Hurricane Gustav really made this a stressful week.  Since I live in the Houston, TX area, there’s the whole “should I leave or should I stay” decision. Then, whether you decide to go or whether you decide to stay, there’s the preparations that have to be made getting your home and property secured. And all the time you’re doing this, CNN is constantly talking about the impending doom and showing pictures of past destruction.  Worry, worry, worry, stress, stress, stress.

What Stress Is

What we call “stress” is the body’s response to a change in your comfort level.  That change could be something physical like an upcoming storm, it could be something emotional like being asked to give a speech in front of a group of strangers, or it could be something mental like worrying about how to get your bills paid.  In either case, your level of comfort changes and you feel stress.

Some stress can be a positive thing, such as when you get an unexpected pay raise.  It can also help make you stronger, such as when you stress a muscle by lifting weights.  However, too much stress or stress caused by negative news or events can create some pretty serious health effects.

It’s important to understand that negative stress can affect your health in a variety of ways including anxiety, mood swings, and depression as well as a number of physical ways such as sleeplessness, fatigue, sweating, and nausea.

Coping with Stress

So how do you deal with negative stress?  How do you cope with its effects?  Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Trust Your Faith.  Whatever your religious beliefs, research shows that people with a strong spirituality are more positive and hopeful towards the future.  They also tend to see stressful situations as part of life that help make us spiritually stronger.  Their belief that there is a greater power in the universe that they can access through prayer and meditation provides the strength and encouragement to handle any kind of stress.

2.  Trust Yourself. Adopt a “survivor mentality” that says, “No matter what, I will get through this.”  This attitude immediately begins to put a positive spin on things and makes them appear more manageable.  Knowing that you’ll survive no matter what happens gets you focused on moving past the problem.  This is obviously better than spending all of your time picturing the many ways that things can go wrong.

3.  Trust the Power of Action. Do something.  It doesn’t really matter what you do, just that you stay active.  Exercise, ride a bike, take a walk, anything to get your heart rate up and your mind off of your troubles.  If there’s a storm coming, throw yourself into the preparations.  Taking action, any kind of action, builds momentum towards a solution.  You’ll be surprised that some of your best ideas on how to cope will come during your bike ride or walk.

4.  Take a News Break. Turn off the 24-hour news coverage of whatever impending disaster they happen to be reporting on.  The news media is great at making it sound like the world is coming to an end – complete with film at 11.  Take a news break and turn off the TV or radio.  Put down the newspaper with the “Doom Doom Doom” headlines.  Walk away from the neighbor who only wants to talk about how the world is going to pot.  This suggestion alone will make some of your stress immediately slip away.

5.  Stay Healthy. During stressful times, it’s critical that you maintain good health.  Make sure that you continue to eat healthy meals, exercise regularly, meditate, and get plenty of rest.  Stress tends to lower your immune system making it easy to get sick – which adds even more stress.

Stress is Part of Life

The only sure thing in life is that things will change – and when they do, many of us experience stress.  Stress is a part of life and learning how to deal with it is part of balanced health.  I hope this short article has given you some ideas on how to cope with the next problem that comes your way.

Hiram
The Balanced Health Guy

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