Anxiety and stress management techniques

By: Danny Swartz

They say there's more than one way to skin a cat. The same goes when you start tearing your hair out with all the frustration, grief, anxiety, and yes, stress. It's a state of mental conditioning that is like taking that bitter pill down your throat, causing you to lose your sense of self, and worse your sanity. Just thinking about it can drive anyone off the edge.

No doubt it's impractical to try to 'cure' stress and anxiety in the sense of eliminating all occurrences. But there are several practical short-term and effective long-term strategies for minimizing it and its effects.

Deep breathing exercises can be a terrific first step toward getting stress symptoms under control. And lessening the symptoms is often a good first step toward curing the longer term problem. Try this: lie face down on the floor on a large towel, elbows bent with your hands flat on the floor. The backs of your hands should be under your chest. Now breath deeply, three or four times.

Several newly popular (and some traditional) techniques have proved helpful for many with stress and anxiety. Aromatherapy, often combined with 'mood music' does actually work in a lot of cases. There's little scientific evidence that aromatherapy has any sort of deep significance, but memories are often associated with certain smells. It can certainly do no harm.

The old phrase from Congreve: 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast' still has a place in contemporary society. While the effect shouldn't be exaggerated, it's nonetheless true that the right kind of music can help shift mood. Both because of its memory associations with pleasant events and for reasons not well understood, music can alter feelings.

There are several techniques for coping with stress. A relaxing walk, a distracting creative effort, a good workout and others can help relieve symptoms. But coping is not curing. To deal effectively with chronic stress - the type that is severe and long-lived - it's necessary to examine its twin roots.

Chronic stress and anxiety are harmful, and very few harmful conditions are 'natural' in the sense that they are common, nor are necessarily devastating, or can not be overcome.

Even losses that are permanent - an amputated leg, the death of a loved one, a bankrupt business - are not equivalent to the loss of life or hope. Individuals can, and do, compensate. Time alone doesn't heal all wounds, but thought and effort can go a long way toward doing so.

It isn't advisable to have a somewhat naive attitude that 'everything is always ok, no matter what'. Bad things do happen and realism requires seeing that. But that same realism can be the basis for seeing things in perspective. Things may be, in fact, as bad as they seem. But, they rarely have to stay that way.

"Quick tip - Burn the candle at one end. Lack of sleep, poor diet and no exercise wreaks havoc on our body and mind. Kind of obvious, but worth mentioning as it's often ignored as a stress management technique. Listen to your mother and don't burn the candle at both ends!"

Acknowledging what is real and recognizing that it's possible to create or acquire new values to replace a loss are key to avoiding long term stress. Long term stress, which often accompanies or leads to depression, tends to be self-reinforcing. You feel bad, so things look bad. Things look bad, so you feel worse.

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Many more articles and tips to deal with stress and anxiety at - www.strees-anxiety.health-dot-com.com/

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