Skills to cope with stress and control emotions will teach you healthy ways to overcome obstacles and pressures that occur in life. At the same time, it will help you minimize harmful effects and prevent further stress from occurring.
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Causes of stress
In reality, there are many causes of human stress and anxiety. You will easily find events and situations that make you unable to control your emotions well. Such as moving house, breaking up with a lover, losing a loved one, financial difficulties, etc.
However, determining the cause of your stress that always appears every day is a more complicated problem. To know the real reason, you need to review and reevaluate your daily habits and attitudes.
- Do you view stress as an essential part of daily life and work? Or do you realize that it is a part of you that stress and anxiety always exist?
- Do you view stress as a temporary state because there are too many things to do every day? Do you no longer remember the last time you felt relaxed and comfortable?
- When you feel stressed, do you try to blame things or other people? Do you consider it normal, nothing too special?
Expressed when faced with stressful situations
Depending on the events that occur and each person’s personality, reactions to stress will also be different. However, usually you will often experience symptoms such as:
- Emotional signs: Irritability, anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, crying, aggression, running away.
- Signs of body physiology: Chest tightness, headache, dizziness, insomnia, fatigue, difficulty breathing, loss of appetite, excessive sweating, teeth grinding,…
- Behavioral signs: Using offensive words, speaking quickly, talking a lot, performing actions that hurt yourself or those around you, wandering aimlessly, drinking alcohol, smoking, being distracted central,…
Coping with stress is the skill built to help you easily face and stay calm when faced with difficult and hindering situations at work or study. With today’s fast pace of life, tension and stress are inevitable factors.
In fact, stress brings many benefits to our lives, it is a great source of motivation to help you try harder every day. However, not all stress has advantages and disadvantages.
If you do not know how to control your emotions and cope well with stress, it will easily cause your mood to decline and your thoughts to gradually become negative. Therefore, training yourself in coping skills is extremely necessary to avoid the dangerous consequences that stress causes.
Understand that all problems surrounding life can make you depressed and stressed. You absolutely cannot avoid them all, so the only way is to face and overcome them. People who have good coping skills with stressful situations will have a higher quality of life, and they can easily adjust and balance their psychological state.
How to cope and control stress?
When encountering stressful situations, many people often choose to find another activity to replace such as watching TV, sleeping, playing games, drinking alcohol, smoking, or even isolating themselves. refuse all meetings. However, in reality, applying these methods only helps you temporarily stabilize your mood, but when you continuously do so, it will unintentionally cause more serious harm.
Therefore, to cope well with stress, you need to take some positive and healthy measures such as:
1. Movement
According to some scientific studies, when the body is exercised properly, it will increase its ability to produce happy hormones, reducing the bad emotions you are experiencing. However, this does not mean that you have to continuously exercise for hours at a time.
Any form of exercise has the ability to relieve stress and quickly eliminate anger and agitation. Therefore, every time you face unpleasant or stressful situations, you can stand up, walk, cycle, dance to your favorite song, exercise at the gym, swim, take the stairs, etc.
2. Communicate and chat with others
This is considered the most effective way to help you easily control and balance emotional deviations. When you start sharing with others, you will avoid being too excited, calm down and feel comfortable and at ease. Especially when you communicate with people who know how to listen, you will feel secure when being understood and sympathized.
Openly share your feelings and the problems you are facing to receive the attention of others. Trying to endure it and hiding your worries inside will only make things worse, the stress will increase and the risk of you making wrong decisions will increase.
3. Avoid stressful situations
Avoidance is considered one of the necessary and extremely important skills so you can cope well with stress and control emotions effectively. Stress is the automatic response of the nervous system when you face unpleasant situations.
However, in life there are situations that you can predict will definitely cause stress, such as roads that are often congested with traffic, appointments, meetings, etc. If you can predict it in advance, It’s best to find ways to avoid them and minimize them from happening. Before making any decision or choosing any situation, follow the order: Avoid – change – adapt – accept.
4. Change the situation
In case you cannot hide and avoid stressful situations, try to change them. For example, if someone constantly asks you for help and you feel uncomfortable with it, say no, showing a decisive attitude.
Start by expressing your feelings clearly, don’t try to hide them. If something or someone makes you feel upset, be frank and bold in speaking your mind with respect and openness.
You may also be willing to compromise in the face of hindering situations. For situations that cannot be changed, the best way is to change your own behavior and outlook. In life, you need to know how to manage your time well, plan specifically what needs to be done to ensure the completion of work smoothly, and limit cases of overwork.
5. Accept things that cannot be changed
In reality there are many situations that you cannot avoid or change. For example, the death of a loved one, a natural disaster, a terrible disease, etc. In such stressful situations, your best choice is to accept and face it.
Although this is a fairly difficult skill, when you can practice it well, you will easily be able to cope with most stressful situations. Over time, acceptance will become easier as you continue to find ways to cope with stress while those problems are out of control.
Don’t try to adjust things that are out of reach. In life there are many things that you cannot control and control, such as other people’s words and behavior. Instead of focusing and stressing over them, choose to react to another, more necessary problem.
Try to think about the positive aspects, try to find opportunities for yourself to develop better. If your stress comes from your own mistakes, the best way is to reflect and learn lessons for yourself.
In addition, learn to forgive and let go. You should accept that life is not perfect, sometimes you have to face bad things, with mistakes that cannot be overcome. Therefore, smiling and accepting it in the most positive state is the necessary skill for you to cope with stress.
6. Adapt, relax and entertain
An essential skill that you cannot ignore is adapting to stress and negative emotions. Also because stress is an inevitable and unavoidable part of life. If you cannot adapt well to it, you will certainly not be able to achieve success in even the smallest things.
All stress can be relieved when you know how to take care of and love yourself. Don’t try to force yourself to follow the hustle and bustle of life and forget your true needs. If you can spend a lot of time resting, relaxing, and having healthy entertainment, you will reduce stress and fatigue.
Plan and arrange your daily work schedule, don’t let yourself face too much work and stress your mind. After completing the tasks that need to be done for the day, give yourself some time to escape responsibilities and enjoy moments of peace and comfort.
You can spend about 30 minutes doing things you love or simply lying down and listening to gentle, happy music. At the same time, practice a little sense of humor and keep a bright smile to welcome a beautiful new day. This will help you fight stress and easily control your emotions.
7. Heal your mind with an expert
Stress and loss of emotional control over a long period of time without timely intervention can easily lead to anxiety disorders, depression… Many people have treated it by taking medication, but this method is dangerous. It causes many side effects and drug dependence. That’s why in the world today, psychotherapy without drugs is a leading solution trusted by many people to overcome stress and emotional imbalance.
If our mind is likened to a beautiful garden, then for those who are having problems with stress and difficulty controlling their emotions, that garden is full of weeds and dirty trash. Psychotherapy is the optimal therapy to clean up that garden of the mind. Then, we sow seeds of love, positive energy, faith and dreams and take care of them to grow green and healthy.