Strategies and techniques for coping with stress

 Stressful situations are now an inseparable "companion" of human life. We perceive stress as a feeling of discomfort in a specific situation, understood as a state of tension, a sense of threat, or fear. Tight muscles of the neck and shoulders, abdominal pain, clenched hands, clenched jaw, or teeth grinding are just some of the body's reactions to a stressful situation. What are some ways to reduce the feeling of chronic stress?

Stress is the body's physiological response to various environmental factors (stressors). The sources of stressors can be: both physical (e.g. noise, disease) and social factors (e.g. unemployment, pregnancy and childbirth, family problems, loss of a loved one).

Stressors activate complex mechanisms of both physiological and psychological responses.

In danger, the autonomic nervous system is activated. It starts to secrete stress hormones like cortisol as well as adrenaline. Hormones are responsible for the stimulation (increased reaction of the circulatory system, intense breathing, increased blood flow to active muscles, increased mental and physical activity) of the body, and thus facilitate its faster reaction to danger.

The body prepares to flee or fight. Due to this reaction, the body's energy-consuming processes that are not needed at this moment are stopped:

• digestion and inhibited sexual functions,
• the intestinal muscles relax,
• the activity of the immune system decreases and the production of antibodies decreases.

These hormones, secreted in excess for too long, can disrupt the functioning of the body and lead to its exhaustion. Short-term stress is adaptive and mobilizes us, while long-term stress weakens the body's immune capabilities.

How Can I Cope With Stress?

The concept of "coping with stress" was first introduced in the 1960s. Our reaction to the effects of a stressor is to try to remove it and return to a state of equilibrium, but it is the way of dealing with stress that will largely determine the costs that we will suffer when confronted with the factors that cause it.

16 techniques: how to overcome stress

1. Keep a positive attitude.
2. Accept that there are events that you cannot control.
3. Be assertive, not aggressive. Emphasize your feelings, opinions, or beliefs instead of being defensive or passive or evil.
4. Find your way to reduce stress.
5. Learn relaxation techniques and practice. Try meditation, yoga, or tai-chi.
6. Exercise regularly. Your body can handle stress better when it is in good shape.
7. Eat healthy, well-balanced meals.
8. Learn to manage your time more effectively.
9. Make attempts to keep your daily routine - constant pores restore order and harmony, and the crowd of changes is a stressful challenge.
10. Set your boundaries properly and learn to deny requests that would put excessive stress on your life.
11. Make time for hobbies, interests, and relaxation. Engage in fun activities. You can create your own list of pleasures: break from chores to relax muscles, board games, aromatic bath, reading, listening to music, cuddling a cat, playing with the dog, warm tea, etc. Pamper yourself and do something you like very much.
12. Rest and get regular sleep. Your body needs time to recover from stressful events.
13. Do not use alcohol or psychoactive substances.
14. Seek social support. Spend time with those you like. Provide yourself with the support of others and stay in touch with your loved ones.
15. Talk about your fears and emotions with people you trust. Avoid aggravating and hurting people, choose those who can really understand and listen.
16. Seek support and don't be afraid to ask for help. Seek help from a psychologist to learn healthy ways to deal with stress.

Selected strategies that will help in the fight against stress

Try different relaxation techniques

Test a few of them and choose the optimal strategy for you. The most common methods of relaxing are breathing exercises, stretching, neck and neck relaxation, Schultz autogenic training, Jacobson progressive training, and meditation.

Relaxing the neck and neck muscles

They can be performed both by standing and lying. You should make the movements of the neck in such a way as to make a figure of eight. We repeat this exercise 10 times back and forth. We should clearly feel the stretching of the neck and nape muscles, which gives the effect of relaxation and makes it easier to breathe.

Jacobson training, i.e. progressive muscle relaxation

It consists in tightening and relaxing specific groups of muscles. Along with inhaling, we tense the given muscle, hold it tense for about 5 seconds, and then relax with the exhalation. We're taking a short break.

It does not matter which muscle groups we start to tense first, we can start, for example, with the hands, head, back, abdomen, or vice versa, and then move up the body. Each group of muscles can be tense three times, but remember to take short breaks.

The training is best done lying down, which promotes relaxation.

Autogenic Schultz training

It is a self-suggesting relaxation technique to relieve stress and anxiety. It consists in inducing a state similar to hypnosis and the use of inner meditation. It consists of six phases or elements: a feeling of weight, warmth, regulation of the heart, regulation of free breathing, feeling of warmth in the solar plexus, and feeling of coolness in the forehead.

There are 4 starting positions: lying on the back; front lying; sit on a chair with a backrest; reclining in the armchair. We sit down in a quiet, peaceful place and perform successive elements or stages of autogenic training using auto-suggestion. It is best to do this under the guidance of a specialist.

What is the Schultz relaxation technique?

Training elements. Examples of messages. Effects

• Feeling heavy
• "My right hand is heavy"
• Muscle relaxation
• A feeling of warmth
• "My right hand is warm"
• Vasodilation, the heat increase
• Breathing regulation
• "My breathing becomes calm and regular"
• Calm, slow, and regular breathing
• Heart rate regulation / Pulse "My pulse is calm and regular" Pulse is slow
• A feeling of warmth in the solar plexus (the area between the breastbone and the navel)
• "I feel warm around the solar plexus"
• Relaxation of the abdominal organs
• Feeling of coolness on the forehead "My forehead is cold"
• It helps to calm down

Visualization

It is a variation of traditional meditation. It is about taking a comfortable position and visualizing the places we would like to be at a given moment. You can combine the visualizations with listening to your favorite and relaxing music. It consists in imagining a favorite place (scene) in which we feel comfortable.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a method developed in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zin. He described mindfulness "as a special kind of attention: focused on the present moment, conscious, non-judgmental."

The basis of mindfulness is mindfulness meditation, thanks to which a person learns how to use internal resources in dealing with stress, pain, or challenges. Despite the fact that the program uses elements derived from Buddhism or yoga, it is completely secular and is aimed at people with any belief system.

Anyone can use MBSR, but it can be especially helpful for people experiencing:

• stress,
• mental suffering (caused e.g. by anxiety disorders, depression, or panic attacks),
• diseases (e.g. heart disease, asthma, digestive system disorders, chronic pain, cancer, chronic pain, diabetes, or high blood pressure).

The effectiveness of the MBSR method has been confirmed in many scientific studies.