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How to Reduce Stress Part 5: Building a Support System

Have you ever felt a little down on yourself and really not sure who you can talk to?  Or maybe you have the feeling that this is a problem you should be able to handle on your own.  Sometimes we are not even really sure that there is anyone that would really understand.  When we are feeling like that – we may get very anxious and stressed out about what to do. 

Our support system, safety net, those around us that are there for us no matter what is an important part of being able to handle those stressful moments in our life.  However they do not just show up when we need them, we must develop them long before we need to rely on them for support.  Stephen Covey and his son Sean who wrote the books on habits of successful people and teens, both talk about building relationships.  Building relationships is our safety net.  It is those people that will be there for us when times are tough.  Here are a couple of simple points about building that support system:

 

1. Spend time together – your experiences will bring you closer
2.   Be honest / being trustworthy raises the quality of your friendships
3.   Be loyal / take an interest in things that are important to others
4.   Be a good listener / Don’t be bossy or pressure others
5.   Be willing to apologize and not always the center of all attention
6.   Be clear about your expectations and offer to be there for others

 

Identify those in your life that you feel like you would count on and be willing to talk to them honestly.  If you are not sure who they might be, or you do not believe you have someone in your life that fits that description, pick one important relationship in your life and work on building it into one that you are confident you can rely on.   If we have damaged those relationships in the past, it may take some time to rebuild them, but little by little we can do so.

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How to Reduce Stress Part 3: Learning to Relax

I have a t-shirt that I bought in one of the islands in the Caribbean that says, “It is good to do nothing and then to rest”.  Just as it is important for us to have good time management skills and to work hard, it is also just as necessary to practice calming our mind and being still.  For many it is very hard just to be still, to not be doing anything, to just relax.  Relaxation is about being still physically while being alert mentally.  Knowing how to ‘relax’ is one way of allowing your body and mind to rest, a very deep rest, which in turn allows you to build the energy you need for the rest of your activities.

Imagine I ask you to hold yourself up on a chin up bar and hold it as tight and long as you possibly can.  In a very short period of time you start to get tired and it becomes more difficult.  Soon your muscles are aching and there seems to be no power in your hands or arm to continue to hold.  Finally it becomes impossible – you let go and you feel great relief.  If we did the same experiment and I asked you to hold yourself up on a chin up bar for 10 seconds and then you got a short break and then held yourself  for 10 seconds with a break – you would be able to continue that routine for a much longer time, and the reason is you allowed yourself to relax your muscles.

If we never take the time to calm our mind and body, fatigue can set in quickly and everyday activities will seem harder for us and soon we simply do not have the energy to do even the simple things.  This kind of relaxing is not the same as watching TV, napping, chatting online or even taking a walk.  It can be accomplished in these ways though. Continue reading “How to Reduce Stress Part 3: Learning to Relax”

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Stress: Part 3 – Escapism as a coping tool

When you have reached the limits of your abilities to cope with stress in your life, you may still be embarrassed, scared or so overwhelmed that you start taking part in escapist behaviors to try and feel better.  For teens this may be skipping school, running away from home.  For both adults and teens there may be a turning to drugs and alcohol, lying to people to avoid responsibility and it can get so bad that some feel so hopeless, that they may take to hurting themselves physically or even having suicidal ideation.

Obviously any and all of these behaviors can bring on even more problems that can last a lifetime.  Short term techniques to try to deal with stress are never as helpful as learning how to really deal with the issues or problems that are making us feel so overwhelmed.  We will continue to talk about stress among children and teens in upcoming articles, but if you are a teen or child, just know that talking to an adult that you trust is a great first step and one that you should take for your own well being.  If you are an adult being aware that our children, even the ones that seem to have it all together, may be feeling the pressures of their schedule or workload along with all the social pressures that teens have.

Being able to listen without judging, and knowing that you do not have to have all the answers is key to gaining the confidence of the child or teen.  Recognizing the signs of stress and coping skills that they may be using can help us to get a head start on avoiding larger problems in the future.  Coping with stress is something that all of us can do and we will discuss some of the basics in future articles.

1. Using distraction as a way to cope with stress

2. Using avoidance as a way to cope with stress

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Stress: Using Avoidance to Cope

One level higher than distraction for coping with stress is AVOIDANCE.   As one 14 year old said, “when I don’t want to do something, I go online.”  That is probably true for a number of adults too.  We can get lost in the online world and even have an excuse saying we are doing research or something else.

When it comes to the higher level of avoidance, procrastination is very high on the list of common ways of putting off something that we do not want to face.  Using procrastination on projects, studying or deadlines may be a sign of not wanting to deal with real problems or emotions, and we may find ourselves living with high levels of high anxiety.

Some use sickness as an avoidance strategy.  In the USA over 160,000 students miss school, many times using sickness as the excuse to avoid bullies at school.  It is not that the illness, stomachache, headache, muscle pain or a whole slew of sympton’s are not real – but the root cause may be stress about something deeper that needs to be dealt with that we are avoiding.

Others use sleep as a way of avoiding stressful situations and challenges.  There is no doubt that when we are rested we can do a better job of facing our work, but if we are spending over 12 hours in bed or not leaving our bed on the weekend, it could be a sign of avoiding something.  One thing for sure is that sleep will not solve deeper challenges.

But here is the surprise avoidance tactic of all, being super involved and overachieving to overcome negative feelings.  Staying busy with many clubs, sporting activities and high end class course work may be a sign of trying to prove to yourself and others that you are good enough.  Trying to keep it all together to prove to our else and others that everything is good, can be so difficult and stressful on us that without even noticing things continue to get worse for us.

Avoidance many times leads to seclusion, with your own negative thoughts, that can lead to feeling hopeless and depressed.  Feelings like this may lead to the highest level of non-coping, escape.  We will talk about the dangers of that in our next article.

1. Using distraction as a way to avoid stress

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Using distraction as a way to cope with stress

In our last report on stress we talked about the 3 different ways that some of us cope with stress in our lives.  They were distraction, avoidance and escapism.  Each of them get progressively more harmful to the person practicing them.  However to some degree the use of distraction can offer short term relaxation and can prove to be helpful, as long as it does not get out of control.

Distraction might be a short break to take a walk, bike ride, physical exercise, reading or other short term activity that gets our mind off the pressure at hand.  The only problem with it is that the breaks can get longer or too many of them and that only leads to not getting the work done and more stress.  Unless we control the distraction as a coping tool it could lead to avoiding the problems all together.

We have to be careful that we are not just using distraction as a means of procrastination.  In the end we still have the same work to do, the same reports to write, and the same problems to deal with, except now we have a little less time.  The signs of avoidance in my next report.

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Dealing With Stress; How are You Coping?

Trying to stay on top of everything that we have going on in our lives can bring that stress that we have up to a level that feels more than just challenging.  We can start to lose our physical energy, our sharpness for thinking and very generally lose our edge.  Many of the illnesses and diseases that are prevalent today are said to be furthered and worsened by stress.  How do we deal with our stress?

There are many coping strategies that are used and usually we find one that fits our personality or one that we can be comfortable with and we use it to the max.  These are short term ways of dealing with the real issues and while they can help short term, may actually make things worse long term.

Distraction – Or, I’ll deal with it later
Distractions are about taking breaks and doing something else for a little while.  This can help you be more focused when you return, but the danger is the more you put it off with other activities, the more stressed you may become as your time to completion gets shorter.

Avoidance – Or, I might deal with it …sometime
Avoidance is like distractions on steroids.  There can be so much avoidance that each act of avoidance takes up more and more time and this leads to a vicious circle of behavior.  But there are all sorts of ways that we may be avoiding dealing with our feelings of stress, from illness and sleep to over-achievement or procrastination.  We will discuss in more detail later.

Escape – Or, I don’t want to deal with it…ever.
Escaping is the most dangerous of the ways we may try to cope and many times this will come after dealing with it with distraction and avoidance.  Some may try to escape with the use of drugs, dropping out, lying to others, even to the point of injuring themselves of attempting suicide.  Escapism only compounds the problems and we still have not looked at solving the underlying issues of our stress.

No matter our age, in elementary or high school, in college or on the job, what we really need is some stress management techniques.  I hope to share some with you in the coming weeks, as I study this subject both for myself and all of our students.