5 Effective Methods for Dealing with Overwhelming Stress
Millions of Americans deal with stress on a daily basis. While some stress factors can be handled easily, other stress seems to stick around and affect many areas of our life. These more persistent forms of stress require directed approaches to stress reduction. They might require creating a specific stress reduction plan. If you constantly deal with overwhelming amounts of stress, consider one of these stress reduction methods.
Make necessary changes to your life
Learning all of the best reduction techniques in the world will not help if you simply have too much on your plate. Sometimes, you have to learn to make necessary changes in your life to better accommodate your mental needs. If something is causing you constant stress, consider its benefit to your life. Is that benefit worth it? Could you do without that part of your life? If you can, it might be time to remove it from your life. Sometimes, this is a job, a hobby, or an energy draining relationship. Individual counseling sessions can help you identify the different areas of your life, finding what specific stress related items can be entirely removed.
Schedule time for you
Stress often comes from a lack of personal time and relaxation. If you have many responsibilities on your plate, it is possible that you never get sufficient time to relax. However, relaxation is extremely important to stress reduction. If you find that you are not spending enough time alone, attempt to schedule it in. This holds you accountable for sticking to that scheduled time. Sometimes, using your weekly, scheduled counseling services can serve that needed me time. It can also be helpful to make a technology, stress free time, right before getting into bed.
Is it more than stress?
A surprising 16,000,000 U.S. adults had at least one major depressive episode in 2012. This made up approximately 6.9% of all adults in the country. Many of these adults may not even realize that what they are experiencing is depression. They may simply feel as if they are constantly sad or stressed out, when really it could be a biological imbalance. Additionally, 50% of Americans with major depression do not seek out treatment for the mental illness. If you continue to avoid your feelings and ignore the strong feelings of extreme stress, nothing will improve and your condition could actually get much worse.
Evaluate your social relationships
Even relationships can contribute to these strong feelings. Relationships can include your employer relations, friendships, or romantic relationships. Couples that have difficulty effectively communicating or solving problems together may be left with significant feelings of stress. Couples counseling can be extremely beneficial in dealing with this type of stress. Couples counseling focuses on evaluating communication methods and finding more productive ways to handle conflict. According to the Chicago Center for Emotionally Focused Therapy, research shows that about 50% of couples who participated in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy recovered upon the termination of therapy, with 70% recovering within the next three months.
Find relieving activities
There are numerous stress relieving activities available. Effective reduction is all about finding the one that resonates with your best. Some examples of stress reduction activities include exercise, meditation, swimming, crafting, video games, spending time with friends and family, and biking. Make it a goal to find at least one new stress reduction activity that you enjoy per month.
Stress is one of the most common problems among Americans. With increased demands on work and school, we can easily find ourselves overwhelmed. Dealing with these feelings in an effective way is important. You should be scheduling me time every week, finding stress reducing activities that you enjoy, attending counseling sessions when needed, removing consistent sources of stress from your life, and knowing when it could be more than stress.
