Stress Management

The Secret To Dealing With Stress

When dealing with stress, there's many schools of thought on how to achieve effective stress management. One of the more popular areas is rational thought.

The practice of rational thought allows you to separate the positive thought from the negative. If you keep a stress diary look at each thought and ask yourself if this thought is, in fact, reasonable.

Many people find this step very difficult, because you must be somewhat objective to get it right. You must separate the emotion from the rational.

Frequent negative thoughts that can pop up in your stress diary include:

I feel inadequate (written 5 times in 6 days) I feel taken advantage of (written 3 times in 5 days) I feel I am not appreciated by my kids (written 6 times in 6 days)

Are the above comments only thoughts and feelings on your part or can you back your feelings up with actions?

For example:...I feel inadequate because when I was asked to contribute to the bake sale, because I felt bad that day and remained in bed, unable to make anything.

Ask yourself if this is an occurrence that is frequent (your staying in bed and not doing anything) or if this was a one time thing. If the answer is that you do, in fact, stay in bed a good deal rather than participate in activities, you might want to look further into avoidance issues.

On the other hand, if this was just a one time thing for you, you could easily tell yourself that your feelings are unwarranted and your kids would understand that you wanted to bring something to the function, but simply could not at that time. There will be plenty of other school functions that you will be able to help out with.

The key to rational thought is to clarify and identify truth and underlying thoughts and feelings. When you can do this, you are better able to deal with any stress that results.

Left with the actual negative feelings and thoughts, you are now warned to take appropriate, and if need be, immediate action to ward off any subsequent stress.

Lastly, positively affirm those thoughts and feelings that turned out to be less than negative.

Here's an example:

I felt inadequate, however, I don't anymore. I now realize that I do participate when called upon by my kid's school to contribute, unless I am unable to help at that time. I will continue to help out to the best of my ability and where time permits.

So long as you mean what you write (and say it out verbally) you will feel the stress leave your body and mind as you state the positive and negate the negative.

Dealing with stress doesn't have to include doctor's visits and prescription medications. You can help yourself get better by going through your entire Stress Diary in this way. And you will feel much more relaxed and be less apt to make similar entries the next time around.