International Stress Awareness Week Day 3: Managing your Stress The Stress Management Society offers a free Individual Stress Test. It focuses on lifestyle questions and common stressors. They will email you a confidential report based on your responses which will include some tips to help you improve lifestyle factors which, in turn, may improve your stress levels. Give this a go and make a note of any additional things you could be doing to help make you more resilient to stress in your day-to-day life. General lifestyle things you can do to improve your stress as outlined by the Red Cross are: healthy eating taking regular breaks good sleeping patterns physical exercise or activities
breathing and relaxation exercises managing your time well talking to people
All of the above might help build your resilience to stress. It can be really tough when stress becomes too much, and our day-to-day coping techniques aren’t enough. In situations like this we can feel overwhelmed, panicky, agitated, or nervous.
Simple Quick Wins – Managing our Breathing Breathing techniques can be helpful in mediately calming us. If we control our breathing our brain automatically stops sending stress and anxiety signals to the rest of our body. This then allows us to assess what is causing us stress and plan an action for it. The Stress Management Society recommends the following breathing exercise. Give it a go and make a note of how it makes you feel. Sit or stand in a comfortable and relaxed position Imagine a triangle that starts at your belly button and the corners are at your hips Inside that triangle is a ball or a balloon Every time you take in a breath, imagine that ball or balloon filling up with air Take a nice slow deep breath in through the nose and fill your belly up with air Hold at the top of the breath for 5 seconds Slowly exhale through the mouth, pulling the navel to the spine You can do this just a few times to release tension, or for several minutes as a form of meditation If you like, you can make you throat tighter as you exhale, so the air comes out like a whisper. This type of breathing is used in some forms of yoga and can add additional tension relief.
International Stress Awareness Week Day 3: Managing your Stress Sometimes when lots of things are overwhelming us we can lose sight of what our goals are and how to get there. We can get lost in worry. When feeling like this, knowing where to start to address the things causing us stress can feel impossible. The following exercise can help people bring themselves out of that feeling of being ‘stuck’ in the worries running through the mind.
The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Activity:
1. Look around and name five things that you can see around you. These could be a picture on the wall or a plant in the house. Think about the colours and shapes of what you are looking at. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? 2. Focus on four things that you can feel. This could be the chair you are sitting on or the feel of your clothes on your skin. Think about how they feel, are they soft or hard? Smooth or rough? Cold or warm?
3. Name three things that you can hear around you. You may be able to hear people outside or the wind blowing. Think about how loud or quiet the noises are. Are they noises you hear often? 4. Notice two things that you can smell around you right now. This could be a flower, the smell of your clothes or the shampoo in your hair. Think about what you like about that smell.
5. Focus on one thing that you can taste. If you can't taste anything, then instead you can choose your favourite thing to taste.
If stress is overwhelming to the level of affecting your day-to-day life in negative ways, then it might be time to talk about it. Talking about stress can be intimidating.