How to Stay Calm When You’re Stressed
Even if you’re the type of person who has a plan for everything and thinks ahead of all the details, life just does not always work out this way. Unforeseen things happen, and unfortunately despite how much we can try to plan things, we just cannot possibly control everything. And that’s okay. It’s how we deal with these slight set-backs which is important.
We are all going to go through periods of our lives where stress is present, it is almost unavoidable. Learning some helpful techniques in dealing with anxiety and panic can however make this slightly easier to deal with.
When things happen differently than we had envisioned, it can be easy to slip into feeling stressed, disappointed, frustrated and stuck in a negative headspace. Instead, we want to try to be able to manage these emotions and feelings so that they don’t become overpowering. We want to be able to accept what has happened and move forwards in a more positive manner, without feeling stuck dwelling over what may have occurred unexpectedly.
Questioning your thoughts
Sometimes the stress in our lives is absolutely warranted, however, other times our mind can make situations seem worse than what they actually are. These are thoughts in the ‘worst case scenario’ category, and are more related to worrying about what could happen, rather than being stressed about something that has actually occurred. This can cause a lot of completely unnecessary panic and anxiety in your daily life.
In this instance, try to slow down and ask yourself the following questions:
How likely is this to happen?
Is this a rational thought?
Can I calmly come up with a solution / work-around?
How could I turn this into a positive?
Do you know for a fact these thoughts are 100% correct, or are they just your own possible future worst-case scenarios?
Can I talk this through with someone?
After you go through the questions, it’s time to reframe your thinking and ask yourself to focus on the same topic / situation in a more positive light. Have you built this up in your mind to perhaps be something greater and more negative than it is?
Our mindset can be very powerful in convincing us of certain points when they are not actual facts at all, and more just our own thoughts and interpretations.
Try to approach the issue with a calm and logical thought process. Imagine someone else you know closely tackling the same issue and think about how they might approach it. If they came to you with this same problem, what advice would you give them?
Set realistic expectations
Despite not being able to control a lot of elements of our lives outside of our own actions, we can however control the expectations we set on ourselves. Setting yourself too many challenging goals, or asking too much of ourselves is a very fast way to add unnecessary stress into our lives.
Try to focus on not expecting to be perfect at everything, or for everything to go right the first time. Set-backs happen, and working on accepting this fact will mean that in future it should be a little easier to move past them and not be quite so devastated.
Breathing
When researching about stress and how to best manage it, one of the top things which comes up constantly is the focus on breathing. Anger, stress and tension all cause us to naturally breath much faster and more shallow.
Even just focusing on breathing slowly, and deeply can disrupt your current cycle and trigger your brain to create a more calming effect. By also concentrating on your breathing, it gives you something else to pay attention to and therefore distract your subconscious from whatever it is you’re currently dwelling on.
Take around 10 minutes purely focusing on taking long breaths in through the nose, holding it slightly and then a long exhale through the mouth.
Positive thinking
Whilst it would be impossible to always think positively (and would add a lot of unrealistic pressure to expect this) we can try as best we can to try to see the slight positives, even in a bad situation. Stress can really cloud your thoughts and judgement, so doing some research into things such as meditation can really help to clear your mind.
Sleep schedule
When your body is under a lot of stress, sleep is usually one of the main functions to suffer. When our brain has not had enough sleep, it struggles even more to process feelings of anxiety and stress, meaning we feel slightly worse when trying to cope with them.
Instead, make sleep a priority when you’re under a lot of pressure. Go to bed earlier than you would like to go to sleep, and make sure that you are doing activities which help your body to wind down before bed. Baths and reading are great examples of evening routine activities.
Lavender essential oils can also promote calmness, so trying products with this ingredient can also help. Things such-as sleep sprays, oils for your pulse points etc.
Some people use background sounds and sound effects to help them fall asleep. Some music apps, such-as Spotify, have lots of calming background sounds and can be set using a timer (meaning they will automatically stop after a set number of minutes).
Staying active
Exercise in any form is a great way to get your body moving and to reduce stress. Being active does not have to mean an hour long session in the gym, it can be as little as a 10 minute walk, quick few yoga pose stretches, or even dancing around your living room to a couple of songs.
Try to make it a goal to fit at least 10 minutes of activity into your day.
Experience
Everyone has a different way of winding down and a preferred way of instilling a feeling of calm. What may work for one person, may not work for another. Looking at past experiences of times you have felt relaxed is a great way of exploring methods and activities which you could try to incorporate more of in the future.
If you have not tried many different coping mechanisms before then don’t worry, now is the time to create those experiences and try new things out for yourself. Test some of the different methods mentioned here and see how you feel about them.
Once you have a few things which you know have an impact on your stress levels, you can research these further to see if there are any other similar ideas which you have not thought of.