stress management

How Stress Management Therapy Can Help

Posted on by Dominick Flarey

Stress Management Therapy

Stress management therapy in it’s various forms, has the potential to do a lot of good in people’s lives. This is because stress can adversely effect our overall health for long periods of time, and have a large detrimental impact on our health during the course of our whole lives.
Many illnesses and ailments can be traced back to stress as a significant underlying cause. Increased stress levels can be a contributing cause or exacerbating factor to heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure, frequent colds and many other illnesses.
Not only does stress effect us physically, but also mentally. The symptoms can limit people’s lives by causing them to avoid situations where triggers for their stress might arise. If an individual suffers from anxiety attacks or panic attacks, this can lead to them avoiding public places and becoming prisoners in their own homes.
Stress management therapy may not completely cure all the symptoms, or the underlying causes of the stress factors for everyone, but it can help people get to a stage where the effect of stress on their lives is diminished to levels where it is minimal. This will mean the impact on their lives from stress is vastly reduced, and both their physical and mental well being can improve dramatically.
It can encompass many types of proven techniques to help people suffering from stress to control and reduce the amount of stress they feel.

Stress Therapy Interventions

Relaxation therapy is one of the main forms of stress management therapy. This can help individuals feel relaxed in their normal daily lives, but it can also give the individuals a set of techniques that may help reduce their stress once the symptoms have been triggered. When a person feels a panic attack or an anxiety attack starting to occur, they can use relaxation techniques to head-off the problem before the symptoms culminate into a full-on attack.
Just as emotional stimulation can cause these attacks, there are relaxation techniques that can help manage them and prevent them from becoming a problem.
As mentioned earlier, these therapies do not only help at the time of the attack, but also help the patient be more relaxed during the course of their daily lives. A person who is in a relaxed state of mind is far less likely to suffer from these attacks. Relaxation therapy helps people reach this state of mind by simply teaching them how to relax. It sounds very simple, but during modern living we often forget how to relax. These therapies can give a person techniques to practice at home to help them maintain a relaxed and healthy state of mind.
There are many different therapies that come under the umbrella of relaxation therapy, some will be of far more benefit to one individual than to another, so different techniques can be used to tailor relaxation therapy to the individual.
Aversion therapy can also help. Some people self-medicate with various substances to help them cope with their stress. Aversion therapy helps them by forcing the mind to associate the addictive substance with a negative stimulus.
Therapy which uses a positive stimulus to help someone associate that with desirable behavior can also help. This is similar to aversion therapy in the way it works, but rather than a negative stimulus being used to prevent undesirable behavior, a positive stimulus is used instead to reinforce desirable behavior or feelings. This can help the mind change the way it feels about the triggers of your stress, and associate them with something pleasant.
Hypnosis can also help, this causes the mind to be “reprogrammed” on a subconscious level, which can both reduce stress and reduce the symptoms and frequency of the attacks themselves.
There are many more techniques that can be used. All of them can help a person manage their stress to prevent it becoming a problem. Some people turn to a pharmaceutical solution for their stress, this can help but it is only a short-term fix. It does not teach people how to manage their stress. Prescription drugs also often have serious side effects that can cause problems in other areas of your life, as well as health problems.
A comprehensive program to help people with their stress, is the best solution to the problem. If you suffer from anxiety attacks, panic attacks or other forms of stress, stress management therapy can make a major positive influence on your life.  To learn about stress management education courses, access here.

What is Stress Management?

Posted on by Dominick Flarey

Stress management refers to various psychotherapies and techniques aimed to control  one’s levels of stress, usually with the purpose to improve everyday functioning.

Therefore, the word “stress” refers to  bad types of stress with negative consequences, also called distress, rather than a good type of stress that has positive or helpful consequences.

Stress management involves reducing and controlling the tension that usually occurs in stressful situations, by making physical and emotional changes. How much change takes place will be determined by the desire to make a change and the degree of stress.

 About Stress

Stress is described as the response one has when facing different circumstances which force him/her to adjust, change or act in some way in order to keep things balanced or be grounded in the reality of the situation.
The stress response may trigger involuntary changes in one’s body, giving an extra energy burst to help him/her run away or fight the perceived threats. This used to be very helpful in the past, when most of the stress was physical. But nowadays, when more and more stress has psychological causes, this response is not really necessary or helpful.
Stress can also be chronic. That happens when someone often faces stressful situations in which he/she has little control. Chronic stress can affect someone’s health  seriously, because it can lower and cause suppression of the immune system. Therefore it can be a factor that causes or contributes to all major illnesses.
Stress Factors
Stress is generally related to both internal and external factors. External factors include your job, physical environment, home, relationships with others, all the challenges, situations, expectations and difficulties you confront with every day. Internal factors determine a person’s and their body’s ability to respond and deal with external factors that induce stress. This includes emotional well being, nutritional status, the amount of rest or sleep you get, overall health and fitness levels, and the stress control ability you have through relaxation or other techniques and strategies.
Therefore managing stress may involve learning how to change some external factors you are confronting with or work with the internal factors to strengthen your ability to face whatever comes your way. There are many programs available today to help you cope with stress.

 Stress Management Techniques

Regardless of the origin of stress you have, there are some basic steps to help you manage it:
– Quick Stress Relief – stress relievers are a great way to start the process, because they help you calm down and see the situation from a relaxed place. It also helps you deal more effectively with stress, and keeps you healthy meanwhile. Common strategies include use of humor or breathing exercises.
– Address the Situation – once you’ve managed to calm down, you can try to identify the type of stress in your life, in order to know how to deal with it.
– Long-Term Stress Management – you need to include some regular activities that replenish you, helping you to better face the daily life stress. A habit that includes some simple stress-relieving activities may be the key to less reaction to stressors, making you able to handle stress when you face it.
Some effective techniques that might help you cope with stress are:
– Exercise – it helps managing tension and emotional stress, may help with relaxation and to improve your sleep. Exercise has the power to remove you from a stressful situation or environment even if just temporarily. Being healthy and fit could also include an increased ability to deal with stress.
– Meditation and relaxation techniques – there are various ways to use relaxation techniques in order to improve you physically and mentally and help control stress. There are some techniques that you can do on your own, and other that are better learned in a class. Here are some examples: autogenic training, biofeedback, imagery, meditation techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, Qigong, Tai Chi, Yoga, social activity, conflict resolution, cognitive therapy, prayer, artistic expressions, stress balls, progressive relaxation, somatic training, or listening to different types of music.
Other stress management strategies are time management, organizational skills and support systems.

Programs

Some stress management programs might be structured in this way:
– Introduction and individual needs assessment – talking about how stress affects you and people around you
– Stress management overview – stress causes, positive and negative stress
– Relaxation techniques and training
– Managing healthy stress levels: preventing, reducing and adapting strategies
– Maintaining a happy, healthy lifestyle, exercise, nutrition, time management, social, productive, assertiveness, positive goal setting.

Why is Stress Management so Important?

Stress can have many negative impacts on your life and body, therefore it is best to learn about stress management and live a happy and healthy life. As the old saying goes, “stress kills.” More recent research finds this to be actually true. We would have a much healthier nation if we could encourage people and them how to manage stress in their lives. If you are interested in taking some stress management courses, access additional information on this blog.

Stress Management Consulting

Posted on by Dominick Flarey

Companies need to help employees succeed with better stress management in mind. Stress kills output and companies should seek to limit stress as much as possible for their employees

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Taking Timeouts to Decrease Stress and Increase Creativity

Posted on by Dominick Flarey

Written in collaboration with Neal Vahle, Ph.D.

The world today is moving faster than ever. Technology has changed the way we communicate and get information and entertainment, and also the way we read, learn and how, when, where and from whom we buy products. And these changes will keep coming faster and more dramatically, causing most of us to be rushing and racing just to keep up.
The result is an enormous amount of stress, tension and exhaustion, which severely decreases the quality of our health, our relationships and our work. When over stressed, we don’t sleep well, are more anxious and irritable and are taking more than 40,000 tons of aspirin a year to counter the ever-increasing stress-related headaches, bad backs, neck pains and stomach problems.   Learn to  Decrease Stress.

The article, “Taking Timeouts to Decrease Stress and Increase Creativity”, by Robert J. Kriegel, Ph.D. states

“The human engine, like any other, runs on energy. The more you have at your disposal, the healthier you’ll be and the better you’ll feel and perform. But you can’t continually run an engine in the red zone, at max output, or it will burn out.”

For the full article please go here.