How To Get Rid Of Stress In South Africa
What is Stress?
Stress is a physical and emotional response to something happening within ones life. Stress can cause tension headaches, high blood pressure, difficulty sleeping, changes in appetite and increased anxiety. These symptoms are how the body deals with stress and can give us signs of possible problems to come.
How To Get Rid Of Stress In South Africa
Is stress making you frustrated and irritable? Stress relievers can help restore calm and serenity to your chaotic life. You don’t have to invest a lot of time or thought into stress relievers. If your stress is getting out of control and you need quick relief, try one of these tips.
Get active
Virtually any form of physical activity can act as a stress reliever. Even if you’re not an athlete or you’re out of shape, exercise can still be a good stress reliever.
Physical activity can pump up your feel-good endorphins and other natural neural chemicals that enhance your sense of well-being. Exercise can also refocus your mind on your body’s movements, which can improve your mood and help the day’s irritations fade away. Consider walking, jogging, gardening, housecleaning, biking, swimming, weightlifting or anything else that gets you active.
Eat a healthy diet
Eating a healthy diet is an important part of taking care of yourself. Aim to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, and whole grains.
Avoid unhealthy habits
Some people may deal with stress by drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, smoking, eating too much, or using illegal substances. These habits can harm your health.
Meditate
During meditation, you focus your attention and quiet the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. Meditation can instill a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit both your emotional well-being and your overall health.
Guided meditation, guided imagery, visualization and other forms of meditation can be practiced anywhere at any time, whether you’re out for a walk, riding the bus to work or waiting at the doctor’s office. You can also try deep breathing anywhere.
Laugh more
A good sense of humor can’t cure all ailments, but it can help you feel better, even if you have to force a fake laugh through your grumpiness. When you laugh, it not only lightens your mental load but also causes positive physical changes in your body. Laughter fires up and then cools down your stress response. So read some jokes, tell some jokes, watch a comedy or hang out with your funny friends. Or give laughter yoga a try.
Connect with others
When you’re stressed and irritable, your instinct may be to isolate yourself. Instead, reach out to family and friends and make social connections.
Social contact is a good stress reliever because it can offer distraction, provide support and help you tolerate life’s up and downs. So take a coffee break with a friend, email a relative or visit your place of worship.
Got more time? Consider volunteering for a charitable group and help yourself while helping others.
Assert yourself
You might want to do it all, but you can’t, at least not without paying a price. Learning to say no or being willing to delegate can help you manage your to-do list and your stress.
Saying yes may seem like an easy way to keep the peace, prevent conflicts and get the job done right. But it may actually cause you internal conflict because your needs and those of your family come second, which can lead to stress, anger, resentment and even the desire to exact revenge. And that’s not a very calm and peaceful reaction.
Try yoga
With its series of postures and controlled-breathing exercises, yoga is a popular stress reliever. Yoga brings together physical and mental disciplines which may help you achieve peacefulness of body and mind. Yoga can help you relax and manage stress and anxiety.
Try yoga on your own or find a class — you can find classes in most communities. Hatha yoga, in particular, is a good stress reliever because of its slower pace and easier movements.
Get enough sleep
Stress can cause you to have trouble falling asleep. When you have too much to do — and too much to think about — your sleep can suffer. But sleep is the time when your brain and body recharge.
And the quality and amount of sleep you get can affect your mood, energy level, concentration and overall functioning. If you have sleep troubles, make sure that you have a quiet, relaxing bedtime routine, listen to soothing music, put clocks away, and stick to a consistent schedule.
Keep a journal
Writing down your thoughts and feelings can be a good release for otherwise pent-up emotions. Don’t think about what to write — just let it happen. Write whatever comes to mind. No one else needs to read it, so don’t strive for perfection in grammar or spelling.
Just let your thoughts flow on paper — or computer screen. Once you’re done, you can toss out what you wrote or save it to reflect on later.
Get musical and be creative
Listening to or playing music is a good stress reliever because it can provide a mental distraction, reduce muscle tension and decrease stress hormones. Crank up the volume and let your mind be absorbed by the music.
If music isn’t one of your interests, turn your attention to another hobby you enjoy, such as gardening, sewing, sketching — anything that requires you to focus on what you’re doing rather than what you think you should be doing.
Seek counseling
If new stressors are challenging your ability to cope or if self-care measures just aren’t relieving your stress, you may need to look for reinforcements in the form of therapy or counseling. Therapy also may be a good idea if you feel overwhelmed or trapped, if you worry excessively, or if you have trouble carrying out daily routines or meeting responsibilities at work, home or school.
Professional counselors or therapists can help you identify sources of your stress and learn new coping tools
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How can I relax my brain?
Exercise. Just 5 minutes of aerobic exercise, like a brisk walk, could start to calm your mind. It releases endorphins — chemicals that make you feel good and can help improve your mood, focus, and sleep. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) can give you a big dose of them in a short time.
Why do I get stressed so easily?
Mental health conditions, such as depression, or a building sense of frustration, injustice, and anxiety can make some people feel stressed more easily than others. Previous experiences may affect how a person reacts to stressors. Common major life events that can trigger stress include: job issues or retirement.
How long does stress last?
How long does stress last? Stress can be a short-term issue or a long-term problem, depending on what changes in your life. Regularly using stress management techniques can help you avoid most physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms of stress.
Can stress make you ill?
But can you actually get sick from stress? The short answer is yes. Stress sickness can contribute to many health issues, including: Anxiety.
What stress can do to your body?
It can suppress your immune system, upset your digestive and reproductive systems, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, and speed up the aging process. It can even rewire the brain, leaving you more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
Why can’t I handle stress?
Anything stress-free that can take your mind off things and doesn’t require too much effort from you. Feeling under pressure all the time can also be a sign of a mental illness, such as an anxiety disorder. (It can also be a cause of mental illness!) Dealing with an underlying mental illness can be life-changing.
Why do I cry when I’m stressed?
Researchers have found that crying stimulates the release of oxytocin and prolactin , two chemicals that can bring your heart rate down and otherwise calm you after a stressful event. But crying doesn’t always serve a self-comforting function.
Why do I overthink everything?
While overthinking itself is not a mental illness, it is associated with conditions including depression, anxiety, eating disorders and substance use disorders. Rumination can be common in people who have chronic pain and chronic illness as well, taking the form of negative thoughts about that pain and healing from it.
Does stress harm the brain?
According to several studies, chronic stress impairs brain function in multiple ways. It can disrupt synapse regulation, resulting in the loss of sociability and the avoidance of interactions with others. Stress can kill brain cells and even reduce the size of the brain
What is the best medicine for stress?
Drugs such as Xanax (alprazolam), Klonopin (clonazepam), Valium (diazepam), and Ativan (lorazepam) work quickly, typically bringing relief within 30 minutes to an hour. That makes them very effective when taken during a panic attack or another overwhelming anxiety episode.
Can anxiety be cured?
Since it’s a natural part of the human condition, anxiety is not completely curable. But feeling anxious should be a temporary state that resolves when a stressor or trigger has passed.
Is anxiety worse at night?
Symptoms of anxiety are typically the same whether you experience them during the day or night, says Peterson. However, at night they tend to be more intense. Anxiety can bring on both mental and physical symptoms.
Why do girls cry for no reason?
However, frequent, uncontrollable, or unexplained crying can be emotionally and physically exhausting and can greatly affect daily life. This type of crying may result from a mental health condition, such as burnout, anxiety, or depression. It might instead stem from hormonal imbalances or neurological conditions.
What is a mental breakdown?
Instead, a mental health crisis or a breakdown of your mental health is a situation that happens when you have intense physical and emotional stress, have difficulty coping and aren’t able to function effectively. It’s the feeling of being physically, mentally and emotionally overwhelmed by the stress of life.
What can happen if anxiety is not treated?
For the majority of people with undiagnosed or untreated anxiety disorder, there are many negative consequences, for both the individual and society. These include disability, reduced ability to work leading to loss of productivity, and a high risk of suicide.
Is crying every night normal?
There are people who cry everyday for no particularly good reason, who are truly sad. And if you are tearful everyday over activities that are normal in your life, that may be depression. And that’s not normal and it is treatable.
Is it normal for a teenager to cry for no reason?
For teens, everything feels more intense, whether it’s good or bad. And crying can help a teen process and move through those emotions. Teenage crying isn’t necessarily a warning sign. However, a teenager crying all the time, for no apparent reason, may be experiencing an underlying mental health disorder.