Proactive Ways to Deal with Stress

You know what it feels like when you do not or cannot manage stress properly. And it is blatantly obvious when others let stress influence them. Not being able to deal with conflict constructively, not listening properly, battling to solve problems, struggling to stay positive – and that is just at home. At work, illness and time off drop your productivity even lower than the reduced performance stress was causing you to achieve. In this article we’ll discuss some proactive ways to deal with stress.

It is far better to find proactive ways to deal with stress by paying attention to two factors that can make a big difference: how the environment you are in causes stress, and how you manage that stress.

Everyone’s environment creates stress points for them; tackling them means you look at coping mechanisms and management techniques aimed at reducing these stress points. The other side of the same coin is to look at strategies that will help put you in a stronger, more agile frame of mind. This is a more comfortable place to be where our heart rates and blood pressure are not elevated and where we feel confident.

How to understand stress.

Now, before we dive in deeper it is important to define stress: Stress is our experience of being confronted with a stressful situation – also known as stressors. This will look like an unpredictable piece of bad news, a work deadline, or an upcoming bill payment.

These stressors are factors that cause us to experience stress. The expectation your spouse has of you to remember your wedding anniversary and celebrate it in a way that shows you considered them when you planned it, maybe a stressor that is interpreted as stress.

Stress is experienced when we see upcoming threats or opportunities that we fear we are not able to handle comfortably. It is important to notice that we see the opportunity before us.

Because stress is something that is a result of what we perceive, it is subjective and just as people are all different, so they will experience the same situation in unique ways. Also notice that it is not just what we see as threats that cause us to experience stress, but also opportunities.

Can you picture a situation where you come up with a solution to a problem you are facing at work, but first have to get your manager’s approval before implementing it – you would want the conversation with your manager to go well.

The amount of stress you feel about discussing the opportunity can fluctuate depending on the significance you place on the outcome of the conversation, and since you want your manager to buy into your solution, you may feel some stress.

Stress can be good (but also bad).

You have felt the sudden dose of energy that stress can give you. When your body is alarmed, the stress you feel makes your heart pump faster and more powerfully, giving energy to your muscles and clarity to your thoughts. Your body prepares for flight-or-fight to deal with the stress so that you are ready to get out of harm’s way or protect yourself from harm.

At this point, you need to be aware that if you do not properly manage your stress, your body can experience it for longer than it was designed to be useful to us. Experiencing chronic stress can bring about heart disease and heart attacks, and the energy produced can be counterproductive just at the point where you needed it to give you the edge.

For example, speaking too fast while delivering a speech is a counterproductive effect of stress, as is acting with impatience and irritability toward your team just as you need them to voluntarily go the extra mile.

Stress also has the negative effect of redirecting our attention to the thing causing the stress. Just as our bodily, or physiological, reaction to stress helps or hinders us, so can our mindful, or psychological, reaction.

There are occasions when it is useful to give extra attention to the immediate problem, think of a football coach who yells to gain his players’ attention and motivate them. But using stress to increase attention can also backfire if creativity and a relaxed mind are needed.

When we are in the midst of a stressful time our perspective narrows to facilitate a more rigid decision-making process. We do not see the nuance in the situation as easily. In this state, we can become fixated on a problem or an approach to it and struggle to see it from a different point of view.

For much the same reason as we sometimes experience an aha moment regarding challenges we face while doing something completely unrelated – like having a shower or exercising – if we take part in activities that take our minds off from a stress-induced narrow perspective we are better able to find their solutions.

Now add to the list of unhelpful characteristics of stress its ability to suck up additional attention and so we may ignore other important factors, people, even other approaching crises. While experiencing high stress levels it is difficult to listen, learn and give effective assistance.

So, here we have read what many of us have learned through first-hand experience: that stress managed in a way that is not constructive can result in irritability, poor attention span, bad decision-making, and health problems.

Interestingly, the type of stress management we admire in other people and imitate for ourselves does not mean that they, or we, never get to a point where we are stress-free. Rather as we challenge ourselves to improve and do all we can with the time that we have got, we will cause ourselves stress. The important factor is to maintain our stress at a level where we can exploit it for energy and productivity.

So there are two sources of stress – our environment which we cannot control, and ourselves. We can continue to improve our self-control throughout our lives and it is often thought that working on how we react to stress is better than trying to create a less-stressful environment.

Many things in our environment are outside of our control. For example, if the root cause of one’s stress is the poor driving of other motorists, there are not many things you can do to remove the cause of the stress. Another reason why focusing on how you can improve yourself to deal better with stress is beneficial is because this can help us become more adept at problem-solving.

Improving yourself to avoid the effects of stress.

By looking at ways you can become better at dealing with the stress in your own life you can avoid negative personal consequences of stress, such as health concerns and analysis paralysis. There are strategies to help in the short-term as well as the long term.

Further, it makes sense that personal strategies can be divided into those that are proactive, and those that are reactive. Proactive ways to deal with stress are the things we implement before we experience stress, and they make us more robust. Reactive strategies can be implemented when we are experiencing stress to dial down the negative consequences and get us ready to creatively solve the problems we are facing.

Now, as with most things, the more you practice it, the less energy it takes to implement. Here are some proactive and reactive strategies we can implement to help us better deal with stress. Proactive strategies can help to limit the intensity and length of time we would feel the physical effects of stress while reactive strategies help to clear our heads to effectively address the problems causing the stress:

Proactive ways to deal with stress.

Maintain your social support network. Be intentional to form and keep relationships with mentors and peers who can support you when you face stressful situations.

Keep your heart and body fit. Do aerobic exercise for 20-30 minutes at least every second day. This would be a 2-mile fast walk.

Eat well. Nutritious food, with reduced alcohol and caffeine, helps maintain your health.

Be optimistic. Train yourself to see the glass as half full, strengthen a nimble mindset, and practice creative problem-solving.

Reflection and meditation. Keep a regular time for saying your prayers, spending time with the Lord, and partaking in relaxation exercises. The process of reflection and regular reminders of God’s sovereignty is very helpful.

Reactive ways to deal with stress.

Reframe the problem. How would you advise a peer in a comparable situation to solve the problem you are facing? Create a puzzle of the problem and play with potential solutions as you figure it out

Relax your muscles. Tighten a group of muscles in your body, like your fists, hold for between five and ten seconds, and then release. Do this repeatedly for several other musical groups, such as your arms, legs, tummy, and others.

Practice deep breathing. Fill your lungs up slowly with a deep breath. Hold the air inside for a few seconds, and exhale it until the last air molecule is gone. Repeat this several times.

Look for small wins. Break the problem apart into several small challenges, and then look to solve these one by one. Keeping your focus on one at a time.

Visualization. Picture the stressful situation and play out a scenario where you cope successfully with it.

Clinical counseling. Professionals trained to help us cope with stress are invaluable. Mentors and peers are beneficial; however, your complex situation will not be the first rodeo for clinical psychologists or psychiatrists.

Christian counseling to deal with stress.

If you’re looking for additional help to teach you more ways to deal with stress then why not browse our online counselor directory or contact our office to find out how we can help? We would be honored to walk with you on this journey.