Girl, you don’t even have to thank me. I know you were just craving this type of post. But you can say it if you want, I mean, I’m a sucker for compliments. Just kidding! I would never go fishing for compliments like that… Anyway, let’s have a real girl talk. Face to computer, computer to face. I know that we have all been stressed at least once in our lives, unless you are that one person who just didn’t. It could have been about grades, a guy, or maybe a situation at home. Despite the reason we became stressed, we still felt it. Maybe in the form of a stomach ache, a headache, intense sweating (shout out yikes to those who forgot their deodorant that day!), or a lack of appetite. There are so ,many symptoms to stress that we won’t all experience the same ones. Some of my friends will get headaches while I will fidget with my fingers or rip my fingernails off. So today we’re going to dive right into the depths of stress and talk with a mental health therapist to get all of your questions answered!
Basic Q&A About Stress
Stress is our body’s adaptive response when faced with anything that is perceived as a threat or challenge.
The stress response, specifically our amygdala, powers up our body with oxygen, hormones, and adrenaline that activates what is known as the fight or flight response. What this means is that when we are faced with a stressor, our muscles tighten, heart rate increases, our digestion stops, and all the blood flows towards our arms and legs. This is to increase our chances of survival.
The problem is that in some situations like a life and death situation, we want the amygdala to take over, however, when there isn’t a life-threat our amygdala cannot decipher the difference, thus causing us to become stressed out for invalid reasons.
Interview with Ms. Tar, LCSW
“Stress is a short-term or long term response to a specific event or trigger; like for example being stressed about a fight with a friend. Anxiety lasts longer. It is persistent and excessive and doesn’t go away even in the absence of a stressor.”
“Irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, difficulty sleeping.”
“Short term sress when facing real danger is beneficial, but long-term stress impacts our mental and physical wellbeing. People can get heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, anxiety, and many other issues as a result of long-term stress. It has also been proven that increased stress levels can lead to a shortened lifespan.”
And the answer to the question we’ve all been waiting for….. what do we do to combat stress?
“The number one strategy that I always encourage my clients to do is to practice some deep breaths. And we may think, breaths? Come on, we do that all the time but the difference is that when we are in a state of stress, our breath is so shallow and so fast that it doesn’t really fuel your prefrontal cortex. And, so what we want to do is take these slow deep breaths that allow this oxygen to come to our prefrontal cortex that will then allow us to take this step back to rationalize things. They way to practice this breath is to take a breath through your nose, count to five as you hold that breath, and then you want to release the air softly through your mouth until all the air is gone. You want to make sure that you count because if you don’t, your brain will be likely to return its focus back to the stressor. You want to repeat the breaths multiple times until you are calm.”
There are two other great options for combating stress, guided imagery and progressive muscle relaxation.
Guided imagery: “What this entails is you focusing on a pleasant thought or idea that is likely to bring a smile to your face. And then your going to use the five senses in order to describe it. For example, if you love ice cream then you could think everything about ice cream in unlimited ways. So, I’m going to describe what I see, I’m going to describe the smells of all the different ice creams, I’m going to describe the taste, what I hear in my environment, and what it feels to be eating that ice cream. And so, this is a really good exercise to do before bedtime because it activates those slower brain waves that allows your body to relax and fall asleep easier.
Progressive muscle relaxation: “The third strategy that I encourage people to do is called progressive muscle relaxation. And for this one, what you do is apply tension to different parts of your body and then you relax the muscles. For example, you would squeeze your left hand really tight, hold it for about three seconds, and then relax it. You do this about three times and then you would switch to your right hand. Once again, you squeeze, hold for three, and then relax. You keep putting tension and relaxing different parts of your body until you do a whole body scan until you’ve applied tension and relaxation everywhere. What’s really cool about this is that if you actually relax your muscles and as you do this, tell yourself relax; your brain will actually associate the word relax with the actual physical relaxation fo your body and any time you say relax in the future, if you do this enough, your brain will automatically make your body relax.”
And there you have it! The secret of all secrets, the way(s) to eradicate stress. Please, please, please let me know in the comments if you have any other tricks that help you to feel less stressed. I know the breathing has always helped me whenever I stress out but I’m so so so so so open to other methods. I hope this helps!
