Now that we have raised our awareness about our symptoms and triggers of stress we can move on to taking some short-term action. In this blog I want to give you some immediate self-help tasks you can use to help reduce your stress.

But please don’t take on or make too many changes at once. It is far better if you make only one small actionable change at a time. That way it is far more likely to stick. What you are after here are some small lifestyle changes. It really is the only way you can tackle the stress and keep it under control.

Yes I will start by talking about the usual suspects. But tackling these changes one at a time will give you some quick wins. That is important to do as we need to regain some sense of control before moving on to more long-term strategies.

Step 3 Start By Taking Back Some Control.

All of the following come under what I can your basic self-care needs. If we meet these needs they can lay the foundation for good physical and mental health. If we don’t we can end up in all sorts of trouble including having high stress levels.

One of the first things as therapists we often look at is making some small lifestyle changes. But remember to try only one thing at a time. Even within each of the following I’ve listed several choices for change. Pick only one of these choices to change at a time. That way it’s more likely to stick as a new habit.

Eat A Healthy Balanced Diet. Cut Down On Caffeine, Sugar And Alcohol. 

When we eat a diet full of processed convenience food, refined carbohydrates, and sugary snacks, plus lots of caffeine we can worsen symptoms of stress. Remember that fright, flight, and freeze response well it some foods and drink will make it worse. It will throw off our proper stress response and leave us feeling permanently in stress and anxiety mode.

Eating a diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, high-quality protein, and healthy fats, especially omega-3 fatty acids, is better for stress and anxiety reduction. When we eat more healthily we start to help ourselves cope better with life’s ups, downs and daily pressures.

Speak to your GP or to a nutritionist or dietician on how to eat a more balanced diet. Answer the following questions as well:

1. What does your diet look like?
2. Are you resorting to sugary snacks or caffeine to get you through the day?
3. Do you need to check with your doctor about your diet?

It can be hard to change so much at once. So why not just start with some small swaps. For example: an apple or banana instead of a chocolate bar, one glass of water for every cup of coffee.

Make sure you have breakfast in the morning. We often skip this first important meal of the day when we’re stressed. We also tend to skip lunch too. You may be busy but you need to eat food and take a break to relax and talk to friends. This will help with your productivity levels in the long run and reduce your stress levels.

You should look at reducing caffeine and sugar also. Both really stimulate the stress response in a negative way. Any small change to the consumption of either of these will help your stress levels. Try switching to decaf or better still having a no caffeine rule after lunchtime. You can try using zero sugar cordial in water to help with the taste until you get use to it.

Exercise And Getting Ourselves Moving.

Taking up even something as simple as a walk at lunchtime can help. Better yet make it into a hobby or new interest. Getting moving helps eliminate the excess stress hormones from our body thus reducing our stress and anxiety symptoms.

It is recommended that we exercise for 30 minutes at least 5 days a week. This can hard to do at first. But start with 10 minutes and build it from there. You can even break it up into either 10-minute intervals or combine it with a hobby or another form of relaxation to make it more fun.

Try exercising with your other half. Even a 10 to 15 minute daily walk will give you both some alone time. But maybe think about dragging the kids along after dinner as it will also help tire them out for bed. So that’s another benefit.

If you work close by each other taking a class together at lunch-time or straight after work can also help here. It’s working on your own mental and physical health, reducing your stress levels and helping to build your connection all in one.

A simple 3 minutes of exercise and another one that builds a connection is to put on one of your old favourite songs and dance to it. Yes the kids will think you’re crazy at first but hopefully it’ll bring up some great memories too. This is also a great way to break the ice or the tension by the way.

Whatever you try please remember that by exercising you are using up those excess stress hormones. That’s important and vital if you want to conquer your stress levels. Again only try one small actionable step here and schedule it in or you won’t make the switch.

Learn Some Form Of Meditation.

Relaxation is a vital step in reducing stress levels and helping to maintain good stress relief. Techniques such as yoga, tai-chi and meditation in its many forms can help greatly.

These can help you maintain a level of restfulness that is opposite to the flight, freeze or fight response levels. When we practice these techniques daily we greatly reduce our stress levels. We also boost our feelings of joy, serenity and help us remain calm and controlled under pressure.

There are a variety of meditation options out there. I have a number of blogs, videos and podcasts you can try to get you started. But if you like any one particular technique I’d recommend you take a class. Some examples of meditation can include the following.

The Seven/Eleven Breathing Technique (Video)

The 7/11 technique (podcast) (you can use 4/6 either) is a great deep breathing technique to use. This technique is a very helpful one for reducing stress and anxiety. It can even calm you down when you feel angry, as it is a very effect anger management tool. All the technique requires you to do is take a deep breath in for a count of 7 and to exhale for a count of 11.

Deep breathing techniques work by stimulating what is known as the Parasympathetic Nervous System. I’ve already mentioned the ‘fight, fright or flight’ response. This is the Sympathetic Nervous System that gets you ready for action and helps us naturally react.

The Parasympathetic Nervous System is simply the opposite of that. It activates a natural bodily response that can be described as ‘rest and digest’. It stimulates our out-breaths to decrease our blood pressure, dilate our pupils and slows our heart rate, thus lowering emotional arousal in the process.

It’s important to realize that it’s the out-breaths that stimulate the response. So it stands to reason that a breathing technique with longer out-breaths than in-breaths will be more effective at lowering emotional arousal. I’ve outlined more about this technique in a blog, video and podcast in the links above.

3 Minute Breather, Maybe The Place To Start.

You can also try the 3 minute breather as a great quick on the go stress relief technique. It can be used in any situation when you feel your stress, anxiety, or emotions rise that you need to calm down quickly. It is based on the 7-11 technique and you try a free starter session here. I recommend it if you have a difficult time meditating as you can complete the whole thing in 3 minutes.

Tip: Take yourself off to the loo in work and use this technique to calm down before or after a presentation or meeting.

Mindfulness (blog and video)

Mindfulness is another beneficial meditation you could try. It is a very simple technique but may not be for everyone. This technique is all about focusing on your breathing and trying to staying fully in touch with the breath as it enters the body and leaves the body. There are other mindfulness techniques used around food, sound, sight and walking also.

The idea with mindfulness is to try to keep your awareness on your breath in this present moment. You don’t have to deepen your breath for any of this as you focus is on the air as it comes and leaves your nose. Your thoughts will wander, you can’t stop this. Allow your thoughts to wander and watch them as they drift along without judgment. Then when you realize you are doing this simply bring your attention back to the breath instead.

You can try my podcasts which include what is mindfulness, a 10 minute session and a 20 minute session.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (a free session)

Progressive muscle relaxation is a relaxation technique that helps you release the tension in your body. It also helps to reduce the stress in your body, feel more relaxed and calm.

It is a simple technique as you work your way through all the muscles in your body one muscle group at a time. You firstly tense the muscle and then release the tension.

It teaches you to notice the contrasting feelings between tension and relaxation in each part of your body. In this way we get to know our bodies better and can target specific muscle groups that hold tension when we are stressed.

Rest And Sleep Are Equally Important. 

Feeling tired can increase stress and increased stress can lead to disrupted sleep patterns.  In my book, The Building Blocks of Self-Care, sleep is the second chapter. I feel it is the most important factor after meditation in improving stress levels, helping us to see our irrational thinking and improving other mental health issues.

A simple thing to do is remove all TV’s and devices from your bedroom. Make your bedroom a no-go zone for any form of social media access also. Your bedroom should be a warm and inviting place where sleep is the main focus. For more helpful tips on sleep improvement check out my blog 11 Tips To Help You Get A Better Night’s Sleep.

Continue To Use A Stress Journal.

There is nothing worse than keeping things locked in our head. When we enter that negative think cycle we end up damaging our self-confidence, feeling stuck, stressed, or anxious.

An exercise that helps at any time during the day or night is a simple brain dump. A brain dump is an exercise of writing everything we can think of down on a piece of paper or in a word document. We can then use this exercise to help us go back to sleep or to pick the next quick step (short task) that is important to achieve.

Try to pick a 5 minute task to begin with then move on to the next quickest task. We can also use the brain dump to see where, and with what, we might ask for help or delegate or delete off our “to do” list.

It’s okay to use this technique at any time of the day even if you have things planned out in a diary. Doing a brain dump gets everything out of our heads so we don’t need to hold on to them. We realize we don’t need to carry everything around in our heads and enter the rumination cycle which destroys our self-confidence.  We can let them go and focus fully on what we want to do next.

Firstly, start to get all you thoughts, to do’s, shopping list items, phone calls and emails you need to send, etc., out of your head each night. This will afford you some sense of relief as your mind will begin to relax and realize it doesn’t have to keep everything to the fore. It can begin to know these items/things don’t need to be solved while you’re sleeping.

Secondly with over thinking we need to start seeing the patterns (see list above) so by using the nightly brain dump to get everything out of our heads each night we can also start to see any patterns in our thinking also. When we see the patterns we can use this information to raise awareness firstly, accept our thoughts and then we can take action to change them. I’ll talk more about this below.

What Would I Recommend You Start With?

If I was to pick a few things to start with I would recommend the following three things to try first.

1. The 3 minute breather. As you can use it throughout the day to instantly calm yourself down.
2. 10 minute walk at lunch-time. This will help use up some of the excess stress hormones coursing through your body during the day.
3. Cut back on the caffeine. Caffeine will only make your stress symptoms feel worse. By cutting back you can reduce them.

Next week I’ll cover some long-term strategies for stress reduction.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.