Stress Management

Stress is a word that millions of Americans throw around each day of the week without even thinking about what they are saying. Stress can be found at every age beginning with teens and continuing all the way to senior citizens. Not many pre-teens deal with stress, unless they are living in a stress-filled home or experience a large amount of it at school each day so stress typically begins to show during the teen years. The first major day of stress is when a teen enters a high school for the first time as a freshman. This can be one of the most traumatic experiences for teens across the country, especially if they are coming from a small school and are entering a large, regional high school for the first time. Stress can also pop up in college students, adults, and seniors without much warning. Stress is a serious condition that can lead to health problems down the road if not taken care of immediately. Everyone deals with stress in their own, unique way, and no way is the wrong or right way. Stress can occur on many different levels ranging from mild to severe. Mild cases of stress can last from one to two days with the onset of a major test while severe cases of stress can last from a week to a month. Stress can occur because of varying circumstances, some of which are outlined below: Death of a loved one Test Paper Presentation at work Loved one becomes seriously ill Meeting bill payments Meeting mortgage payments Applying to colleges Interviewing for jobs Beginning a new job Beginning at a new school Moving Opening a business New responsibility Crime Divorce Separation Drug or alcohol abuse Arguments The first way to deal with stress is to identify the things in your life that are causing you to experience stress. This can be a relative, your divorce, a lack of money, taking on a new responsibility or any of the other items listed above. Once you identify the cause of the stress, you can begin to work on removing stress from your life or at least managing it at a lower level. This can be done by starting a stress journal. Each time you feel stressed out write it down and review what you wrote a week later. You will begin to see a pattern in the journal as to what is causing your stress. Write down the following items in the journal: What caused your stress (make a guess if you’re unsure). How you felt, both physically and emotionally. How you acted in response. What you did to make yourself feel better. By identifying the things in your life that cause you stress you can begin to avoid those items if at all possible and remove stress from your life. If you cannot avoid these items then you will need to find better ways to cope. Better ways to cope with stress include thinking positive thoughts, shying away from negative thinking, entering each situation with a positive look and not thinking too deeply into things.