Stress can be a powerful force to reckon with. In fact, according to the American Institute of Stress, almost 70% of Americans feel some type of anxiety on a daily basis. Common reasons include thinking about money, career, the current political climate in the nation, and issues like violence and crime. While some stress is understandable, too much worry can disrupt your daily life and make you feel unwell in mental, physical, and spiritual ways. Fortunately, it is easy to find a solution to this trouble when you take time to explore some of your options.
To feel whole again, it can be important to consider different ways of managing your stress. Look over these suggestions and discover an idea that will help you feel well.
Get Physical
Understanding the science of stress can help you tackle the issue head-on. When a situation begins to make you tense, your body starts to produce hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are responsible for the “fight or flight” response in humans, triggering people to respond to a threat by facing it or fleeing from it. While this makes sense evolutionarily, modern living creates anxiety-ridden situations that don’t align with the “fight or flight” responses that our ancestors experienced. Instead, people simply take on the stress without responding directly to the stimuli.
One simple way of working through worry is by engaging with physical activities. If your main goal is to give yourself some spiritual clarity, then you can explore activities like yoga, which helps you to engage with your body in a safe way, allowing you the opportunity to begin working through any tension. Yoga is all about moving your body and focusing on your breathing, which are both incredibly useful when you are feeling overwhelmed and need to center yourself.
Symbolic Gestures
In some cases, a symbolic gesture can do wonders for alleviating yourself of some of the symptoms of stress. You won’t always be able to conquer all of the problems facing you in life, but you can definitely alter the way you feel about these issues. Give yourself a bit of time to write down all of the things bothering you. You can choose to write a list or write each item on a separate piece of paper, whatever helps you clearly identify all of your stressors.
Once you’ve written down the things that cause you frustration, rip the papers into little pieces. You can be destructive about it, tearing through each paper like a wild animal, or you can rip the pages in a quiet, methodical manner. The idea is to add a physical action to the mental idea causing you worry. The act of destroying the paper might not do much on the surface, but the symbolic gesture can invigorate your spirits and help you feel like your problems are a bit more manageable than you had initially thought.
Say “No” More
Often, people tend to get stressed when they do not have enough free time to sit alone and process what life is throwing at them. If you’re the kind of person who likes to say “yes” to everyone you know, then this could be a reason for your anxiety. When you stop doling out all your free time to friends and family, it can be a bit easier to focus on any tension and discover ways to minimize the levels of frustration you feel.
Stress can easily stand in the way of your spiritual, mental, and physical health. When life keeps adding more frustrations to your plate, be sure to take a step back and evaluate what you need to do to feel sane again.