---

1. MANAGING STRESS FOR A HEALTHIER LIFE

MANAGING STRESS FOR A HEALTHIER LIFE

Stress significantly impacts your overall well-being. Keeping stress levels down offers benefits that can improve your entire life. It's crucial to find ways to relax your body and mind to protect your physical and mental health. For immediate relief from acute stressors, techniques such as deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation can help calm your stress response. To manage the symptoms of chronic stress, strategies like spending time with supportive individuals, practicing meditation, and doing yoga can be very effective.

Understanding and Managing Stress

Everyone experiences stress, but learning to manage it is crucial for protecting your physical and mental health. Stress creates a cycle of tension, where physical and psychological strain can worsen each other. Conversely, relaxing your body can ease mental stress, and calming your mind can relieve physical tension.

Effective Relaxation Techniques

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) notes that there are many effective ways to relax your body and mind, including:

Breathing exercises

Progressive muscle relaxation

Exercise

Journaling

Creative activities

Mindfulness

Social support

Proactive Stress Management

By mastering these relaxation techniques, you can prevent your stress response from being constantly triggered, allowing you to approach challenges more proactively and peacefully. It's common to be caught off guard by stress, but recognizing when you have too much stress and need to relax is vital says the US National Institute of Mental Health.

Relaxing Your Body to Counter Stress

Physically relaxing your body is a powerful way to stop and reverse the stress response. Stress can create a negative cycle where mental tension leads to physical tension, which in turn increases emotional stress.

The Role of Cortisol

Stress triggers the release of cortisol, often called the body's stress hormone. While cortisol is essential for functions like immune response and blood pressure regulation, excessive levels can harm your health.

Inducing the Relaxation Response

The key to physical relaxation is to engage in activities that trigger your body's relaxation response. This leads to beneficial changes like a slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, reduced breathing rate, muscle relaxation, improved glucose control, and a stronger immune system. Regularly practicing these techniques enhances your ability to manage stress effectively.

Effective Techniques for Physical Relaxation

Breathing Exercises: When stressed, people often breathe shallowly and rapidly. Learning to take deeper, slower breaths can significantly ease your body's stress response. Studies show controlled breathing can improve attention and significantly lower cortisol levels.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR): This technique involves systematically relaxing every muscle group in your body, starting from your face and head and working your way down to your feet. With consistent practice, you'll be able to achieve a state of deep relaxation more quickly.

Exercise: Physical activity is a potent stress reliever. It can immediately ease tension and anxiety when you're facing an acute stressor. In the long run, regular exercise builds resilience against stress. The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and two days of muscle-strengthening training per week.

How to Relax Your Mind

Your experience of stress is deeply tied to your thoughts and emotions. When you feel overwhelmed or fearful, these feelings can intensify and prolong your stress response. By learning to relax your mind, you can re-examine your thoughts and break this cycle.

Techniques for Mental Relaxation

Several effective techniques can help you achieve mental relaxation:

 

Transform negative self-talk: Challenge and change negative thoughts into positive ones.

Practice gratitude: Create a list of things you're thankful for to draw strength from the good in your life.

Identify cognitive distortions: Recognize and correct unhelpful thinking patterns like all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, jumping to conclusions, or focusing only on the negative.

Engage in spiritual practice: Daily spiritual activities can support your mental well-being.

Embrace creative expression: Find joy and relaxation through music, art, crafts, or even coloring.

Journaling: Use journaling to explore and understand your experiences.

Reframe your thoughts: Learn to perceive potential stressors in a less threatening way.

Cultivate optimism: Actively work on developing a more optimistic outlook.

Incorporating Stress Relief Strategies

Integrating strategies like mindfulness, meditation, or yoga into your daily routine can be incredibly beneficial. Studies show that practicing meditation, for example, can lead to decreased physical arousal, a lower heart rate, reduced breathing, and overall lower stress levels says the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Benefits of Relaxing Your Body and Mind

Relaxation offers numerous positive effects, enhancing both your mental and physical well-being. Mentally, it can lead to improved memory, more positive thinking, and stronger concentration. Physically, relaxation helps lower blood pressure, reduce muscle tension, and slow your heart rate. Regular practice of relaxation techniques can also alleviate pain, anxiety, depression, and headaches.

When to Seek Professional Help

If you struggle to relax emotionally and mentally, it's advisable to seek professional help. A healthcare provider or therapist can assist you in exploring various stress management techniques and developing new coping skills. For instance, a therapist might use cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you identify and change negative thought patterns that contribute to or worsen stress. By recognizing these thoughts, you can practice replacing them with more helpful and less stress-inducing ways of thinking. In some cases, a doctor may also prescribe medications to manage symptoms of anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions that might be impacting your ability to cope with stress.

Peter Mugi Kuruga

Counselling Psychologist/Marriage and Family Therapist

Court Annexed Mediator

Dip. In Counselling, B. Com, MA. (Counselling), PhD (on going).

 

References

Larsson A, et al. (2016). Using brief cognitive restructuring and cognitive defusing techniques to cope with Negative thoughts. Behav Modif. 2016;40(3):452-82. doi:10.1177/0145445515621488

Ma X, et al. (2017).  The effect of diaphragmatic breathing on attention, negative affect and stress in healthy adults. Front Psychol. 2017;8:874. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00874

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). Relaxation techniques for health. (2011).

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Meditation: In depth.

National Institute of Mental Health. 5 things you should know about stress.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Wunsch K, et al. (2019). Habitual and acute exercise effects on salivary biomarkers in response to psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019; 106:216-225. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.03.015.