Thursday, February 28, 2013

Reducing Stress




People all around the world go through life thinking about their next worry. Overtime worrying about all of the obstacles throughout life can cause a great amount of stress on one person. Sometimes coping with stress can affect a person positively.

Simply coping with stress has not seemed to be the best method to deal with stress over the past years. When coping with stress a lot of people do not look at “the other side of the coin” (Folkman, S., & Moskowitz, J. T.). As humans we find a way to deal with stress and never look at what other things around us are affected by our coping method. When coping with a heavy workload we may calm down the stress by just trying to finish the workload as fast as possible. Meaning that we will pay less attention to other people around us because right then getting rid of the stress by finishing the product is what matters. Or on the “other side of the coin” we may just put the work down and procrastinate with the work causing the performance of our work to decrease. Most stress does not result in something positive. People don’t normally stress out because something good in happening. It is normally the outcome, which resulted from the stress that is positive.

Different people handle stress in different ways. Each person is different so some of these methods may help while others may not. In the article “A Student’s Tips on Reducing Stress” the writer then explains the different ways students are stressed and how they can be reduced. The first tip was to have some confidence in yourself and what you can achieve. If you know that you’ve put the time into your work then there is no reason to always check your grades. Checking your grades often can result in high stress volumes with the student. Another useful tip was to create relaxing activities to do throughout your day that will get your mind off of what is stressing you. Come up with things that are flexible for you to do but also something that you’re not obligated to do. Some things that students can do are play a video games, listen to music, have a conversation with friends, or even play and instrument. Some people even result to something entertaining like watching short clips on YouTube. Anything that you can do that will temporarily distract you from your stressful activity will work.

In the article “Stress and Anxiety”, it refers to three different methods that can be used to reduce the amount of stress someone could have in everyday life. They discuss Exercise, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), as well as Relaxation and Other Alternative Techniques. “Exercise in combination with stress management techniques is extremely important for many reasons. Exercise is an effective distraction from stressful events.
Exercise may directly blunt the harmful effects of stress on blood pressure and the heart (Health Guide). Be sure that in your exercise that you input a decent amount of cardio. The cardio allows the toxins that are in your body that causes stress to be released from your body. “Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is among the most effective ways of reducing stress, whether the source of stress is chronic pain or a chronic disease. A typical CBT approach includes identifying sources of stress, restructuring priorities, changing one's response to stress, and finding methods for managing and reducing stress” (Health Guide). If you can eliminate what ever is stressing you the do so. With CBT if you know what is stressing you out then you are already half way to reducing the amount of stress that you have. Everyone needs to have some type of relaxation method. Weather this means that you light candles and meditate or just find a comedy on television to watch and relax your mind. There should be some type of relaxation method. “Relaxation lowers blood pressure, respiration, and pulse rate, releases muscle tension, and eases emotional strain” (Health Guide).

Everyone has to deal with stress and the many ways to cope with it. Some people try to relax and take their mind off it. Some people exercise. While others may just deal with the stress and fight through it until it over passes. No matter what we all have to deal with it and some of these tips should help others over come their stress.  

-Chris Carter

                                                                                  Sources

Fan, Will. "A Student’s Tips on Reducing Stress." The New York Times. N.p., 30 Oct. 2007. Web. 28 Feb. 2013.

Folkman, S., & Moskowitz, J. T. (2000). Positive affect and the other side of coping. American Psychologist, 55(6), 647-654. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.6.647

"Health Guide." Stress and Anxiety Lifestyle Changes. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013.

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