Mental Health, Stress Handling Vs Stress Elimination

Stress Handling Vs Stress Elimination

Mental Health, Stress Handling Vs Stress Elimination

Around the beginning of humankind, our bodies were built in such a way that they could only handle acute stress. For example, if someone was collecting firewood in the forest, and suddenly got chased by a lioness, their adrenal hormones would shoot up to manage that extreme stress of being eaten alive (a real fear, by the way), and would reduce once the lioness went away. In contrast, today's world endows humans with extravagant lifestyles that require running from lionesses of a different kind (work, family, transport, and so on), round the clock, every single day. Consequently, a lot of people tend to develop chronic stress, which, unless handled or eliminated, can unfortunately lead to serious ailments.

The question that arises often while dealing with stress is what are the best ways to manage it. Several healthcare professionals might suggest two options, stress elimination or stress handling. Often, these two are used interchangeably, creating confusion. There are distinct differences between the two, and knowing when to apply which can save a lot of effort while dealing with stress.

Stress Elimination

Once you have identified the fact that you are stressed out through the most part of your day, it makes more sense to try to eliminate some of the sources that might be behind the stress. One way is to list down all the activities during a normal workday (and separately for a holiday), and to identify those activities that you think might have caused you the most stress. Some events might be easier to identify than others, for example, when your manager at work suddenly dumps extra work on you with a stringent deadline. Other scenarios might seem subtle, but might be responsible or high stress, too, for example, chopping vegetables early in the morning. One way to identify high stress moments is to ask others how they perceive your behavior during certain events of the day. Another way is to invest in a stress monitoring device that categorizes your stress patterns into high, medium, and low throughout the day.

When you have the list ready, take some time to go through it thoroughly, and mark out those high-stress activities that might be possible to eliminate. In the above examples, if your manager gives you extra work once in a while, there might be no cause for panic. If it happens regularly though, evaluate if it is possible to move on to a different kind of job. If chopping vegetables early in the morning stresses you out every single day, because morning hours are full of rush, and there is already so much to do before you head out of that door, try a different approach. Check if you can do the chopping the previous night, and store them in the refrigerator, or, maybe invest in a good quality chopping machine that drastically cuts down your chopping time in the morning. Finding suitable alternatives is the primary goal behind stress elimination.

Stress Handling

While going through the list of activities that stress you out, you might identify several events that cause you high stress, but have absolutely no alternatives. A good example is when you get stressed about getting your child ready for school early in the morning. You cannot eliminate this activity because your child must go to the school at the exact same hour every day. This is where efficient stress handling comes into the picture. Monitoring your all-day stress levels help you take the step towards taking a two-minute deep breathing break between a rush-hour chore. It is easy to say, "I don't have two minutes!", but the fact is, no one is that busy, and it is not an impossible task to take two minutes out of a 30-minute activity. If you are still hard pressed for time, keep a minimum of ten minutes aside each day (any time of the day is fine) to practice some form of mind-body-medicine technique, such as meditation. With stress handling, there is no magic pill, and you only get better with practice.

Stress elimination and stress handling are both effective ways to deal with the chronic stress elements that hover around our lifestyles all the time. Act before your high stress levels turn into a major disorder.