Dealing with Stress
By Debbi R. Kooyman Kelley, Psy.D.

What is stress?
Stress is an adaptive response. It's the body's reaction to an event that is seen as emotionally disturbing, disquieting, or threatening. Stress is not bad in and of itself.

What causes stress?
Major causes of stress include illness, job changes, moving, separations and divorces, deaths in the family, and financial difficulties. But even joyous events, like marriage, the arrival of a baby, or entertaining guests, can be stressful.

“Good” and “Bad” Stress

• “Good” stress is a balance of arousal and relaxation that makes you more alert, energizes you, and helps you concentrate, focus, and achieve what you want.
• “Bad” stress is constant, continual arousal without adequate relief that is harmful to your body and can lead to physical ailments such as headaches, upset stomach, problems sleeping, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. It can also tax the mind and lead to dangerous behaviors such as the abuse of alcohol or drugs, emotional outbursts, or other self-destructive behaviors that can jeopardize your health, job, and relationships.

Tips for Managing Stress

• Keep a positive attitude
  • How you look at things can greatly increase or reduce their stressfulness. Watch out for unhelpful and untrue thoughts, such as "I just can't do this." Substitute these with more correct/helpful thoughts, such as “I can do this” and "If I just take one thing at a time, I'll be fine.”
• Make time for yourself each day
  • Make time each day to do something that you enjoy even if it is only for a few minutes. Revitalizing your self in this way will allow you to maintain proper balance and perspective in your life and will give you better control over stress.
• Manage your time wisely
  • Take one thing at a time. Don’t overdo things. Tackle your day to day problems and responsibilities with a system that works for you. A simple method is to:

    - List the things that you need to do
    - Put them in order of importance
    - Decide what you need to do yourself, and what can be delegated
    - Decide which needs doing today, next week or next month
    - Decide what doesn’t need doing after all, and drop it from the list

• Learn to relax
  • Deep breathing, stretching, meditation, relaxation exercises, yoga, and massage are all effective ways of helping both your body and mind relax and deal better with stress
• Laugh
  • Feelings and attitudes appear to play an important role in health. Humor and laughter are very healing.
• Maintain good social relationships
  • Nurture your ties to family and friends. Give more attention to the people who nurture and support you.
• Talk about your problems
  • Often talking to somebody else will help you see things from a different and less stressful perspective.
• Keep a journal
  • Writing can serve as a good release for stress-inducing problems and may help you to discover important insights or solutions to your problems.
• Exercise
  • Stress releases adrenaline in the body. Exercise helps to reduce it and releases endorphins, natural chemicals that promote calm and contentment. Try a brisk walk around the block when you feel tense.
• Eat healthy, well-balanced meals
  • Alcohol, caffeine, sugar, fats and tobacco all put a strain on your body's ability to cope with stress. A diet with a balance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and foods high in protein but low in fat will help create optimum health. Also, make sure you drink plenty of water.
• Get enough rest and sleep
  • Try to get seven or eight hours of sleep on a regular basis. You may be used to operating on less sleep and an irregular schedule, but you can't handle stress as well in this mode.