Stress Awareness Month: Managing stress and building resilience

Stress Awareness Month: Managing stress and building resilience

4 May 2022

By Dominic Cerillo

Taking care of your wellbeing can help you feel more able to manage stress and build your resilience. Different things work for different people. Try some of the ideas below to see what works best for you. These ideas won’t make all the stress in your life disappear completely, but they will make it easier to get through stressful situations.

Be kind to yourself

Learning to be kinder to yourself can help with how you feel in different situations. Try to take breaks in your day for things you enjoy. And reward yourself for your achievements, even if they seem small.

Try to find time to relax

This might feel hard if you can’t do anything to stop a situation that is making you stressed. But if you can allow yourself a short break, this can help with how you feel. Find out more about how relaxation can help you reduce your levels of stress at https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/relaxation/relaxation-tips/ .

Develop your interests and hobbies

Spending time on things you enjoy could help distract you from a stressful situation. If stress is making you feel lonely or isolated, shared hobbies can also be a good way to meet new people.

Spend time in nature

This can help to reduce stress and improve wellbeing by providing a welcome distraction or change of focus for short while. You could try going for a walk in a green space, taking care of indoor plants, or spending time with animals.

Staying physically active and getting more exercise

Exercise helps to relieve stress. It also helps us stay healthy which further helps to reduce the burden of stress. There are lots of ways to exercise and people enjoy different things: cycling, walking, running, team activities or going to the gym. Just doing the housework, gardening or weekly household shopping are simple ways to exercise.

Getting plenty of sleep

If you’re stressed it can be difficult to sleep but adopting a better sleep routine will help. Adults should aim to get an average of 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night. If we’re stressed out, we’re most likely getting way less, and it’s probably pretty low-quality sleep. This will cause us to be even more stressed. A serious commitment to going to bed earlier and getting more restful sleep can work wonders for our stress levels. A new yoga or meditation program can help you to relax. Before bed, we should all be turning off our screens and various devices to properly wind down, for example, by reading a good book.

Make sure you are eating a balanced diet

Fuelling our bodies properly is so helpful in coping better with the stress.

Keeping a stress diary

Keeping a stress diary for a few weeks is particularly helpful if we don’t know what is causing our stress. It can help us identify things we can change. Try writing down what happens just before or after you feel stressed. This helps to identify the triggers for our stress.

Talk to someone

Telling someone how we are feeling may help with stress. It can help to ‘offload’ our worries and provide emotional support. You may feel comfortable talking to someone you know. Or you might feel more comfortable talking to someone who doesn’t know you. You could always call an emotional support line or see a counsellor. 

Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps with many mental health issues. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), combines mindfulness, meditation and yoga with a particular focus on reducing stress.

“Using mindfulness helps me to just allow some space to breathe and focus on the present moment.”

Find out how to reduce your stress levels in seven days at https://www.stress.org.uk/home-2/reduce-stress-in-7-days/ .

Why not take try the 30-day stress management challenge to see if it helps you to destress

https://www.stress.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/30-Day-Challenge-Daily-Tips-Physical-Mental-Emotional.pdf .

Find more information about stress at www.stress.org.uk, www.mind.org.uk and www.rethink.org

Stress and worry is best helped by talking to others, be it with family or friends or through group get togethers at MindSpace, where many of our volunteers are trained listeners. Come along to a Tea & Chat session or one of our evening groups. You can find out more by clicking on this link https://mindspacestamford.com/join-in/