Last week’s blog was all about the physical toll that stress takes on our bodies. This means that it was definitely a huge downer. Stress is all around us, and sometimes it can feel completely unescapable. For the remainder of this month we’re going to concentrate on what to do about the stress in our lives, reducing its negative effects, and calming our bodies. The main purpose of this week’s blog is to look at how we can make some possible changes to our lifestyles and patterns that will have the effect of reducing overall stress.

If I had a nickel for every time that I told a client this, I’d have a lot of nickels, but the top three things that we can do to positively impact our mental health are to eat the right foods, exercise, and get the right amount of sleep. When considering your diet, it is generally recommended to focus on eating a variety of fresh foods with ingredients that you can actually pronounce and avoiding* nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol (which may feel like short-term stress reducers, but can actually increase stress over time). The foods we eat impact our moods and our overall health. WebMD*** recommends reducing sugars, increasing complex carbs, lean proteins, antioxidants, Vitamin C, Magnesium, and Omega-3 fatty acids. Exercise is important, but don’t forget that walking is exercise. If you feel you don’t have time for exercise make some simple changes*** like: parking far away when you go to the store, take the stairs instead of elevators, walk on your lunch break, wash your car by hand, take your bike instead of driving, or clean up your house. The importance of sleep is vastly underrated, and I’ve worked with a lot of people (especially teens) who don’t get enough sleep. Adults typically need at least 7-8 hours of quality sleep every night. If you are having trouble sleeping, The Cleveland Clinic recommends*:

Have a consistent bedtime and wake-up time
Make sure your room is quiet, dark, and comfortable
Avoid napping during the day as much as possible
Don’t lounge in the bed, it should be used for sleep and sex only
Use relaxing music or sounds when trying to sleep
Avoid caffeine and exercise several hours before bedtime

It is also recommended* to take an inventory of your day and the demands on your time. It is sometimes necessary to prioritize some of these demands and let go of others. This might involve setting boundaries with other people. Remember that it is also important to ask for help from our friends and loved ones from time to time. Before you worry about inconveniencing others, ask yourself if you would help them if they asked. Even so, we don’t have to say yes to everything. It is okay to tell someone no if their request will be a major inconvenience or increase the stress in your life.

I’ve brought up exploring your values a lot in these blogs, but this process also relates to managing stress in our lives. *When our actions match our beliefs, we tend to feel better, even when we’re busy. Many times our actions and values don’t line up. This tends to be in the form of our “shoulds,” as in, “I should stop procrastinating,” “I should lose weight,” “I should stop spending so much time on my phone.” When we’re stressed, we sometimes fall on unhealthy coping strategies that can make things worse in the long-run. We tend to know when we’re in these patterns, though, but it’s easy to get stuck on what we “should” do. “Should” is a limiting word because it is inherently judgmental. When we’re “shoulding” all over ourselves, we tend to not actually do anything different, but we do feel bad about what we’d like to be different. Checking in with one’s values helps people figure out what is really important to them. Once we’ve done that, it becomes much more powerful to start to say “I will” instead of “I should.”

Many people’s jobs can be very stressful due to pay, unrealistic expectations for workers, a dead-end (or no opportunities for advancement), lack of control, or lack of support. Work can commonly be a big source of all of the undesirable side-effects of stress that I wrote about last week. The American Psychological Association** recommends the following steps:

Keep a record of stressful situations for at least a week to help you understand what happened and what about it seemed to trigger your stress response.
Use healthy coping strategies instead of unhealthy ones. This means that instead of reaching for a cigarette or a drink, go for a walk, do some yoga, or find some time for things you enjoy.
Set some boundaries for work, such as not responding to work emails or texts when you leave for the day. It’s also important to get away from time to time, so if you have vacation time, make sure to use it.
Learn to relax with mindfulness. I’ll post more specific information about mindfulness later this month.
Talk to your supervisor. Most likely it would be easier for them to give you some assistance than it would be to replace you if you become completely burnt out at work, so try talking to the person in charge. Many supervisors have a policy of, “don’t bring me a problem without some possible solutions,” so don’t just have a goal of complaining. Make a goal of finding answers together.

These are big-picture ideas about reducing the amount of stress in your life. Next we will be talking about specific steps for actually calming your body when you’re feeling high levels of stress and anxiety, so check back here next week as we continue this blog series about stress.

*https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-relieve-stress

**https://www.apa.org/topics/healthy-workplaces/work-stress

***https://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/stress-management