Stress Management

WOW what a doozy of a topic. Stress management in my opinion means that a person attempts to find ways to cope with their stress or to alleviate stress all together or at least minimize the stressful situations in their lives.

How does this pertain to me???? Hmmmmmm, Let me think. Well for one I can be a real stressed out, wound up, ball of nerves. I can get myself tied up in a frenzy over the least little thing quicker than you can blink. I also do not function well when things in my life are chaotic. I tend to shut down emotionally and at times physically. Chaos brings about the strongest of the stressful events for me. So organization is my best tool for reducing my stress to some degree. My organizational skills have been somewhat hindered in recent years for a reason I really am not sure of. I've just had more trouble concentrating and applying organizational skills. At times I've found myself experiencing a shut down when I can't get myself organized. Of course this is a control issue and there are always situations that are out of my control and when those situations come at me one after another, piling on top of one another it is difficult for me to keep from getting all stressed out over it all.

At some point I have to attempt to cope with the situations because dealing with them, putting them behind me then will give relief to some of the stress in my life. The majority of what I'd consider most stressful for me is related to health issues. Those type of stressors are harder to be able to put behind you because they are recurring and oftentimes long lasting. So I've found that alleviating fears, concerns or questions I have about a particular health issue helps to reduce some of the stress elements of those situations. I've found that education to obtain knowledge on something stressing me out is a powerful tool in teaching me how to cope with that situation. Sometimes I'm stressing because of a fear or perhaps a perception I have about a particular health issue, once I research it, educate myself on it I often learn that my fears are unfounded. Once I realize that the fears I had are not likely to happen then I find that I can put that individual stressor to rest.

Addressing the stressors in our lives one by one can be very tiring and in itself can become a stressor. Keeping our lives as simple as can be is another way I've found to minimize stress. Not taking on too much responsibility is something I've had to learn the hard way. I tend to take on way more then I should and I'm slowly learning to cut back. It is very hard for me to not commit myself to something when I'm asked to participate in some way. Saying No is a big problem for me. I'm getting better but it is still a big problem.

I do not believe there is a clear-cut way to rid our lives of stress and personally I don't feel we'll ever be successful at eliminating stress from our lives entirely. All we can do is try to keep our lives simple, calm and not over obligated. We can't do more than we can do and often we think we can do more than we truly can.