So you think you’re stressed? Well, who can blame you?
With the times we’re currently facing it’s no wonder that people are suffering with extreme stress and anxiety.
The truth of the matter is, stress is a part of life. There are always going to be problems that we face and challenges that we have to overcome. However, a good approach would be to effectively manage the stress, so that it doesn’t affect your quality of life.
To do so, it is essential to understand what stress and anxiety is.
What is Stress and Anxiety?
Stress is essentially something that disturbs the equilibrium in your body. Stress can be both negative and positive. However, when people usually think of stress, they imagine discomfort, pain, uncertainty, fear or worry.
Actually, stress is brought about by sudden changes in your lifestyle that requires your body and mind to re-adjust. While a little stress can act as a motivating factor, if it not managed properly, it leads to a host of other problems. Essentially, there are different types of stress
Acute Stress
Stress is classified as acute due to a sudden event. The body and mind has to process how to go through this unexpected change. Examples of acute stress include divorce, death of a loved one, a job loss or even catching the flu!
Episodic Stress
This type of stress is you have a lot of bad luck. This occurs as a result a series of unfortunate events. Individuals who develop an illness which leads to job loss which leads missing mortgage payments which leads to losing your home and then divorce, would experience episodic stress.
Chronic Stress
Chronic stress is long-term in nature where a person can suffer for months or even years of a prolonged plight or issue. Poverty, terminal illnesses, and working in a job you hate or low self-esteem are forms of chronic stress.
How to Overcome Stress and Anxiety?
The human body is essentially made of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual faculties. Therefore, when overcoming our stress and anxiety, it is important to evaluate which area is being affected.
A lot of issues can impact multiple or all of these faculties. As a result, it is essential, to build a stress-proof body that effectively manages anxieties so as to not jeopardise your health, relationships, mentality and future prospects.
- Identify stress triggers
To manage stress, you need to identify those triggers that cause anxiety. What type of stress are you most susceptible to and difficulty in managing? If you worry about money or career, that could be financial stress. Are you in a toxic relationship or work environment?
Before building your stress-proof body, you need to identify what stresses you out, why and how often?
- Build stress awareness
Building high stress awareness involves evaluating your reaction to triggers? Do you go into panic mode? Does your mind immediately shut down? What thoughts come to your head? Are they negative or positive?
Assessing your reactions identifies the personal effect of these triggers so you can make positive changes. Changes include being responsive as opposed to being reactive. Responsive means, you look at what resources are available to overcome this by adopting a problem-solving approach.
- Build good habits
Replacing unhealthy habits in your life with healthier ones can not only strengthen your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual faculties, but will also help you to adapt to stressful conditions to the point where you can effectively deal with challenges.
How to Overcome Stress at Home
While you’re currently at home, it is essential to build these good habits into a stress-proof body to greatly stress-proof each of your human faculties:
- Physical
Clean eating of wholesome foods, limiting processed sugar, flour, alcohol and junk foods will allow you to feel and perform your greatest. Find a form of physical activity that you enjoy. Walking, hiking, cycling or weightlifting can improve your moods. Muscle massages also work wonders in relieving stress and help you relax.
- Mental
A healthy body supports a healthy mind. Work matters, family matters, news about the state of the world and an influx of bad news can drain your mental energy. Practice slow breathing techniques. As your breathing slows down, your heart rate and the rest of your body follows. It can help you feel calm and have a greater sense of clarity.
You should unplug occasionally from social media, negative people, news and toxic situations, ever so often to allow your mind to heal.
- Emotional
At the core of positive emotional habits is building a strong and supportive social network. Loneliness can also be very stressful. An effective modern technique to alleviate this is called ‘Friend Therapy’.
This essentially encourages a person undergoing severe emotional distress to engage socially with a network of people can listen and offer encouragement or inspiration. Friend therapy is effective among family, online support groups or close friends where you can vent to someone without being offered advice.
How to be Productive at Home
Several things can be implemented to eliminate anxiety and work from home productively and stress free.
- Establish a routine
Once you have a clear cut plan worked out between you and your employer as to how correspondence will occur, work is to be performed and targets met, it will be easier for you to adjust to working from home.
- Begin your day on time
Being late only cultivates more fear and anxiety. Instead, as you have greater control over your time when working from home, start your days when supposed to, or even earlier. Starting early gives you a head start to the day enabling you to cater for setbacks.
- Prioritise
Take each of your tasks, starting with the most important and put your entire focus and concentration on it before moving on to the next. Having one thing to study at a time reduced anxiety greatly.
- Play music
Having non-distracting music in the background can brighten your work area and keep you in a positive frame of mind.
- Take scheduled breaks
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed or tired, you may just need a simple break to unwind, recuperate and rejuvenate yourself.
