Best Ways to Reduce Stress

Sometimes, after a highly unexpected event, life is just plain stressful. Maybe you are on a tight deadline at work, have relationship issues, or someone in your family is having

health issues - or perhaps several unpleasant things are happening simultaneously and feel like you are juggling 1000 things at once. The emotional and behavioral changes after these circumstances are known as stress.

If you also have had experienced these kinds of situations or still going through them, you might be a victim of stress. Here, we have mentioned ways to reduce stress and enjoy a peaceful and healthy life.

What Are the Complications Of Stress?

Before coming to management, we would like to discuss stress-related complications. Stress can affect your overall health and all aspects of your life, including behaviors, thinking ability, emotions, and physical health.

What Stress Does to Your Body?

When you come across something threatening - an oncoming car or your boss's tone of voice - your ears and eyes send signals to the amygdala, an organ of the brain involved in emotional processing. When detecting danger, the amygdala sends an alert to the hypothalamus, which then signals to the nervous system and triggers the fight-or-flight response.

When this response is started, stress hormones like adrenaline flood your body, make your heart beat faster, and increase your pulse and blood pressure rate. Simultaneously, you breathe more quickly, and blood sends extra oxygen to your brain.

At the same time, a range of other hormonal changes and physical responses occur when your body reacts to stress.

When this fight-or-flight response is activated, it causes specific health problems like high blood pressure and brain changes that lead to anxiety and depression.

When going through stress, you may experience symptoms like;

• Becoming easily frustrated, agitated, and moody
• Feeling overwhelmed and losing control over your body.
• Have difficulty in quieting your mood
• Low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself 

In addition to these behavioral changes, individuals with stress can also experience some physical changes in their bodies. Physical symptoms of stress can include;

• Headaches
• Low energy
• Aches, pains, and tense muscles
• Rapid heartbeat and chest pain
• Insomnia
• Frequent infections and colds
• Loss of sexual desire
• Nervousness, ringing the ear, cold and sweaty feet.  

Stress can also be recognized by some cognitive symptoms like racing thought, inability to focus, racing thoughts, poor judgment, forgetfulness, etc.

Stress Management

While it is not always possible to change or control everything in your life, you can change how you relate to those causing stress. The best trick for dealing with stress is softening how you perceive stress and connecting it more accepting.

Mindfulness To Manage Stress Response

Understanding the stress mechanism is crucial to managing your body's stress response. The more you can manage the stress consequences, the more you will feel relaxed. One helpful approach for how to reduce stress is practicing mindfulness.

Mindfulness is an art and the ability to be entirely engaged or present at the moment. This ability lets you step back from unpleasant emotions and thoughts due to a challenging situation. Mindfulness enables you to calm the mind, coordinate with your body, and gain perspective of the world around you.

Individuals who incorporate mindfulness meditation into their lives report a greater sense of positivity, acceptance, patience, and compassion. At the same time, they also experience

lower stress, frustration, and sadness even in extreme situations. 

According to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, ten days of practicing mindfulness meditation reduces stress by 14%.

Stretching And Exercise

Exercise reduces the body's stress hormones like cortisol and stimulates the production of endorphins, which elevate mood. Walking, jogging, or any other activity where you repetitively use large muscle groups will surely help you reduce stress. Even a short

A 10-minute stroll can relax the mind and clear your brain of overwhelming thoughts.

On the other hand, stretching can manage the muscle tension produced by carrying stress in your body. This, in turn, can also help you avoid insomnia and sleep better. In addition to regular exercise, stretching is a recipe for living a less stressful and more peaceful life.

Music Mantra  

When you are stressed, you may feel like everyone is against you, and you cannot connect to others easily. Studies show that music facilitates emotions of belonging, positive feelings of warmth towards others, trust, empathy, and social skills.

Peaceful music can also change your mood and heartbeat. When you listen to something exciting and engaging, your heart begins to sync with the beat. It means that a melody can calm down a racing heartbeat. So, any time you feel stressed or frustrated, do not go for long-term treatment options; open your favorite playlist and play a song.

Talk Therapy

Talking to someone can also manage your stress and lower it within seconds. In a stressful situation, your friends or family members can help you reduce your stress by lightening your thoughts.

You only see the negatives when under pressure, while others can evaluate the positives. They can also let you know how to avoid impending danger.

So, whenever you are under stress, call a friend and let them know about what's on your mind and overwhelming you. After doing this, you will like a load was lifted off your shoulders.

A third available resource of talk therapy is talking to a therapist. When you process stressors in your life with a therapist, when you process stressors in life with your therapist, this can help you work through whatever leads to tension in your brain and body. Your therapist can also tell you how to help you reduce your stress.

Bottom Line

Stress is one of the central and unavoidable parts of our lives, but that does not mean you should ignore it. Too much-untreated stress can result in potentially severe mental and physical health problems.

The good news is that, in some cases, stress is manageable. Although the above-given tips are beneficial in stress management, several other ways and medications are also available for stress management. I suggest you talk with professionals if these tips are ineffective or not enough.

I think it's enough for today. For more information regarding stress, please drop a comment below.