Stress Management  

Quite broad by nature, stress management has different aspects that you need to understand in order to cope up with stress and achieve your goals. This article intends to explain in brief, the causes of stress and the ways in which you can cope up with those challenging minutes. 

It is essential to understand what stress is and what causes stress.  A clear understanding can help in effectively managing the stress. Different disciplines like psychology, medicine or others have come up with different definitions of stress. Among these different opinions, the most generally accepted definition of stress is, “stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.” (Richard S Lazarus gives Definition).

Summarized below are the various causes of stress. 

·        Our attitude : Our attitude to a given situation can cause stress. Keeping a relaxed attitude to situations like tax audits, sudden monetary loss, retirement, academic failures etc. can help us combating stress. Adopting realistic attitude towards a disturbing situation avoids aggravation of stress and depression. These situations, causing stress, are the stressors. 

·        Gene : In case stressed parents, there are high possibilities that the children will duplicate the stress. 

·        Dramatic and tragic situations : Situations such as death, divorce, unemployment, physical abuses, etc. are the major stressors and can lead to broken spirits causing depression and stress. 

With a brief idea of ‘what stress is’ and the ‘factors causing stress’, we are pretty well equipped to learn about the stress management techniques. 

·        Action-oriented : In this variant of the stress management technique, a stress situation is subject to confrontation by changing the environment for the patient. A change in environment can help the patient to forget the stress situation and come out of depression. 

·        Emotionally oriented : By this technique, stress management, aims at eliminating stress by changing the way one looks into the stress. This change in perspective can help in coming out of the stress situation. 

·        Acceptance-oriented : Combating stress by accepting the fact that, an individual has a lack of power is another technique of stress management.

In the first stress management technique i.e. action-oriented technique, a change in environment essentially means managing the demands and increasing the resources (at disposal) to mobilize. These help the patient in forgetting the previous stress environment and manage the life in a better way. In the second method, we adjust our perceptions and in the third, we accept a situation that has permanently changed. 

There are many therapies directed towards fighting stress. Some of the popular ones are music therapy, acupressure, walk therapy, naturopathy, yogic techniques, sound therapy, spirituality and many more!  

Chronic stress and depression can sometimes be life taking. It is essential to cope up with such situations as soon as they appear. Delays in combating stress can lead to situations from where it becomes difficult to recover the person from mental trauma. Be quick to help yourself and your loved ones!