Best Stress Busters, Part One

First, recognize quickly when your emotional reaction to a situation or event is heading to a level that is inappropriate, so you can immediately take steps to remedy those thoughts. A strong level of emotion is not necessary for life’s little fustrations, so you need develop your own scale of what in your life constitutes a true emergency and what is just a little thing that hasn’t worked out the way you wanted it to. Reserve your energy for tackling the big things.

Try every stress reduction technique you learn until the stress goes away. It can take up to 8 minutes to distract yourself from something that part of you really wants to do. That’s a long time when you are fighting an urge, so if one thing doesn’t work, immediately move onto another suggestion. Watch the clock if it helps – when you become fully distracted, you’ll find you’ve automatically stopped watching it.

Drown out your negative thoughts by internally repeating a personal replacement phrase. Some to try are: “No”, “There’s nothing to cry (get upset) about”, “I don’t have to think that”, “What’s the hurry”, “I don’t know, I don’t care and it doesn’t make any difference” (this last one is a quote from Albert Einstein).

Banish negative thoughts by having an internal conversation with God or with yourself. Discuss good points about yourself or your life, relive successful moments, think of some bad times you’ve already been through and remember that you got through them. Draw in strength from God’s love or from the strength of your own indomitable will and become confident that your worries or your anger is needless and let it go.

Before you give in to increasing an emotional reaction, try to evaluate logically the seriousness of the situation that is bothering you. Ask yourself to think about things like: is it really the worst thing that ever happened, have other things happened to you this serious that you or anyone else have previously overome, what’s the probablility that whatever you’re worried about is really going to happen. If the situation isn’t critical, your logic can overcome your emotions.

Release your anger through vigorous physical activity so you can deal more logically with what is happening. Our bodies are constantly ready to call upon our survival instincts, even if you have never had to invoke these protective reactions before due to a threatening situation. This may be a reason why we are sometimes moved to use these strong emotions when not really called for. Our negative thoughts unconsciously trigger these physical reactions and it may be beneficial to work the stress chemicals out of your bloodstream with activity, just as if you were in a “fight or flight” event.

Activity doesn’t have to be a sport or a workout for release – dance around the house to music that makes you feel good, throw a tantrum on your bed and kick your arms and legs on the soft mattress until you get it all out, or scream or sob as loud as you want into a pillow, or punch the pillow if you need to.