Stress is an inevitable part of life. From worrying about an upcoming exam to stressing about managing a healthy work-life balance, it seems that there is always a matter to worry about. Stress is an automatic reaction to a wearisome event, and it is completely normal. However, there may come a time when stress negatively impacts your life.
Stress has the unique ability to compromise how we think and feel. Stress can impact you both physically and mentally.
Anchor Therapy is a counseling center in Hoboken, NJ with psychotherapists specialized in helping children, teens, adults, and couples with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, and life transitions. Anchor Therapy is accepting new clients and is now providing in-person sessions and telehealth (video/phone) sessions to residents of New Jersey and New York.
Stress can impact your body by causing:
Headaches
Muscle tension or pain
Upset stomach
Difficulty sleeping
Fatigue
Chest pain
Change in your sex drive
Stress can even affect your mood which, then, impacts your behavior. You may not realize the ways that stress symptoms are influencing your health. In some cases, stress can be the culprit to your uneasy symptoms.
Stress can influence your mood by triggering:
Restlessness
Anxiety
Lack of motivation
Lack of focus
Irritability
Anger
Sadness
Depression
Feeling overwhelmed
Your behavior can be impacted by stress in the following ways:
Drug misuse
Alcohol misuse
Tobacco use
Social withdrawal
Overeating
Undereating
Angry outbursts
Working out less frequently than usual
By recognizing common stress symptoms, you can seek out stress management counseling. Through stress counseling, you will be able to manage your symptoms.
We can’t always control what occurs in our lives, but we can control how we react to those occurrences. In other words, your welfare is not at the mercy of external forces. Regardless of your stressors, you can manage your stress reaction, so you can once again feel good both physically and mentally.
Stress counseling can teach you some tips for managing stress, such as:
Increasing Your Awareness of Stressors & Your Stress Response
When you feel yourself getting stressed, it is important to become aware of what is triggering those feelings. Once you determine that, you can identify your stress reaction. Before your stress grows out of control, try to become aware of your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Once you understand your triggers and can pinpoint the sensations as they occur, you can cope better.
2. Focusing On What Is In Your Control
A stress and anxiety therapist will teach you to identify what is in your control. By taking tiny steps in the right direction, you can feel more centered and even empowered. For instance, you may have a large project coming up at work that requires you to work with your colleagues. Even though the project may have a lot of components, you can break it down and focus your attention on the small, more manageable aspects. You can take your energy and apply it towards your contribution to the project instead of being overly invested in other people’s contributions, or the things that are outside of your control.
Many stressful situations can be taken one moment at a time. If you find yourself stuck in a particularly awful situation, try to take a step back and control your response by employing relaxation techniques.
3. Using Relaxation Techniques Regularly
When you start to use relaxation strategies, you teach your body how to manage your physiological stress response. Your fight-or-flight response is an automatic physiological and psychological reaction to stress that prepares the body to react to the perceived danger. It is as if you are presented with two choices: to fight the danger or flee from it.
You can learn to mute this fight-or-flight response by using relaxation techniques that cause the sympathetic nervous system to stop functioning. As soon as you notice stress starts to creep in, take deep and mindful breaths. Slow and deliberate breathing eases the body’s stress reaction.
A stress therapist will teach you several calming techniques. For example, a favorite, well-used stress strategy is the 5-4-3-2-1 breathing method.
Along the lines of this exercise, you name:
Five things you can see
Four things you can touch
Three things you can hear
Two things you can smell
One thing you can taste.
This grounding strategy is simple but extremely effective. This method can slowly ground you.
Another way that many people enhance their stress response is by regularly practicing certain activities. For instance, people who practice meditation, tai chi, or yoga regularly may experience a reduced level of stress and an increased level of calmness.
Practicing relaxation regularly looks different for everyone. For some people, this may be listening to music. Music tends to disrupt the stress response in a good way.
4. Make Your Overall Health A Priority
In stress and anxiety counseling, your therapist will highlight the fact that stress cannot be treated individually. In other words, taking care of your whole self is a crucial step in reducing the negative side effects of stress. By adopting a well-rounded diet and engaging in exercise regularly, you will learn how to manage stress in the short- and long term.
Exercise is known to produce endorphins which is a chemical that the brain creates to lessen stress and pain. This can boost your mood, lessen anxiety, and make you feel more positive about yourself and your circumstances.
Additionally, eating a diet that is high in sugar, processed foods, and unhealthy fats can impact your mental health. It can worsen the impact of stress and disturb your mood. When you begin to nourish your body with more healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, and lean proteins, you are fueling your body with antioxidants and key nutrients which reduce the impact of stress on the body and mind. Overall, it’s all about balance!
5. Make Your Hobbies A Priority
As mentioned previously, stress management looks different for everyone which is why seeking individualized treatment from a stress and anxiety counselor is so important. What may be a coping mechanism for you may not work the same for someone else.
If you want to deal with stress positively, you need to explore stress management techniques with your therapist in your stress counseling sessions. When you figure out what it is that you enjoy doing, you can begin to do them more and more.
By practicing stress management exercises frequently, you will teach your nervous system to work for you instead of against you. The more you enjoy your stress-management technique, the more likely you are to do it.
Here at Anchor Therapy, we specialize in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, also known as CBT. CBT is an effective method used to reduce and manage stress and anxiety.
Through stress therapy or anxiety counseling, you will initially assess your thoughts, actions, and circumstances. From this assessment, your therapist will tailor a strategic approach to suit your needs. If you are interested in learning more about CBT specifically, read our recent blog post, “How You Can Treat Your Anxiety Using CBT.”
Victoria Scala
is the Social Media Manager at Anchor Therapy in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is currently an undergraduate student at the Honors College of Rutgers University-Newark, looking to study Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the graduate level. As a Social Media Manager at Anchor Therapy, Victoria is committed to producing content for and managing the office’s social media presence and blog.
