Welcome back to my blog for Mindset Therapy. Through this blog, I aim to provide education on mental health symptoms, provide tools to manage common mental health symptoms, and help you decide when treatment might be the best choice.
Life is stressful. We have many tasks to complete, people to please, and little time for ourselves. Stress is a normal part of life and can be motivating but can become problematic when it starts to cause difficulties in our life. People refer to stress in various ways, with terms such as: irritable, nerves are shot, worry, anxiety, and overwhelmed. Common signs of excessive stress include: eating too much/too little, sleeping too much/too little, low patience, easily frustrated, getting angry quickly, developing panic attacks, worrying, and withdrawing from friends and family. As you can see, stress presents in a variety of ways, which makes it even more difficult to notice in yourself. If you find that you are experiencing any of the above signs of excessive stress, it is important to recognize your stressors and make changes.
Once you have identified your stressors, there are some things you can do to assist in managing the stress while you work to decrease the cause of your stress. I will briefly discuss deep breathing as one tool because it is extremely effective in lowering the stress response. Deep breathing involves finding a quiet place to allow yourself to breathe slowly and deeply from your diaphragm (your stomach should rise when breathing in) for several minutes. When I introduce deep breathing to my patients, they are hesitant it will work because it seems too simple. However, a quick explanation will show you how it works: when stressed your heart rate increases, breathing gets faster and shallower, and muscles get tense. When you are relaxed, each of these things are performing in the opposite, for example your heart rate slows down. As you can see, your body can not be stressed and relaxed at the same time because they are opposite responses in your body. By implementing the relaxation response through deep breathing, you are reversing the stress response. Engaging in deep breathing throughout the day can assist in lowering your stress response.
To learn more tools to manage your stress, set up an appointment and have a treatment plan created that targets your goals!