Key Concepts
Vocabulary: chronic stress, stress-management skills, relaxation response, resilient
Managing Stress
When Stress Becomes a Problem
Main Idea: Identifying what is stressful is the first step in learning how to manage stress.
You are keenly aware of stress when its cause is obvious, such as when you’re late for an appointment, your computer crashes while you’re doing homework, or when you realize that you’ve left the materials you need to complete a project at home. When you know the source of stress, you can find ways to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, people often don’t recognize the stressors in their lives. Many times, people recognize that they’re feeling stressed only after the stress has begun to affect their health.
The effects of stress are additive, meaning they build up over time. Unless you find ways of managing stress, it will take a physical and mental toll on you. An increasing number of teens are experiencing chronic stress, stress associated with long-term problems that are beyond a person’s control. For these individuals, stress has become a constant burden that can last for months.
Fortunately, there are positive actions you can take to deal with stress. Although you can’t eliminate all stress from your life you can manage it. The trick is to learn strategies to keep stress from building up and to deal with individual stressors effectively.
Stress-Management Techniques
Main Idea: You can develop strategies to both avoid and reduce your stress.
Stress-management skills help you manage stressors in a healthful, effective way. Some skills involve strategies to prevent stress. Others focus on coping with the impact of stress.
Avoiding and Limiting Stress
Avoiding situations that cause stress is the easiest way to reduce its effects. If you’re unable to avoid a stressor, you can try to restrict or limit the amount of stress you’re exposed to.
These are effective strategies you can try:
Handling Stress and Reducing Its Effects
Some stressors may be unavoidable. Some days you may be running late for school because the weather is bad or the bus had a flat tire. If you have a part-time job, your boss might be stressed himself on some days, which makes your workday stressful. For stressors that are unavoidable, try to find ways to reduce their negative effects. To lower the impact of stress on your health, try these tips:
Staying Healthy and Building Resiliency
Main Idea: Taking care of your health is essential to stress management.
In addition to learning stress-management skills, developing habits that maintain your general health will also help reduce the effects of stress. These self-maintenance habits help you deal with stress in positive ways. They can also play a role in preventing stress, reducing stress, and helping your mind and body recover from stress.
Get Adequate Rest
Too little sleep can affect your ability to concentrate. This can affect schoolwork, athletics, and even relationships. By contrast, adequate sleep can help you face the challenges and demands of the next day. Using time-management skills will allow you to get the eight to nine hours of sleep that you need each night.
Get Regular Physical Activity
Participating in regular physical activity benefits your overall health whether or not you are feeling the effects of stress. Physical activity can release pent-up energy and clear your mind. Done regularly, exercise increases your energy level and your endurance. It helps you sleep better, too.
Eat Nutritious Foods
Eating a variety of healthful foods and drinking plenty of water not only helps your body function properly, but it also reduces the effects of stress. In contrast, poor eating habits can contribute to stress, causing weakness, fatigue, and a reduced ability to concentrate. Overeating and undereating can also put your body under stress. Beverages high in caffeine and sugar, such as coffee drinks or quick energy drinks, can increase the effects of stress.
By including self-maintenance and stress-management strategies in your daily routine, you can become more resilient. This means you’re able to adapt effectively and recover from disappointment, difficulty, or crisis. For example, you would probably feel disappointed if you didn’t win the part you wanted in the school play. A resilient teen would bounce back from this disappointment and work harder for the next audition. Resiliency helps you handle difficulties and challenges in healthful ways and achieve long-term success in spite of negative circumstances.