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To Stress or Not to Stress?

admin — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:07:26 +0000

Posted by admin under To Stress or Not to Stress? | Permalink | | Leave A Comment | 1 Comment
Today it seems that no matter who we are or what we do, we have more stress in our lives than our parents or grandparents did. There are many factors and demands that cause stress in our lives: things such as demanding careers, relationship conflicts, financial worries, health concerns, parenting challenges, legal issues, fear of the unknown and so many others.
If that were not enough, the stress and worries these situations cause further diminish our ability to function well and to be healthy. In fact, stress can cause depression, fatigue, irritability, withdrawal, insomnia, appetite changes, head aches, lower sex drive and many other ailments and diseases. Some studies suggest that as much as 80% of all major illnesses are attributed to stress. Take note of that again — as much as 80% of all major illnesses are attributed to stress! It is quite obvious — stress is NOT good for us, and we are wise to get rid of as much of it as possible.
So how do you do that? First, do you know what things in your life are causing you stress? Think about it and write down those things. Next, go through your list and write possible solutions and ways to ease stress for each of those stress causers. Then, make a plan to do those things. That plan may look like a daily reminder that you read, post-it notes on your computer or a daily quiet time of prayer.
For those stress items that we cannot remove from our lives and for the unexpected stress that creeps into our lives, try these tips:
• When you feel tense or stress, stop what you are doing, close your eyes and take several deep breaths. Inhale slowly counting to 10 and exhale slowly counting to 10. Try to do this at least three times. You may need to do this several times a day.
• Start an exercise program. You may be amazed how much stress is relieved when you exercise. The endorphins that are released can reduce your stress, improve your mood and give you an energy boost.
• Play relaxing music or soothing sounds that calm and relax you.
• Plan a day off or at least plan some time just for yourself and do whatever is relaxing to you: sleep in, lay in a hammock, have coffee with a friend, take a bubble bath, have a glass of champagne, go for a hike, get a manicure or read a book.
• Count your blessings. Record things you are happy and thankful about. Read them daily and add to your list as you recognize new blessings and things to be thankful for. The goal is to have a longer “thankful” list than “stress” list. Focus on the positive and remind yourself of the positive things in your life often.
• Simplify your life. Are there unnecessary things in your life that you could remove? Are you over-extended or over-committed? Are their things in your life that you can outsource to simplify your life? Are your children in more than one extra-curricular activity? Is that adding more stress than is worth it?
• Find more joy. Are their things that can truly add joy to your life? What are they? Are you focusing too much on work or negative things in your life? Are you taking time to stop and enjoy your life, your family, and your children?
Make today the day for new beginnings and for removing as much stress from your life as possible. Find joy. Make joy.

Effective Stress Management for those with Busy lives!

admin — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:53:03 +0000

What would you do with increased stamina, decreased anxiety, and solid peace of mind? You would probably get more done in less time–at the very least, each day would be more enjoyable. In the long term, you would certainly experience better physical health and a longer life span.
The only thing standing between you and a higher level of general well-being is the unpreventable occurrence of stress. Daily stress can rob us of our potential, weakening every aspect of our lives. Consider the following:
* Stress breaks down the efficiency of the immune system leaving our bodies vulnerable to illness and disease.
* Stress causes heart problems and high blood pressure.
* Stress contributes to addictive behavior, causing alcoholism, eating disorders, nicotine addiction, and workaholic tendencies.
* Stress causes social withdrawal, perpetuating symptoms and leading to destructive isolation.
To avoid stress and related symptoms you must be proactive, nurturing your body and mind through a balanced diet, exercise, and reserved time for relaxation.
A Balanced Diet – We know that a balanced diet can improve your health, but can it really do anything for your stress level? Experts say it can. Research has found that good nutrition has a tremendous impact on our ability to ward off the damage stress can do to our systems. Sure, you’ll still feel tense, but with your body nutritionally armed for battle, you’ll handle things better. There are many things you can do to maximize your body’s fighting power.
One of the most significant things you can do is to reduce the amounts sugar and white flour in your diet. Sugar and white flour cause a host of problems you could do without. By reducing these items in your diet, you will be able to maintain better weight control, reduce the risk of heart disease, and increase your energy level. Why? Because items made with these products metabolize too fast in your blood system. The result is unhealthy spikes in your blood sugar, rapid depletion of energy, and damaging stress symptoms.
Exercise – In addition to eating right, exercise can be a tremendous help in fighting stress. As you get moving, your circulation delivers oxygen and nutritional elements throughout your body. The result is muscle relaxation, the release of mood elevating chemicals, and a strengthened immune system. Studies show that those who exercise regularly are less likely to suffer from stress related illness.
Relaxation. When your body relaxes, it reverses stress symptoms. You experience a sense of control as you eliminate the feelings of helplessness that often accompany stress. Find that one thing that really helps you to kick back and forget about things for a while. Here are some suggestions:
- Catering to our senses, such as sight, smell, and sound can reduce anxiety. So put on some favorite music, keep fresh cut flowers in view, and sink into a warm bubble bath.
- Reduce the clutter in your life. Passing a stack of papers as you leave for work, tripping over boxes, or stuffing a breakfast plate into a sink of dirty dishes, creates underlying tension that acts as a fuse when something gets you fired up.
- Deal head-on with anything that has been bothering you. Ignoring problems won’t make them go away–resolving them will.
- Get a good night’s sleep. Your body needs this time to heal and “reboot” in preparation for the next day’s challenges. Deny this basic need and you drain all of your systems of their strength.
Good nutrition, exercise, and learning to enjoy life will help you ward off dangerous stress symptoms. It’s important that you take steps now to ensure a healthy future. That is why I dedicate several sections of my ebook series, A Balanced Approach to Health, to teaching you how to reduce the levels of stress in your life, instantly improving your quality of life. You’ll learn: How to cope rather than stress, 13 affirmations to move beyond stress and its impacts, how to become a relaxation guru, and much more.

Stress & Supplementation: How is a Supplement Supposed to Help with Stress?

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:44:09 +0000

THE STRESS PRODUCT INDUSTRY – MORE THAN JUST A MONEYSPINNER?
It’s not news that stress products are a big-money industry, and stress supplements are at the forefront. Go into any pharmacy or health-food shop, browse the vitamin shelves, and you’ll be guaranteed to find at least one product per range dedicated to the relief of stress. The herbal section will also often offer ‘stress capsules’, ‘stress tinctures’ and ‘stress teas’. But how useful (and how safe) are these products? How are they supposed to help us manage stress? Do they work, or are they just a way of parting people from their hard-earned cash?
GENERAL THOUGHTS ON SUPPLEMENTING
There are two schools of thought when it comes to supplements. One is that if we eat a healthy diet – one rich in raw fruits, vegetables and whole foods, and low in processed additive-laden fare – we’d have no need for supplements. Our bodies, this theory suggests, have evolved to eat food. Not pills, not extracts, not single-nutrients-in-a-bottle, but actual real foods that used to be alive. Therefore, supplements are at best a placebo to waste our money, and at worst, a quick way to unbalance our bodies (too much of some nutrients will block the absorption of others; while too much of others can actually be toxic to our systems)
The second school of thought holds that this view is naive. Firstly, our bodies have to cope with environmental demands today well in excess of what they’ve evolved to do, which means foods that used to give us sufficient nutrients simply aren’t enough any more. Secondly, the food quality today is far lower than it used to be. Nutrient quality has dropped due to use of chemical fertilizers & pesticides, short-term farming practices, and the transport & storage induced time-lags between harvesting, and point-of-sale in stores. Because of the gap between what our bodies now need to cope, and what our food can now provide us with, the only way we can meet our nutritional needs is to supplement an already-healthy diet (note that very few experts will recommend supplementation instead of eating well, and most of those that do are trying to sell a particular product!)
STRESS AND NUTRIENT LEVELS
I’m not a nutritionist, so can’t offer any definitive answer as to which school above is right. If you’re interested in making your own decision, there are a number of resources on line – try typing ‘nutrition & supplements’ into a search engine and see what you come up with. Both schools agree, however, that to keep functioning optimally (even when we’re not under stress), our bodies need a minimum level of a vast number of nutrients. And when we start to experience stress responses, our need for many of those nutrients skyrockets.
Entire papers have been written on the biochemical effects of stress on our bodies. The release of stress hormones causes a number of physiological changes which directly chew through some of the nutrients in our bodies, and leach others from our system. Further nutrients are used up after the stress response passes, healing the damage it caused. The stronger (or more frequent) the stress response, the greater the toll it takes on our systems.
Most stress supplement products will therefore be based around one of two perspectives (or a combination of both). Either they contain some combination of nutrients the stress response has depleted from our bodies (giving them more resources to minimize or repair any damage caused); or they contain herbs or extracts that relax the body, thus fooling it into believing it’s not actually as stressed as it thinks it is. Neither approach is necessarily better than the other (often, combining both works better than either individually); and it depends on the person in question as to which is more appropriate in a given situation.
Before we start discussing specific herbal and nutritional supplements, however, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer an important reminder. However good a supplement might be, it’s no substitute for actively managing the stress in your life. Just as any vitamins should be taken in addition to a healthy diet, a stress supplement (if you choose to take one), should be a small part of an overall stress management strategy, rather than an alternative to one.
The remaining articles in this series explore in more detail the topics we’ve briefly introduced in this one; with Part 2 addressing specific nutritional stress supplements, Part 3 addressing herbs that are known to help with stress relief, and Part 4 tying it all together and offering suggestions about where to go from here. I hope you’ve found this introduction to the vast field of stress and supplementation informative – if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Otherwise, may every day bring you closer to your Optimum Life.

Steps to Relieve Stress

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:11:34 +0000

We get over-stressed now and then. It’s a natural response under certain conditions. We need to be concern when our stress is getting out of hand and interfering with our lifestyle. What problems can too much stress cause?
• High Blood Pressure • Colds and the Flu • Allergies • Diabetes • Damage Relationships • General Bad Health
The list goes on….
Getting over the stress is what we want to strive for. How can we go about this? Taking the natural approach is probably the best way to start. Here are a few ideas to begin with.
Exercise: It may be difficult to begin an exercise program but once you start it will become easier. Exercise helps to blow off steam and gets rid of excess stress. So you benefit by reducing your tension and obtaining a workout as well. Of course talk to your physician before beginning an exercise program.
Relax: Yes it is hard to relax when you are stressing. Try taking in a deep breath slowly. Now as you breathe out picture all the stress leaving you. You may find that doing relaxation techniques on a regular basic when you aren’t stressed out to be beneficial.
Learn relaxation techniques such as: • Meditation • Yoga • EFT • Z-Point • Bio-Feedback • Listening to some soothing music. • Prayer • Asking for Assistance • Joining a Support Network
Look into what causes your stress: You may not know what is inducing you stress. Try to understand where the source is coming from if possible. Once you understand what is causing your stress you can try to modify these problem areas. If you can’t, can you substantially reduce them? Maybe you can look at these stressors in a different way.
Have a Positive Attitude: Always look on the bright side of things. Don’t think about what may go wrong. Take positive steps to improve yourself, your business and your spirit. Work on your ambitions. Find methods to enhance your routine activities. At the end of the day understand that you have done all you can to maintain a healthy lookout on life. Now you can relax and enjoy the remainder of the evening either by yourself or with family and friends.
Nutrition: A healthy diet with the proper nutrition is one key to balancing you physical, mental and emotional health. Frozen TV dinners or Big Macs are not good choices. You need to consume as much unprocessed food as possible. Try to eat as much organic products as possible to eliminate pesticides from your diet. Eat plenty of fresh vegetables, raw if possible, and some fruit. Drink plenty of clean water to keep those brain neurons communicating.
Get Enough Rest: Getting enough sleep at night is crucial to keeping stress at bay. Try to relax the best you can in the evening. Exercise early so that you aren’t all wound up. If you watch a movie ensure it’s not too violent are exciting. It may be better to watch a comedy, read something soothing or listen to soft pleasant music.
If your stress is so severe and you can’t seem to find relief regardless of what you try then you may desire to request professional help.
So there you have six ideas that will help you reduce stress and enjoy life more. Don’t delay. Start on these recommendations right away. Don’t stop there. Keep looking for new ways to manage your stress and genuinely enjoy life once more.

How To Reduce Stress That Causes Hair Loss and Bad Hair

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:42:44 +0000

Your hair will be radiant and shining if you are healthy physically as well as emotionally.
Your hair becomes dull and lifeless if you are upset emotionally. Your hair will begin to fall out, and it will become waxy with the overproduction of sebaceous glands.
Stress can affect your hair the same way that affects your other major organs such as your heart. Stress can cause hair loss and many times cause hair problems 3-6 months after some trauma event occurred.
As soon as your body finds its equilibrium and you have recovered from stress, the hair loss should cease. Reducing stress can stop stress hair loss so consider the following stress management techniques.
Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is a simple but effective stress management technique. It is actually the core component of many stress management techniques, which are comparatively complex in nature.
Imagery
Imagery is a method of relaxation through use of pleasant or relaxing images. Such images help to calm the body and mind. One can get a sense of relaxation by simply controlling the breathing and viewing some soothing image.
Meditation Techniques
Meditation has long been one of the most popular stress management techniques. It is the process of focusing upon the core of one’s being. It soothes the mind, body and the emotions. One can do meditation by daily practice of a routine or simply while being alone outdoors.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
One can use Progressive Muscle Relaxation to achieve mental relaxation through physical relaxation. It involves tightening and relaxing the muscle groups in succession. In this technique, you first need to tense up a group of muscles to contract them as much as possible. Then relax the muscles normally after a few seconds. You should relax the muscles as much as possible.
Autogenic Training
This stress management technique uses passive concentration and awareness of the body sensations for relaxation. Physicians use Autogenic training as a part of therapy for many ailments. In this technique, one focuses upon different sensations in different organs of the body through repetition of the autogenic “formulas”. Those sensations include warmth, heaviness etc.
Biofeedback
Biofeedback is an advanced technique for achieving relaxation, controlling stress responses and for modifying the body’s reactions. It uses certain monitoring equipment to extract information from the body. Such equipment can measure heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity, muscle tension, stomach acidity and other biological functions inside the body.
Martial arts
Practicing martial arts can be a great stress management technique. It keeps one physically fit and mentally alert. There are several martial arts that one can take up. Tai chi is a Chinese martial art that is popularly known as “meditation in motion”. It stresses precision and force. The body movements are soft and flowing.
Qigong
This ancient Chinese health care system combines Eastern philosophy and relaxation techniques with physical training. The physical training includes aerobic conditioning, isometrics, isotonics etc. This stress management technique has several forms. They are effective in treatment of various medical conditions.
Yoga
This ancient Indian form of exercise is highly effective as a stress management technique. Yoga has many forms but all forms work on the principle that the mind has a connection with the body and breathing. Yoga restores the balance and harmony in the body and emotions through different breathing exercises and postures. It increases the body’s flexibility and capability for relaxation.

How to Relieve Stress

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:41:38 +0000

One question that is not asked enough by people under stress is how to relieve stress. Unfortunately, people who are under stress tend to simply take it as a matter of course and simply accept its existence as though it was some sort of natural occurrence, or even a boon! Thus, people who are feeling the effects of stress do not actually take the time to notice that they are under stress and need relief. And when people are under stress, the first part of tackling the problem of how to relieve stress is actually realizing that there is stress that needs to be relieved.
Are you having trouble concentrating? Are you struggling with a project that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere? Are you dealing with people who simply will not listen to sense? Are you frustrated with the way things are going? Congratulations, you have stress. Okay, this is not really something to be congratulated on, but it is important to understand this fact. After all, the beginning of the “How to relieve stress” problem begins with recognizing the warning signs. Then, once the warning signs are seen, healing can begin.
The first thing to do when you want to know how to relieve stress is to learn how to walk away. That’s right, get up, go someplace else, and just cool off. It is often vital to hit that reset button and take a few deep breaths away from the action. The work will still be there when you get back, but being there beyond your breaking point will not get it done. An overabundance of things to do will not be helped by a clouded mind, so give your mind a break. Then, once your head is clear again, you can head back and bang out the projects with the greatest of ease. Or at least more ease than when you were sitting in front of a pile of work and wondering how you would get through it all.
Okay, so you need a break, you have walked away, but you are still so stressed that you are ready to pop. Unfortunately, the previous lesson on how to relieve stress has not worked and you need something more powerful. Well, you need to pull out a better method. This means that you need to simply concentrate on nothing.
When stress is way too much for a simple period of walking away, you need to practice an exercise in meditation. This means sitting down, closing your eyes, and thinking about absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to think about nothing, so you should think about your breathing. Take a deep breath in and feel the air moving through your nostrils, down your windpipe, and into your lungs. Then push that breath out and feel it moving all the way up from your diaphragm, up into your lungs through your windpipe and out of your nostrils. Feel every motion of the air and notice how it feels as it exits. Imagine your tension flowing out with the air, evaporating into the endless space of the atmosphere, diluting into a complete dilution of oxygen. Think about nothing but breathing and notice every moment of the experience. Then, after about 3 or 4 breaths — or as many as it takes — open your eyes. You should feel as refreshed as though you just took a quick, refreshing nap. If you don’t repeat the exercise until your mind is clear and you are able to concentrate on your work again.
These activities are very effective for a short period of time, but you will also need a method for relieving stress in the long run. After all, it is taxing to notice that you are under stress and it takes a great deal of will to make that leap and push away all those feelings. Thus, you need a way to relieve stress in the long term.
In the long term, the best method to choose, when you want to know how to relieve stress, is to do what you always say you are going to do: eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep at night. Yes, we all say that we will do it, but none of us every actually follow through. But, if you eat right, you will feel better during the day, if you exercise, you will feel better during the day and sleep better at night, and if you sleep enough, you will actually clear away all that fogginess that can lead to stress. So do your body and your mind a favor by taking care of those little things that you keep telling yourself you will do tomorrow. After all, today was yesterday’s tomorrow.
When you want to know how to relieve stress, you should begin with a few simple methods as you slowly build up your will power to tackle the larger work of exercising, eating right, and getting the sleep you need. By doing all of these things, your mind will be cleared up, you will feel better during the day, you will sleep better at night, and you will not have to worry about stress nearly as much. After all, once you are relieving stress routinely, you won’t have to worry about how to relieve stress.

USING EXERCISE TO MANAGE STRESS

admin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:40:29 +0000

So what do the experts recommend when it comes to controlling stress with exercise?
First and foremost, don’t overdo it. Too much exercise, or exercise sessions without enough rest time between them, lead to overtraining, and overtraining is as dangerous a stressor as anything the work world can throw at you. The current ACSM guideline for a healthy lifestyle is 30-45 minutes, 3-5 times a week. If you haven’t exercised for some time, check with your doctor first, and then start small. Even 10 minutes three times a week is better than nothing. If you want to do more than this, feel free, but if you start waking up tired, getting injury prone, or losing ground instead of gaining it, you need to cut back, or you’ll just increase your stress.
Secondly, make sure you enjoy what you do. Exercise performed because you have to is not going to keep you motivated to do it, and the resentment you feel won’t help with your stress levels. There’s a wealth of exercise options – from walking, swimming and cycling, through to aerobics, martial arts and team sports.
In fact, you don’t actually need to ‘exercise’ to exercise. All you need to do is get active – so if walking the dog, digging in your garden, or playing with your kids appeals to you more, they’re just as valid. And if you need a little help making the commitment, consider the services of a personal trainer.
Lastly, be aware that whatever is causing the stress, simple activity is not going to magically deal with it. If you’re not sure where your stress is coming from, you might benefit from one-to-one coaching with a stress management expert. If you know the root cause, however, getting active will put you in a far better frame of mind, body and spirit, to manage it yourself. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the true miracle of exercise.

Stress & Exercise: How do I make it Work for Me?

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 01:39:37 +0000

Everyone knows that exercise reduces stress levels. Doesn’t it?
Actually, some of the research is a little conflicting. For a start, vigorous exercise is actually stressor itself. On a physical level, exercise causes the tiny muscle fibres to actually tear, and then grow back stronger as they heal. Not exactly relaxing for the muscles in question! Quite apart from this, one study showed anxiety levels increase in the first 5-10 minutes of exercise as adrenaline – one of the key stress hormones – kicks in. So how can it be that exercise reduces our stress and anxiety levels over time?
The quick answer is that while exercise is a short-term stressor, lack of exercise is a long-term one. As we mentioned in last week’s stress newsletter, our bodies are built for movement. When we’re sedentary day after day, all the systems that have evolved to service a body-in-motion start to break down, which causes waste-products to build up.
Our stress response originally allowed us to either fight a potential threat get as far away from it as possible. These are both fairly physical activities. All the biochemical changes – the stress hormones released – are based around this response. They allow us to get into action – and quickly! It’s no surprise, then, that unless we do what our bodies expect and get moving, those hormones have nothing to do but hang around in our bloodstream, making us feel jumpy, irritable and just plain stressed. As soon as we start moving though, the hormones have done their job. Our body as a whole can return to normal, and relaxation can ensue.
There’s more to the de-stressing effect, though, than just clearing hormones from your bloodstream. First there’s the well-documented release of endorphins– nature’s opiates – into your bloodstream. These act to both deaden pain and make you feel wonderful. On top of this, regular exercise actually strengthens your body – improving your sleep, boosting your circulatory and immune systems. Since these are the very things that the stress response attacks, regular exercise becomes a form of preventative maintenance.
Then there are psychological buffers that exercise offers against stress. As we set ourselves exercise plans and goals, and stick to them, we start believing in ourselves more. This can translate directly into the way we deal with the stressors in our life. If we feel more in control of them, the stressors become less powerful.

How To Deal With Environmental Stress

admin — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 01:35:29 +0000

An increasing problem in today’s world is environmental stress. This is a type of stress caused by increasing pollution in air we breathe, the water we drink, and even in the sounds we hear. Though environmental stress seems to be simply a physical problem, it can actually alter the ways that our minds work. However, too much environmental stress can also cause physical problems that will ruin our health and lower life expectancy.
One of the most common, and most noticeable, types of environmental stress is air pollution. As factories churn out smoke and carcinogens, we are forced to breathe air that is filled with poisons. Whether we notice them or not, we cannot avoid them. Our lungs are constantly subjected to small particles that stick in the lung tissue and gasses that can find their way into our bloodstream. Obviously, this is not a good situation, because we cannot exactly afford to stop breathing.
As well, we are subjected to a whole variety of chemicals when we drink water. With all the chemicals that are used in farming, or sprayed on our lawns, or poured into our water supplies, the water we drink is filled with all sorts of poisons that are doing our bodies no good. Once again, we cannot afford to stop drinking water, but we do need to be aware that the water we are drinking contains a lot of things that we would not want in our bodies.
However, there is not much we can do to avoid this situation. Obviously, filtered water is superior to simple tap water, but even water filters cannot remove everything from our water. In fact, we do not want filters to remove all of the substances, as water contains many electrolytes that are essential to ensuring the proper functioning of our bodies. Even bottled water is not safe, as the water has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is usually either a stream or from the ground. Unfortunately, streams are filled with particulate matter and chemicals can soak into the ground. However, some water is simply taken from municipal water supplies and those are not safe either. Thus, this is a problem that needs to be faced in day-to-day life.
Unfortunately, these poisons do not only put stresses on our bodies, they put stresses on our minds as well. These physical forms of environmental stress put poisons into our brains as well, and can cause them to functions less effectively. Just as alcohol or drugs can affect the ways that our minds work, these subtle poisons are also seeping into our brains and causing mental changes. In fact, receiving too many of these poisons can slow down mental processes without our noticing the change. It will simply happen so slowly that we cannot notice the difference.
In addition, one of the most common causes of environmental stress is noise pollution. Anybody who lives in a large city is bombarded with a deluge of noise that can damage the ears, numb the senses, and cause a boatload of stress for our minds. With cars, busses, trains, factories, and people all screaming to be heard above the din filling the streets of the modern city. These pressures on our brains and our eardrums are enough to shut the mind down and send it into a cocoon of insensibility.
As well, simply being in a public place can cause us to have to deal with noise pollution. This is, of course, caused by the infamous “cell yell”. Anywhere we go in public, we must deal with people yelling into their mobile phones. This is not only annoying, but it is a form of environmental pollution. Listening to someone yell at a phone causes our minds stress and, through that, causes our bodies stress. They are annoying, and annoyance is a form of stress. Thus, we find ourselves stressed by something that is simply a fact of modern life.
Environmental stress occurs to us every day and we should be aware that it is happening. Obviously, we cannot be aware of it all the time because to do so would probably cause us more stress just by simple worry. However, it is a fact of life while living in the modern world and we should have the presence of mind to know that environmental stress takes a toll on a body… and a mind.

Dealing with Parental Stress

admin — Mon, 16 May 2011 01:31:51 +0000

One of the biggest problems with having children is the remarkable fact that they tend to be the source of parental stress. This is, obviously, the unique stress that comes from being a parent and having to worry about the fact that your kids are growing up, learning new things, living their lives their own way, and — all too often — figuring out things the hard way. In addition, you have to worry about your kids making the right decisions, staying out of trouble, and just generally turning into human beings just like you. Needless to say, this tends to create a lot of parental stress.
Being a parent isn’t easy. After all, you are responsible for raising, instructing, and helping children as they work their way from an infant into adulthood. And even when they go off on their own, you still worry about them as they make their way through the world. Despite the fact that they move on into adulthood, you never stop being a parent and you want to make sure that they are doing okay. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done and it is not easy to let them go. Thus, you find yourself both trying to give them freedom and trying to hang on to them as they go out into the world.
The problem becomes one of both trying to keep a hold of your children and trying to let them be their own people. Thus, in order to allow you children to move on, you need to learn to let them go. That’s right, in order to ease parental stress, you need to learn how to be less of a parent. In fact, you need to learn how to let them make their own mistakes. This is very difficult, since you will have to watch them as they go through the process of growing up, largely without your help. This can be very difficult, since you will want to protect them from the world. But the world will show up sometime and you will need to let them learn to deal with it. Needless to say, this will only make parental stress worse for a while, since you will be essentially standing on the sidelines as they make errors that you could have warned them against. Just remember that it will do them good in the long run and they will be better for it.
However, this does not mean that you shouldn’t keep an eye on your children. Let’s face it, you are still a parent and you need to watch over your children. Trying to cope with parental stress will not be improved by being completely ignorant of your children. Instead, let them be themselves as you try to keep an eye on them. They will find their own way, even if you do not always enjoy the path that they have to go down to get there. Just allow them to be imperfect and they will learn what they need to know in the process.
But when the stress of child-raising gets to be too much, don’t be afraid to get help. There are plenty of support groups, books, and websites out there that want to help you through your parental stress. Don’t be afraid to give them a try, if for no other reason than to stay informed. Nobody said it was going to be easy, so try to keep your stress under control. Then, by keeping it under control, you can survive a lot of difficult situations and a lot of difficult years and prevent yourself from going crazy with worry.
Just remember that your children will, eventually, become rebellious and they will probably try to act in a way that may shock you. It is well-known that parental stress can be fairly severe during the teenage years, since teenagers are always eager to go their own way. And if that doesn’t increase parental stress, nothing will. You will often find yourself on the sideline, trying to figure out what is going on in their heads, but try to remember that you were their age once. Teenagers aren’t perfect. Neither are adults. Keep both of those items in mind and you may be able to keep your parental stress to a minimum.
No, parental stress is not easy. No, it is not simple to solve. No, there is no point where you can just let your children go completely. However, by managing your own parental stress, allowing your children to grow up, and understanding that your children need to make their own mistakes sometimes, you can keep your emotions under control and allow your children to be themselves. So, rather than allowing parental stress to take over your life, let parental stress take a backseat to keeping an eye on your children, making sure that they are doing fine, and enjoying the years when they are growing from youth to adulthood and beyond.