified that stress can be good in our lives. We’ve looked at acute stress versus chronic stress in part two. How do we manage stress and promote our own well-being. This is something that we’re going to look at in this section of this course. We’re also going to look at where does my stress come from? And what stress relief can I apply to reduce my stress.
Stress management strategies can help us to remove or change the source of stress, alter the way we may view stressful event, lower the impact that stress may have on our physical bodies and teaches us to have alternative ways of coping. Managing stress and promoting good well-being, there’s lots of different things that we can do here. And it’s really just about finding your own flavour. It’s about looking at – we don’t all like the same flavour of ice cream. We don’t all like the same flavour of whatever it is. It’s really just about – what is it on a particular day that I’m going to enjoy doing. What is it that I feel love to do. And it’s just about having something that you feel passionate about. That you feel love to do in that moment.
It could be – I’d just love to just sit and have a cup of coffee right now. I’d just love to sit and have a cup of herbal tea right now. I’d just love to sit and have a glass of water right now. It doesn’t have to be big huge things, that we perceive are life-changing or have a massive impact on our lives. It’s just in each moment choosing what we feel we’d love to do. And that’s not the same every day of every week for everybody. It’s really just picking some on each day, it’s having a set of tools and a range of tools that you can use and that’s what this course is about.
And that’s what this course is here to provide you with. It’s having a range of tools that you can –use these on a given day, to pick and mix from – to say – okay today that this is what’s going to feel good for me.
Different things that we can use to cope with stress and different strategies that we can use to cope with stress. Some of these are, some people enjoy massage, yoga, listening to music, listening to our own favourite piece of music. Or music that we enjoy, can help to prevent stress and can also help us to de-stress. Exercise, this can benefit our physical and our mental well-being, our physical and our mental state. It’s really important to find exercise that you feel you enjoy. We don’t all enjoy the same things and exercise, some people just like going for a gentle walk some people like going hardcore at the gym. It’s just trying to find what’s the balance for you. And what you might like now, you might have a different thing that you like in six months’ time.
It’s always just, going with what feels right for you. The person who knows you best is you. The person who knows what’s best for you is you. It’s about choosing what is the best for you in this moment. What is the best for you at this point in life. What feels the best for you. What feels right for you. What feels like love to you. What feels like this is what I’d love to do in this moment.
Reducing our removing our intake of alcohol, drugs or caffeine, tobacco. Removing these from our lives if at all possible. Cutting back on these or reducing where possible. And then looking at our nutrition. Having a healthy balanced diet of foods and beverages and fluids that you’re tolerant of. It’s making sure that you’re tolerant of the foods that you are having. And that’s not the same for everybody either. Ensuring that you’re including lots of fruits and vegetables and again ones that you’re tolerant of. And having good nutrition helps to maintain the immune system and boost the immune system, especially at times of stress. It’s even more important when we’re in stress mode to ensure that we have good nutrition.
And then time – looking at setting aside time each day for yourself – to relax, to organize your life, and to pursue your own interests. Whether that’s a few minutes in a day, a half an hour in a day, an hour, a few hours. Whatever it is that you can fit in to your schedule, into your balance with your life – it’s to make sure to bring that in for yourself as well. And really it’s about the only person who can, who has a responsibility and you can get the cortisol levels back down again when we’re in the stress response – to remember those cortisol levels are elevated – the only person who can get that back down unfortunately is ourselves.
It’s really up to us to bring in whatever self-care tools that we can to help to get our stress response down. And it’s really to be in our parasympathetic nervous system as much as possible. Be in a calm state as much as possible. Practicing being in a calm state as much as possible. It’s not our natural way to be in this calm state sometimes for everybody.
Sometimes we have to teach ourselves and re-train and re-learn how to do that as well. We’re also geared and wired as humans, and this is just part of our every evolutionary aspect – is to look at the negative more than the positive. It’s to choose the negative over the positive and that’s really a protective, protection mechanism.
What we want to do, is to try and practice the positive as much as possible. And it’s not to put a shiny happy stamp on everything and to just ignore that the negative is there. But it’s really just to make a choice in any given moment to say in this moment if there’s stress there – it’s not good for me to be in the stress response. It’s not good for me to have this cortisol, adrenaline and nor-adrenaline pumping around my body on a longer-term basis. It’s not healthy for me. It’s not helping to keep me balanced. It’s not helping to keep me well on a longer-term basis. What can I do to bring myself back over to my para-sympathetic nervous system. Back over to a calm state. What tools do I have to do this. That’s what we’re all about and what we’re talking about here as well.
Other tools that we can have as well – or other tools that we can bring into play. Talking can be great. Sometimes we’re not the only one with the same problem, that a problem shared is a problem halved. It’s also good to air our feelings, to air our thoughts and to have confidence there to have a support network there in others whether that’s a friend network or in a professional capacity. Just to really allow us to release the self-talk that may be going on within ourselves, to do with negativity or to do with stress or to anxiety or to do with fear. To allow ourselves to reach out to somebody else. Allow ourselves to take support, to have support from somebody else as well. Whether it’s being offered or whether we have to go looking for it as well. It’s just that it shows strength to be able to go and to ask for support in this way as well.
And then acknowledging the signs. If anxiety is high we don’t always notice this. We don’t always notice that we’re stressed and the effects on our body. Sometimes we can be so used to living with stress that we don’t notice the impact that it’s having on our mental well-being, our emotional well-being and on our physical bodies. Noticing the symptoms is the first step to taking action.
Sometimes if we’re working long hours, we need to take a step back. We need to ask for support. There can be lots of areas in our lives where sometimes you just need to reach out and ask for support. And knowing that it is okay to do that. It’s a healthy thing to do. And it’s showing strength within us that we’re able to do that as well.
It’s about finding our own de-stressor finding our own de-stressors. What is it that we enjoy. What is it that we feel love to do in a particular moment that’s going to support us in helping us to de-stress.
Whether that’s something to help us relax, reading a book, joining a choir, joining a club, taking exercise. Whether that’s exercising on our own, exercising with others, playing in a team sport, practicing yoga, listening to music, dancing. Anything that can help us to feel less stressed, to help us to de-stress. To help us to take time out. To help our bodies come back to calm mode. To help our bodies release the cortisol, release the nor-adrenaline, to allow our hormone system to come back into balance. To allow us to feel a sense of peace, a sense of harmony.
These are the things that we need to do to allow us to de-stress. These are the things that we need to do to allow us to come back into balance in our lives.
Establishing support networks as well. Whether that’s in our local community, with a local club, maybe with a charity or maybe with other networking social or support activities and groups as well. Being part of a group can help prevent stress from building up and developing in the first place sometimes and it can also help us by providing us with practical support when hard times may come. Online social networking is absolutely fantastic, being able to connect with each other through technology just so long as this doesn’t fully replace face to face contact over a period of time. Having contact through social networking with loved ones who may live in other places near or far away or we can’t reach quite easily, can actually reduce stress levels and reduce levels of anxiety which can keep the stress response at bay.
If stress is affecting your daily life, sometimes it’s good to seek professional support as well – maybe asking a doctor or another Support Specialist who can help you with chronic stress or with longer-term stress, or with stress that’s difficult for you, or you’re finding difficult to manage or to keep at bay.
We’re going to look now at the exercise in part 3 of your workbook. This is the table, where we’re going to look at three different areas. And the three different areas then, are the life areas that you that you chose in the exercise that we did in part two. We’re going to look at the stress within this life area. Each of the areas that you had stress in in that exercise in part two – we’re just going to write that down on the left-hand column in the box that’s provided in your workbook for part three.
Then the middle column we’re going to look at where does this dress come from? Do you know where this stress comes from? And even if it’s a general theme – yes the stress is related to my finances – where is that coming from? Can you relate it to one or two or three – what are the aspects that it’s really tied down to? What’s the detail of what it’s tied down to? If for example it is your financial aspect of your life. Or if it’s relationships as well what is it to do with the relationship? Is it with one person in particular? Is it with a few people? Is it a theme within relationships for you? If it’s one person in particular can you tie it down to what it’s actually related to? So we’re really trying to hone in on where the stress is coming from for you.
And then the third section is what stress relief do you apply to that area at the moment? And if you don’t apply stress relief to that area at the moment – what stress relief could you apply to that area at the moment? And I suppose these are all things in life that we know anyway – the things that we’re – they’re happening in our life. The person who knows us best is us. We know what’s best what’s going on in our lives. This exercise is just about bringing our awareness to these areas to see – where am I feeling stressed? Where exactly is this coming from? Because I don’t maybe sit and think about this enough in detail. I’m just aware that it’s there. And I’m aware that I’m feeling stress about it. And is there anything that I’m doing at the moment to alleviate this stress? Or is there anything that I can do to alleviate this stress? How can I support myself? What tools can I use? Just putting the video on pause now for a while just to take some time to complete this table. To see – where is the stress in my life? What area of my life? Where has the stress come from? How long has it been there for maybe as well. And then is there something that I’m doing at the moment to support myself to reduce the stress. Reduce the hormones that may be raging around my body because of this stress that’s there. Or is there something – what can I apply to this area of my life to support me in reducing this stress? Just to take a few moments to pause your video, to complete that exercise.
I hope you found that exercise useful in Part 3. Welcome back.
In this section we looked at – how do we manage our stress. How do we promote good well-being. How can we do this if we’re not doing it already. We also looked at where does our stress come from. Do we know where it comes from. Can we pin it down to the detail of where it comes from. The more we can pin it down to the detail, the more likely it is that we can do something about it to help to relieve and release that stress from a particular area in our lives if possible.
And what stress relief do I apply at the moment to areas of my life where I feel stress. Or what stress relief can I apply to areas of my life. And we’ve given lots of suggestions here in this part of the course and there may be others that have been triggered as we’ve gone through this material where you think ‘there’s something that I would love to do that I haven’t been doing, that is going to alleviate this stress in this particular area of my life’.
Hopefully you found this useful and found it beneficial and maybe as we’ve gone through this material you’ve come up with other ideas that you believe that can support you. Or other ideas that you’ve maybe implemented before in life that you’ve forgotten about and that you’d hope to implement again. Maybe a sport that you used to play, music that you may have listened to you before. Friends to reconnect with that you maybe haven’t connected with in a long time.
There’s a wide range of things that we can do to support ourselves with stress relief. And again just to remember that’s all about bringing ourselves back over into the parasympathetic nervous system. Back over in to a calm state, back over into balance as much as possible. Bringing our awareness to, I now feel and know that I’m in a stress response and I know I need to alleviate this. I know I need to allow this to release from my system as quickly as possible.