5 Effective Stress Management Techniques You Should Try

Although stress forms a general part of life, chronic stress often undermines well-being and health. Effective stress reduction strategies are effective in minimizing the emotional and physical impacts of stress to help a person feel much more equipped to handle their life’s challenges. Stress management techniques are not the same for everyone. For instance, while several individuals might find meditation effective, a few individuals might experience anxiety attacks and similar adverse health effects.

Following the right approaches for managing stress often aligns well with the lifestyle of people, staying consistent with the values and offering people a better sense of agency on stress. It is extremely essential to browse through the underlying reasons for stress and finding proper ways for reducing it whenever possible. So, read through our post to know everything about effective stress reduction or management strategies.

What Is Stress Management?

Some stress management techniques involve coping with stress by managing total stress levels, better reacting to stressful situations in life, and developing resilience.

Stress is impossible to avoid and impossible to really de-stress when it finds you. Despite that, as soon as the bills are paid, the bills will keep coming, there will never be more hours in the day, and the work and family responsibilities will always be demanding. The fact is, you have more control over stress than you know. On the contrary, stress management is based on the simple realization that you are in charge of your life.

Taking charge means maintaining positive control over how you deal with problems and manage your stress, your environment and schedule, your emotions, and your thoughts. The final objective is a balanced life that includes time for work, time for relationships, time for relaxation, and time for fun, along with the ability to withstand pressure and accept challenges.

However, there’s no stress management, one size fits all. For this reason, it’s worth it to try and see what is best for you. The following stress management methods and strategies might help you whether you’d prefer to lower your overall levels of stress, prevent further stressors from affecting your life, or use them to manage stress at any given moment.

Evidence-Based Stress-Relief Techniques

What are the ways to relieve stress in a couple of minutes? Fast-acting tools include helpful techniques such as deep breathing and meditation that you can do anywhere, anytime

1. Try Guided Imagery

It can be thought of as a small trip in the mind. You may imagine your ‘happy place’ as you surround yourself on a beach, hearing the noises of the sea, being able to smell the sea, and touching the warm sand beneath your feet. You can use a recording that has someone who walks you through a peaceful scene done before you repeatedly. Or, if you know how to do the following yourself then you are able to practice guided imagery on your own.

Close your eyes for a minute and think of yourself in a peaceful scene. Imagine anything you do with your senses and imagine that you are really there. After a few minutes, open your eyes and come out of the present moment.

The senses are activated, and using guided imagery, one conjures up memories or images of serene locations. This positive mental imagery induces a peaceful state of mind. There are two ways a person can do it on their own: first, by writing a script and reading it to themselves, and second, by following guided meditation that takes them through a calming scene. They may also attempt guided imagery recordings, programs, and apps.

2. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

Mindfulness-based stress reduction principles support a person’s capacity to deal with stress. The practice of mindfulness involves remaining present, minus what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.

Mindfulness can be practiced by anyone on their own, but mindfulness-based stress reduction is a structured program of several stress reduction techniques, including:

• yoga-like exercises
• deep breathing
• body scanning
• cultivating mindfulness

3. Exercise to Reduce Stress

Reducing stress and anxiety is an effective exercise in how to manage stress. It can also decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and many other health issues. As people with chronic stress are more prone to these health issues, exercise is an important strategy to reduce the health effects of stress and also helps with stress. Exercise can also help alleviate the symptoms of anxiety disorders.

A 2020 paper says that exercise may also prevent anxiety disorders. A 2018 paper also suggests exercise could help reduce a person’s urge to stress eat, and thereby help people adopt a more nutritious diet even on stressful days.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adults should do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week. However, while these recommendations exist, any exercise is better than no exercise.

4. Progressive Muscle Relaxation

If progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) sounds familiar to you, it is because it is a process where a person starts at the feet searching for tension, progressive muscle relaxation. Finally, they become aware of such tension and gradually start to relax their muscles to get rid of physical and emotional tension. PMR is one of the effective stress management options.

However, someone can do it on their own by taking their toes, slowly working their way up the body, and relaxing every muscle and group of muscles. They listen to a recording or soothing music if they have trouble with relaxation. With practice, though, you will be able to recognize tension and tightness in your muscles and relax more easily. This can be a helpful technique for learning how to manage stress at work. However, with each practice, you should come to feel a relaxing sensation throughout your body.

5. Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the process of turning towards the present moment. Many different approaches can be used to help a person mindfully slow racing thoughts and avoid catastrophizing. Developing mindfulness is an essential part of building stress management skills.

In these cases, they could try using the same senses. For instance, they could begin with three things they can pee by, taste, smell, and hear, and then three things they can touch and see. They can also notice as much detail of their surrounding environment as they can calmly and without judgment.

Often, mindfulness-based stress management methods have been consistently shown to be an effective stress-relieving intervention. Constantly bringing your awareness to the present moment, nonjudgmental and accepting, can help you to handle stressors to your advantage when they do arise.

Summary

Reducing stress is one of the important things to know in order to keep yourself in good mental and physical health. Stress is not bad; it doesn’t make life more miserable. It can destroy a person’s health and relationships, but good stress management techniques will improve the quality of life. Hence, it is important to know how to manage stress and anxiety as well as to develop yourself to the individual level in order to achieve a healthy work-life balance.