A little stress in life is good if it invokes motivation and challenges us to perform better in a healthy way. But chronic stress, constant worry leads to anxiety and affects our health.

If you are feeling stressed, anxious or overwhelmed about something, here’s a simple step you can do to overcome the situation. Stop all activity, think about what made you anxious, take a few deep breaths, allow your nerves to calm down and then take an appropriate action of your choice from the list below.

Here is a list of few things you could do to help you relieve stress

1. Eat properly and do regular exercises

2. Set yourself targets to achieve. Your goals should be realistic and practical.

3. Try to complete the most important work first, and then the other work. Learn to prioritize and remove the unwanted tasks.

4. Reduce the urge to be a perfectionist. You are human and bound to make mistakes somewhere down the line.

5. Be flexible in your approach.

6. Avoid excess competition, but do not fear from competition either. Competitions help to bring out the best from you.

7. Do not buy on criticism, but constructive criticism is not to be neglected.

8. Do not worry too much if you fall short of expectations.

9. Exercise control over your temper

10. Push away negative thoughts

11. Take time out for yourself and spend some time alone thinking about the activities you planned for today, and make a plan for tomorrow

12. Keep quiet when someone’s yelling at you.

13. Keep smiling and be cheerful, it will de-stress others around you.

14. Try to keep the atmosphere light. Try to crack a joke when you are stressed out.

15. Practice meditation and yoga. This will help you relax.

16. Call a friend or your loved ones and speak to them for a while

17. Watch a funny movie or video on the internet

18. Take a massage followed by a hot shower

19. Indian head massage

20. If you like dancing, dance to your favorite music

Remember, when stressed out, it is important to take an action to relieve stress. Don’t make a mistake by doing negative things like drugs and alcohol. Be positive in your approach, think good, do good and only good will happen to you.

When stressed out, your body undergoes changes through which you prepare to fight or run away from the situation. This change causes release of cortisol from your brain. If this response doesn’t get reverted, chronic stress is caused which interferes with the hormones responsible for sexual activities. The result is lower libido and loss of sex drive. Try to relieve stress and learn stress management techniques.

Many people are so occupied with their professional and social responsibilities, that they feel exhausted at the end of the day. This is very common for women who work in the day, take care of children in evenings and have to do the chores of household activities. Being packed with work, there’s hardly any time for you to relax. Your energies are drained as soon as you complete the work and only feel like sleeping. You don’t get into the mood for sex. Even if you are in a mood for sex, you hardly find time for sex. Try to be less busy by cutting down unwanted activities, you’ll find some free time and have sex to boost your mood. Try to complete the important jobs first and seek assistance from your spouse on some work. He’ll be more than helpful, especially since he is getting sex afterwards.

Relationship issues are another reason for lower sex drive. Conflicts and arguments often arise in a relationship. Work through tough times and resolve the matter. Support your partner, and communicate with each other. Understand each other’s expectations. Sex after a fight is often a great boost, as sex brings people closer.

Want to find out more truth about sex and stress, here are a few excerpts from researches

• Arizona state university studied 58 middle-aged women. They stressed the women through out the day, and their partners got intimate with them the same night. The next morning, these women were in better mood. Orgasm has many benefits for health and stress relief. But when these women had an orgasm without a partner, their mood was still negative. Positive physical contact is important in relieving stress.
• These women had a better sex drive on the next day. Being in good mood meant their partners got more physical affection and sexual activity.
• Another study revealed that positive physical contact helped women relieve stress. Emotional stress alone didn’t work effectively.

It can hence be said that having sex when stressed out leads you to good mood. This good mood will get you good sex and very often.

Alcohol is another substance people turn to for reducing stress. While it gives a feeling of elation to your mind, the body is still under tremendous stress. Alcohol makes your body to produce adrenaline and affect your immune system. You may not feel sleepy even though you are tired. Alcohol only adds to your worries, and increases stress.

Another common comfort food for stressed out people is sugar. There’s hardly anyone who wouldn’t have had an ice-cream, or a candy after a long day at work or any other stressful activity. Sugar affects your adrenaline glands and you may feel depression and irritated.

Fatty foods like sugar strain your cardiovascular system. You are leading your heart to more stress by eating such foods. You must also avoid salty food as this increases blood pressure. You will loose control over your emotions. If emotionally disturbed, you are likely to feel agitated later on with compound feelings.

One more disadvantage of eating all the above food is that when stressed out, these foods add to the weight on your body and start showing gradually. Many obesity cases are due to unhealthy eating in stressful conditions.

Eating chocolates, fatty foods, sweets, salty foods are all harmful when I’m stressed out. So, what is it that I should eat to avoid hunger pangs when I’m hungry and stressed?

To control your stress and avoid hunger pangs, take in fruits, vegetables and whole grain food. These will naturally assist you in fighting stress, are good for your health as they are rich with nutrients. These foods are fat free and you will not gain weight. Maximize the nutrients by eating them raw; you will loose vitamins and enzymes after cooking them.

Here are a few tips on eating habits which could reduce stress

1. Do not skip your meal, have at least 3 meals a day.

2. Try to eat at the same time everyday.

3. While eating focus only on eating. Do not eat while you drive, walk or work. Finish your food and proceed to whatever you want to do.

4. Incorporate fruits, salads in your meals.

5. Drink plenty of water.

To be able to manage stresses, you must first be able to find the cause. Without finding the reason for feeling stressed out, you cannot fix the solution. It is like roaming aimlessly to find a way to your home. People who feel stressed out have tried all options of relieving stresses, but failed just because they haven’t been able to figure out what caused them to stress. If you are determined and spare time from your schedules, you can find the stressors. Once you have identified the stressors, you can easily take steps to do whatever required getting these out of your life.

Stress is something which refuses to get ignored, and its affects are seen adversely on the mind and body. Stress is the catalyst for headaches, muscle aches, migraines, digestive disorders and many more illnesses. Stress can cause serious damages to health, cancer and heart problems being two primary diseases that could be caused by stress. Hence eradicating the stressors from your life as soon as possible is important. But to eliminate stresses, we need to know what causes stress and where do they come from.

So where do these stressors come from? Sources are classified broadly into external and internal stressors. External stress comes from your work, the pressure of performing, etc, from relationships with family and friends, the atmosphere you live in. If you feel that theses are not the sources of stresses in your life, look internally for the state of your mind, sleeping and eating habits, the emotional trauma you’ve been through.

Not all families are perfect, and you cannot deny the fact the pressure from family members can stress you out. The pressure may not be directly from them, but you may start worrying about the future of kids, health conditions of you parents, happiness of all the members etc. Some family events may be missed due to work pressure, and you start worrying about not being able to be there for your family. You must learn to strike a balance in your life. This same can be applied for your relationships with friends.

Once you have identified the stressors, devise a plan to get rid of them. For instance, if you are stressed because of your job, you can consider quitting the job and finding a better one, or a career change. You can opt for doing your own business. This will make you feel relaxed, and you will enjoy what you are doing. But if you are unable to conclude on what is causing stresses to you, make a note of the possibilities whenever you feel stressed. Over a period of time, you will definitely be able to find a few causes, and eventually pinpoint one reason that is responsible to stress you out. Locating stressors is not an easy job, but to get rid of stress from your life, you have to manage stresses properly so that you can move forward comfortably.

]]> http://relievingstressblog.com/?feed=rss2&p=16 http://relievingstressblog.com/?p=14 http://relievingstressblog.com/?p=14#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:42:50 +0000 admin http://relievingstressblog.com/?p=14 There is not a single person who doesn’t feel stressed out. But it is all in the thinking that we feel the level of stress is increasing, and sometimes we worry on things which are not real. There is a saying that imaginations create demons which are more dangerous than reality itself. By thinking and worrying too much about something, we are stressing our minds. We must learn how to exercise control over our thinking, and we will experience less stress. We need stress in small quantities to keep ourselves attentive to solve issues and problems, business and family needs. Most of the time we induce stress on ourselves for no reasons, and this is preventable.

Stress is a silent killer, and being too anxious is not good for health and your social status. People often torture themselves with thoughts and feelings. Self induced stress can be avoided by utilizing your time working out ways to tackle problems rather than thinking about it.

If you do not plan well in advance, you may get into trouble or fall short of achieving what you had set out for. We may find ourselves in the middle of nowhere if we travel to an unknown place for the first time without a set of clear instructions or a map or guide. If planned and organized properly, we could save time, money and unwanted stresses.

Another reason for stressing out in our daily lives is not organizing the desks, work place, closet, home, etc. These things if properly organized could save a lot of time and stress. If your desk is organized, you won’t have to look for a pen amidst papers and files; you could just pick it up from the pen stand or pen holder.

It is very common not to find your car keys on the key stand. The previous night you could have left it in your pockets and put the clothes in cleaners. Taking time out and organizing your self and your surroundings will help you in preventing the self induced stress.

A poor mind set will not help you overcome self induced stress. Learn to forgive yourself when you make a mistake, after all you are just a human being, and are bound to make mistakes. You cannot be flawless all the time. Learning from mistakes will help you preventing from inducing stresses on yourself.

Here are ways to avoid self induced stress

1. Eliminate stress inducing from your mind

Self induced stress is something that you bring it from your choice. It has nothing to do with the outside world. You can fix the problem. Set your mind to overcome the issue, you can eliminate self induced stress from your life.

2. Look at the brighter picture

Learn to take positives from mistakes and correct what can be corrected.

3. Combat self induced pressure

Laugh it out and forget those things which you cannot solve. Take a break and find peace. Keep yourself occupied with things that you like to do.

Stresses are not easy to avoid, but trying to avoid them will definitely reduce stresses in your life.

• Husband and wife working full time, while their parents are dependent on their help for shopping due to health conditions.
• You are running hand to mouth over expenses and you are denied a hike in pay. You hardly seem to make ends meet and barely save some money.
• Divorced parents sharing the custody of child arguing with each other on matters concerning the children. These arguments tend to arise out of nowhere and more frequently.
• Ever increasing competition at work makes you feel pressure and for survival you work day in and day out. You may take up more work than you can handle. Working very early, staying up too late to complete your job. Taking time to recheck work to correct the mistakes, etc.

Types of stresses

1. Survival stress

It is a common response to fight dangers or run away from it, depending on the situation. When you feel that someone is trying to hit you, you’d react by hitting him before he hits you, or you’ll get clear and avoid getting hit. There is a sudden burst of energy in you enabling you to survive this physical danger.

2. Internal stress

You must have come across a crossroad in your life where you would have felt that you are not capable of handling certain situations, or you start worrying for no reason at all. This kind of stress is very difficult to understand and manage. This happens when we put ourselves in stressful situations and start worrying about things irrelevant to the issue.

3. Environmental stress

Responding to the situations which surround you is natural. For example, when passing by a noisy area, we tend to close our ears. We react differently to noise, crowds pressure from family, friends and work. Identifying environmental stress and getting a control over them will help reduce stress level to a great deal.

4. Stress due to fatigue and overwork

Working hard throughout the day takes a heavy toll on the body. One of the common reasons for such stress is the inability to manage time properly. Find ways to relax when you are uncomfortable, and stressed out.