Okay, stress. I’ve got some. More than some, actually. A combination of weird family issues and household issues and just stuff has me anxious, sleeping poorly, stomach-achey, tight-necked, clenched-jawed and prone to bursting into tears from time to time with little to no warning.
The problems themselves aren’t anything I can fix, per se. I just have to wait and let them work themselves out, and they are, but it’ll be awhile until the situations are all right, and while I really don’t have any reason to worry (I know, intellectually, that the problems are temporary and that worrying can’t help anything) I just can’t seem to help it, and the stress is wearing me ragged.
So far I’ve tried (with only modest success) napping midday, drinking herbal tea and having smaller meals to avoid the rumbling tummy problems, meditation/prayer, exercise and I’ve added B-Complex, Antioxidant Complex and C vitamins to my daily regimen.
Any suggestions for other workable ways to chill out, calm down and not let it all get to me?
Long hot showers, with the water hitting me just above the nape of the neck, is my speedy stress reliever.
Write it all out. It obviously won’t solve anything, but seeing it on paper makes it easier to digest. As solutions come, cross it off. As the list dwindles, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Grab a good book, go sit at Dennys/Perkins and veg out for an hour. Escapism can be a good thing.
When I’m under stress (especially the “Can’t do a thing about it” stress), I get on my Gazelle Glider and go, go, go, go. Just turning on the music and moving for about 20-30 minutes every day help. It doesn’t make the problems go away, but it does help me calm down. I imagine walking outside, or doing an aerobic tape, or yoga would do something similiar.
It doesn’t have to be earth-shattering. Help a stranger who’s carrying a heavy package. Make a cup of tea for a co-worker. Bring a little treat for the office: homemade cookies, some nice, in-season apples, whatever. Pick up some flowers or a special treat for your SO.
If you’re feeling up to it, help somebody out with a problem. Give somebody whose car is in the shop a lift to the store. Find someone else who’s stressed out, too, and take them out for dinner.
I hate exercising. Always have, always will, and it shows when I have to go clothes-shopping
But a year or so ago I made a concerted effort to try to hit the gym a few days a week. And at the end of the workout, I found I felt better about stressors for a little bit. I distinctly remember one time being really teed off about something before I went. The more I thought about it on that treadmill, the higher I cranked the speed. And I felt better afterward, dammit.
Anyway - if you can find or make the time to go for a walk, hit the gym or whatever… a) it’s time for yourself when you don’t have to deal with the stress, b) you can remind yourself it’s good for the body, and c) I’m sure Opal would approve.
Yoga or Tai Chi, or any controlled, slow motion movement done with abdominal breathing.
There are tons of herbs that are supposed to help with depression, but I don’t know how well they work. There are also prescription meds you can look into.
mindfulness meditation (where you focus on breathing) or positive visualization (visualizing yourself being able to handle your situation without having to feel stress and knowing its coming to an end) will help a little bit. You’ll still have stress even if you do a ton of things right, but the stress won’t be as intense hopefully.
Good advice here already; in addition, eat right (lay off sugar, caffeine and alcohol), underreact to your stressors (easy to say, I know, but it really does work - you always have a choice of how you react to things), and do progressive relaxation exercises. You know, those tense your muscles then release them kinda things. The mindfulness meditation is great for stress reduction; use meditation to relax your brain, and use progressive relaxation to relax your body.
I’ll further recommend exercise. But there are different approaches depending on 1) what type of stress you’re dealing with and 2) what will work for you. Perhaps I am fortunate that both approaches work for me, for the right situation.
First is more of an aerobic type, and can be as simple as walking. 30 minutes is optimal, but if you can’t do that much, do as much as you can. The key (as others have pointed out) is to get moving. Hiking, biking, rollerblading will all work. Get the heart going. It may not be possible to not think about the things upon which you are stressing, but the fact that you’ll be active will help keep things in perspective (if these things need to work themselves out on their own, what ‘purpose’ is there to me stressing about them ?)
The second approach is the work-yourself-to-exhaustion approach. Find a much more rigorous task, and go at it until you’re exhausted. If there’s a punching bag around, that will certainly do. Splitting wood is a great one as well. In this approach, you get so wrapped up in the activity, you tend not to dwell on the issues that are stressing you. It’s more of a shock type treatment. Like the primal scream thing to release the stress.
Follow whichever with some nice relaxation. Deep breaths, nice shower, read a book, whatever. Should help until things start to build up again.
