Stress is currently among the most popular words in the English language, mainly because many believe they cannot go through one single day without having experienced it more times than they care to count.
This is actually true in today’s modern setting. Progress, fast-paced living and business, and modern pollutants and toxins all contribute to creating and multiplying stress in the everyday life of the average person.
Stress is believed to account for an increase in crime rate, illness, social and pathological problems, and even a marked decrease in life expectancy. Stress is also largely blamed for the great increase in people requiring physical therapy to deal with unexplained body pains and psychiatric care to deal with a growing sense of anxiety.
These reasons lead to the conclusion that while stress is seemingly unavoidable in life, it happens to be among those things that you should avoid completely.
But how does one cope with stress in the very stressful world of today?
Source
Stress may come from all around us at any given time. This being the case, it is important then to establish which one is the leading source. This is the first step in dealing with it because one of the manifestations of stress is the loss of the ability to organize or make sense out of things.
Once one is able to pinpoint the leading source of stress, it will definitely be easier to sort out the rest. Pinpointing the leading source of stress is also a great way to get your bearings straight, and therefore ensuring you are able to organize your thoughts and make sense of things again.
Control
Once you have sorted out the leading source and the other sources of your stress, try to figure out which ones are the sources you can put an end to, shut out, or at least minimize. By doing so, you are able to put a semblance of control back in your day, another of the things that stress seems to deprive people of.
Getting a sense of control back also reduces the anxiety that people feel whenever they are stressed out. This sense of control also gives you a better insight into things, allowing to you to figure out which stress source you should target first, and how you can best and most appropriately react to it such as through chiropractic help and physical therapy.
Counter
Stress effectively removes a person from their “happy place”, that sensory sanctuary inside them where they feel most secure. This is like removing everything a person likes and loves about the day, such as a sense of belonging, peace, accomplishment, and whatever else they love about their day.
Many experts suggest resorting to the use of an outlet to release pent up stress, such as a hobby. Hobbies are things that we find personally satisfying and engaging. By engaging in a hobby, one is able to shut out the stress for a while, achieving a sense of balance in the process. Once a sense of balance is achieved, a person may better deal with the stress, and continue with the rest of the day able to cope with other stress sources as well.
Security
In many cases, people are so prone to stress mainly because they allow themselves to be. Just as one is sure to become sick or ill if they intentionally compromise their immune system and expose themselves to viruses, a person is very likely to become stressed out if they do not safeguard against it and allow themselves to be vulnerable to it.
Things we often take for granted, such as ample amounts of sleep and rest, eating right, healthy, and on time, good hygiene and grooming, are often the main safeguards we have against potential sources of stress we face everyday. Not getting enough sleep will definitely leave you tired, listless, and not able to perform at peak performance. Not eating right will make you either constant hungry or sick, both of which are huge contributors to stress. Not engaging in any sort of hygienic practice and good grooming will leave you looking more of a wreck than you already are, and therefore even more stressed.
Stress is not a simple matter, but it is not impossible to find ways to cope with it.