A Few Ways to Handle Stress

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Would you like to know what one of my least favorite sentences of all time is? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s any variation of the sentence “you don’t need to stress about that”. At best, it sounds like an empty platitude I hear because the person doesn’t know what else to say. At worst, its entirely dismissive of what I’m feeling and shows no interest in being helpful. Stress is part of being human, everyone experiences it. It’s the feeling of a situation demanding more from you believe you’re able to provide.

So, today, instead of telling you why you shouldn’t stress, I’d like to name a few ways I deal with stress. These are tactics and activities that work for me, and I hope they work for you. I know not everyone reacts to stress the same way. These aren’t in any particular order as they’ve all worked for me, albeit in different situations.

• Yoga-  This is an activity that I do when I feel stressed but can’t immediately figure out what the cause is. Often time, there are several factors causing me to stress out and this helps me clear my mind of everything and focus on just breathing and yoga poses. You don’t necessarily even need to do yoga poses. There have been times where I just sit on my yoga mat and do some breathing exercises as a way to calm down.
• Walk away- Let’s say you’re stressed about a school assignment or project at work. Sometimes, you just need to walk away and be away from your work for a little bit. Take a walk around the block. Go eat some lunch or a snack (away from your computer). Switch to a completely different task for a little bit, just to take some time away from the project you’re getting stressed about.
• Make Art- Sometimes, you just need to get creative. Not everyone can draw or paint, but anyone can color. Studies have shown that coloring can reduce anxiety levels, meaning its ideal for stress reduction. Adult coloring books have become popular for a reason, they cause you to focus on a single activity, coloring, which has effects similar to meditating.
• Blog (or write) about it- Sometimes, I find myself getting stressed because I feel like I don’t have an outlet to talk about things that I’m feeling. I get stressed, I feel like I can’t discuss my stress and that causes me more stress. Part of the reason why I started blogging was to deal with my stress. There are a number of posts that I’ve written that I didn’t publish because I just needed to get all of my frustrations and feelings out. This has also helped me figure out what things seem to be stressing me out on a regular basis
• Get physical- Sometimes, stress is from restless energy we have. Or our minds overthinking things. One thing I started doing when I was looking for jobs was going for runs or going to the gym. The exercise tired me out, which let me get out a lot of the frustration I was feeling that was causing me stress. It doesn’t need to be vigorous exercise, just enough to tire you out a little bit and release some pent-up energy.
• Take A Nap- Sometimes, I stress about thing I can’t control in the slightest. And sometimes, the things I stress about are of the Wait-and-See variety. Or other tactics don’t prove useful in this case. So, I take a nap, or at least try to. Even if I don’t actually manage to fall asleep, laying there, in the dark without my phone or computer in front of me helps me unwind. Sometimes, saying “I’m going to bed, I’ll finish this tomorrow” is the best thing you can do for your own mental health.

Those are a handful of stress-relieving techniques I use. Not every technique fits every situation and the effectiveness varies depending on what exactly the problem is and how much it's upsetting me. Still, at least one has worked every time I've needed to relieve some stress. Since I've started dealing with stress instead of trying to ignore it or power through it, I've found myself happier as a whole.

That's how I deal with stress, how do you handle it?