STRESS MANAGEMENT

What is Stress?
It is a condition that can have an impact on ones mental and physical well-being; It is the emotional and physical way in which we respond to pressure; A psychological and physical response of the body that occurs whenever we must adapt to changing conditions, whether these conditions be real or perceived, positive or negative.

Sources of Stress at Home: Death of spouse, family, relative or friend Injury or illness of a family member Marriage of son or daughter, brother or sister Separation or divorce from partner Pregnancy or birth of a new baby Childrens misbehavior or disobedience Childrens educational performance Not enough money to maintain your standard of living Loss of money in burglary, pick-pocketed or share market

Sources of stress at work: To meet out the demands of the job Relationships with colleagues To control staff under you To train your staff and take work from them Support you receive from boss, colleagues and juniors Excessive work pressure To meet out deadlines Working overtime and on holidays

Other sources of stress:

Fear, intermittent or continuous

Threats: physical threats, social threats, financial threats, other threats

Uncertainty

Lack of sleep
Somebody misunderstands you Setback to your position in society

The mental or emotional symptoms of stress are:

Tension

Irritability
Inability to concentrate Feeling excessively tired Trouble sleeping

The physical symptoms of stress are:

Dry mouth

A pounding heart
Difficulty breathing Stomach upset

Headache
Frequent urination Sweating palms

Tight muscles that may cause pain and trembling

Managing Stress involve learning about:

How stress affects the mind and body

How to identify the warning signs of stress

How to develop good stress management

techniques When to seek professional help

What is Stress Management? It is a set of techniques and programs intended to help people deal more effectively with stress in their lives by analyzing their specific stressors and taking positive actions to minimize their effects.

Recognizing stress:
Body scanning helps increase awareness of muscular tension. According to Lowen: Body tension is an inevtiable response to stress. Once stress is removed, tension goes away. According to Perls: it is important to differentiate between external awareness (stimulation of the five senses from the outside world) and internal awareness (physical sensations or emotional discomfort or comfort within the body).

Keeping A Stress-Awareness Diary

Most people find that some parts of the day are more stressful than others and that some events produce more physical and emotional symptoms than others.

Stress Management Techniques: 1. Breathing exercises 2. Progressive relaxation 3. Visualization 4. Meditation 5. Therapeutic touch 6. Rolfing 7. Bioenergetics 8. Autogenic training 9. Self-Hypnosis 10. Thought Stopping 11. Refuting Irrational Self Talk 12. Biofeedback

BREATHING EXERCISES -- breathing calmly and deeply keeps the blood well oxygenated and purified. It helps to remove waste materials from the blood and clears thinking. Poorly oxygenated blood may contribute to fatigue, mental confusion, anxiety, muscular tension, and feelings of depression.
o Awareness breathing
o Deep breathing o Ten-to-One Count

o Alternate Nostril Breathing

Progressive Relaxation The technique of progressive relaxation is based on the premise that muscle tension is the bodys physiologic response to anxiety-provoking thoughts.
Muscular tension increases the feeling of anxiety and reinforces it. Deep muscle relaxation, by contrast, decreases physiologic tension and blocks anxiety.

Progressive Relaxation
a. Active Progressive Relaxation helps people

identify which muscles or muscle groups are chronically tense by distinguishing between sensations of tension (purposeful muscle tensing) and deep relaxation ( a conscious relaxing of the muscles. Each muscle or muscle grouping is tensed for 5-7 seconds and then relaxed for 20 or 30 seconds. This cycle is repeated.

Progressive Relaxation
b. Passive Progressive Relaxation In passive progressive relaxation, the muscles are not tensed. The goal is to relax the muscles without first tightening them. The sequence in which body parts are relaxed differs from that of the active progressive method. Begin with the muscles easiest to relax (in the toes) and progress to muscles most difficult to relax (in the head).

Progressive Relaxation
The sequence is as follows: o Feet o Lower legs o Knees and upper legs o Hips and buttocks o Lower back o Lower arms and hands o Chest and diaphragm o Abdomen o Pelvis and genitals

oNeck oForehead and upper face oMouth and jaw

VISUALIZATION Positive visualizations use a persons own imagination and positive thinking to reduce stress or promote healing.
Relaxing through visualizing is enhanced by

constructing in ones own mind a relaxing environment. Some find the soothing sounds of the seashore calming; others prefer to imagine themselves floating in a soft cloud.

MEDITATION --is a kind of self-discipline that helps one to achieve inner peace and harmony by focusing uncritically on one thing at a time.
Meditation has been associated with various religious doctrines and philosophies for thousands of years. It is seen as a way of becoming one with God or the universe, finding enlightenment, and achieving such virtues as selflessness.

MEDITATION (cont.)
-- the state of meditation is equivalent to a state of deep rest. The HR slows, the body uses less oxygen, and blood lactate a waste product of metabolism decreases sharply. Alpha waves, which characterize brain activity during states of calm alertness, increase.

MEDITATION (cont.)
--There are four major requirements of meditation:
A quiet place 2. A comfortable position 3. An object or thought to dwell on 4. A passive attitude
1.

Many people who meditate prefer to use a mantra, a syllable, word, or name that is repeatedly chanted aloud.

THERAPEUTIC TOUCH -- it is defined as the transfer of energy in a therapeutic manner; that is, some of the excess energies of the healer are directed to the client, or energy is transferred from one place to another within the body of the client. -- Prana is the subsystem of energy that Krieger believes is the basis of the energy transfer in therapeutic touch.

ROLFING -- Rolfing or structural integration, is based on the belief that psychologic conflicts are recorded and perpetuated in thebody. -- to function properly, a person must be in correct alignment with the forces of gravity. When the body is in an incorrect position, the myofascia or connective tissue that supports the body weight shortens and undergoes metabolic changes that decrease its energy and interfere with free movement.

ROLFING (cont.) -- Rolfing is a method of working with the body to achieve a realignment of the body structure. The basic therapy consists of 10 one-hour sessions. The rolfer massages and manipulates the clients deep connective tissue. Once this tissue is freed, the body is able to realign itself with gravitational forces.

BIOENERGETICS ---offers techniques for reducing muscular tension through the release of feelings. It makes less use of direct body contact (between client and therapist) than other body therapies, guiding the client instead through a series of exercises and verbal techniques. --- the exercises begin with deep breathing and progress to stretching and kicking the limbs. This enables the client to break through muscular rigidity and express feelings previously trapped in habitual postural modes. These modes, called muscular armoring, prevent the free flow of energy.

AUTOGENIC TRAINING --Is used in stress reduction and holistic health centers to teach self regulation of the autonomic nervous system. -- Autogenic training is based on the achievement of six physiologic outcomes: 1. Heaviness in the extremities 2. Warmth in the extremities 3. Regulation of the heartbeat 4. Regulation of breathing 5. Abdominal warmth 6. Cooling of the forehead

SELF-HYPNOSIS -- Erickson redefined hypnosis as an experience originating in the client in order to cope with a problem overwhelming to the conscious mind. -- People practice self-hypnosis to achieve significant relaxation, to make positive suggestions for change (eg., to lose weight, to stoop smoking, to overcome fear of the dark, insomnia), in increase learning and remembering and to uncover significant but forgotten events.

THOUGHT STOPPING
-- is a behavior therapy technique that is particularly useful in helping a person control obsessive and phobic thoughts. It involves concentrating on the unwanted thoughts and, after a short time, suddenly interrupting the thought and emptying the mind. --Thought stopping is based on the belief that negative and frightening thought invariably precede negative and frightening emotions. Controlling these thoughts can reduce stress.

REFUTING IRRATIONAL SELF-TALK -- Self-talk is intrapersonal communication, the thoughts with which we describe and interpret the world to ourselves. -- Irrational or untrue self-talk causes stress and mental disorder. -- Two common forms of irrational self-talk are statements that: awfulize (catastrophic, nightmarish interpretations of an event or experience) or absolutize (words such as should, must, and always, that imply the need to live up to a standard).

--- Rational-emotive therapy emphasizes human values as the important component of personality. Healthy functioning is possible only when the values we believe in are rational ones. -- Absolutist, perfectionist attitudes are irrational. -- Rational-emotive therapy frequently uses reinforcing techniques to help people change. Clients are taught to reward themselves for working on self-defeating ideas and to penalize themselves if they do not.

BIOFEEDBACK -- or visceral learning, is a technique for gaining conscious control over such involuntary body functions as blood pressure and heartbeat, which are mediated by the autonomic nervous system. -- Biofeedback treatment is based on the ability to voluntarily control some autonomic functions to a degree once thought impossible.

How do we manage stress better? 1. Become aware of your stressors and your emotional and physical reactions.

Notice your distress. Dont ignore it. Dont gloss over your problems. Determine what events distress you. What are you telling yourself about meaning of these events? Determine how your body responds to the stress. Do you become nervous or physically upset? If so, in what specific ways?

2. Recognize what you can change. Can you change your stressors by avoiding or eliminating them completely? Can you reduce their intensity (manage them over a period of time instead of on a daily or weekly basis)? Can you shorten your exposure to stress (take a break, leave the physical premises)? Can you devote the time and energy necessary to making a change (goal setting, time management techniques, and delayed gratification strategies may be helpful here)?

3. Reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions to stress. The stress reaction is triggered by your perception of dangerphysical danger and/or emotional danger. Are you viewing your stressors in exaggerated terms and/or taking a difficult situation and making it a disaster? Are you expecting to please everyone? Are you overreacting and viewing things as absolutely critical and urgent? Do you feel you must always prevail in every situation? Work at adopting more moderate views; try to see the stress as something you can cope with rather than something that overpowers you. Try to temper your excess emotions. Put the situation in perspective. Do not labor on the negative aspects and the what ifs.

4. Learn to moderate your physical reactions to stress. Slow, deep breathing will bring your heart rate and respiration back to normal. Relaxation techniques can reduce muscle tension. Electronic biofeedback can help you gain voluntary control over such things as muscle tension, heart reate, and blood pressure. Medications, when prescribed by a physician, can help in the short term in moderating your physical reactions. However, they alone are not the answer. Learning to moderate these reactions on your own is a preferable long-term solution.

5. Build your physical reserves.Exercise for cardiovascular fitness three to four times a week (moderate, prolonged rythmic exercise is best, such as walking, swimming, cycling, or jogging). Eat well-balanced, nutritious meals. Maintain your ideal weight. Avoid nicotine, excessive caffeine, and other stimulants. Mix leisure with work. Take breaks and get away when you can. Get enough sleep. Be as consistent with your sleep schedule as possible.

6. Maintain your emotional reserves.

Develop some mutually supportive

friendships/relationships. Pursue realistic goals which are meaningful to you, rather than goals others have for you that you do not share. Expect some frustrations, failures, and sorrows. Always be kind and gentle with yourselfbe a friend to yourself.