Stress Management

Hi everyone! Thanks for reading the Center Street Psychology Blog! If you haven’t been here before, you can click back to see some of our other posts on things like attachments styles, communication tools, and brain health. This week, in honor of April being Stress Awareness Month let’s take a look at some stress management tools!

Being able to successfully manage stress is an important part of being psychologically and physically healthy. Stressors come in many forms, from relationship issues to money to making big life decisions. With high levels of stress our bodies are constantly in flight-or-fight mode, which is helpful in the short term but can have negative impacts in the long run. High stress levels have been linked to many health conditions including heart disease, high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression. The clinical term for the level of stress we carry related to life events is “allostatic load”, when our bodies produce hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to try and mediate stress is “allostasis”, and when our ability to cope with stress becomes too much is “allostatic overload”. So, what can you do to help with stress?

·       Recognize the signs: knowing the ways that your body tells you about stress is key to being able to cope with stress. Things like headaches, hypervigilance, difficulty concentrating, upset stomach, and irritability can all be signs of high stress levels.

·       Connection: sometimes when stress becomes too much, we withdraw from social connection. However, stepping away from relationships can leave us feeling overwhelmed and unsupported, so it’s important to find a healthy balance of engagement.

·       Utilize routines: having a routine is one way of letting your body and your mind know what to expect and takes some of the uncertainty out of structuring the day.

·       Self-care: take time to recognize if you’re eating and sleeping well, drinking enough water, exercising, and doing the things that you enjoy. Oftentimes self-care can be pushed to the side when stress levels are high, but that’s when it’s especially important to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.

Want to know more?

·       My Health Alberta (https://myhealth.alberta.ca/Health/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=rlxsk) has an entire site dedicated to stress awareness and management, including ways to relieve stress and avoid stress.

Try using progressive muscle relaxation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJAyxihadh4) to reduce stress through a combination of relaxation, breathing, and intentional muscle tension.