Stress & Anxiety
What causes stress?
- Our own emotions
- Physical, behavioural and lifestyle factors (eg. poor posture, poor health, change in circumstances, addictions, poor relationship skills)
- The way we think about things (eg. our identity expectations, our beliefs)
- Spiritual issues (eg. alienation, lack of life purpose, moral anxiety)
Stress can be motivating but too much stress can lead to overload.
Signs of too much stress
| Emotional | Mental |
|---|---|
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| Physical | Behavioural |
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Most people feel uncomfortable when they are overstressed. So they try to calm down or distract themselves from the unpleasant feelings in various ways. Some of these ways actually do more harm than good:
- Compulsive exercising
- Ignoring commitments in the hope that they will go away
- Abusing legal drugs
- Overeating or skipping meals
- Drinking too much alcohol
- Smoking
- Forgetting things or putting things off until later
- Pretending not to be interested in things we really want or people whose opinions we value
- Distracting ourselves from our feelings by working very long hours
Making a Stress Management Plan
To manage stress we need to change ourselves, our situation or both.
Make some notes each evening about your day:
- When did I feel the symptoms of too much stress?
- What happened to bring them on?
- What did I think about and do as a result?
Use these notes to work out your own stress management plan.
Stress management plans can involve:
Changing the way we do things
i.e. changing certain habits and learning new skills such as:
- Emotional management
- Time management
- Parenting skills
- Assertiveness
- Relationship skills
- Budgeting
- Personal effectiveness
Changing the way we think about things
Some negative thought habits may be:
- Worry
- Negative thinking
- Having unrealistic expectations of self and others – eg perfectionism
- "Catastrophising" - making things out to be worse than they really are
- Overestimating the likelihood of a feared situation occurring
- Underestimating your coping abilities if the feared situation does occur
- Underestimating how much others will help you
Consider instead:
- Serenity affirmations
- Practise Letting Go
- An idea: The Trouble Tree
- Seeking support from other people
- Counselling
- Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy
- Prayer and meditation on Scripture
Getting rid of unnecessary sources of stress
- Changing situations where the costs outweigh the benefits
- Cutting down on our workload
- Avoiding tiredness
- Learning to say no
- Delegating jobs you don't need to do
NB. "Situation hopping" or doing "geographicals" - changing partners, jobs, friends, towns etc. as a frequent alternative to changing ourselves - brings only short term stress relief.
Reducing your physical anxiety level through:
- Relaxation - deep breathing, systematic muscle relaxation, a warm bath
- Cutting down on stimulants - caffeine, nicotine, speed
- Exercise and vigorous activity eg jogging or swimming
- Paying attention to posture and static bodily stresses
- Maintaining a healthy well-balanced diet
- Laughter, music, dance (got any jokes?)
- Massage and stress relief devices eg. Stress ball
- Aromatherapy
