Instead, Peterson suggests, replacing your stress involves taking small steps to add more of what you want to your life. “Rather than just seeking to healthy ways to cope with stress reduce [stress], shift your attention,” Peterson says. Meditation can be as simple as closing your eyes and creating a blank space in your mind.
Emotion-Focused Coping Style
When you experience stress, hormones in your body are released to prepare you to face the situation. Your breath and heartbeat quicken, your blood sugar rises, and your brain takes up additional oxygen to increase your alertness. When the situation passes, the hormones dissipate, and your body returns to normal. Healthy coping skills can help protect you from distress and face problems before they become more serious. By understanding the two main types of coping skills, you can better select strategies that are suited to different types of stress. Unhealthy coping techniques—such as drinking or avoiding the problem—may offer some temporary relief, but they tend to make things worse in the long run.
Practice This Breathing Technique to Help Manage Stress
Stress management might mean practicing mindful meditation over self-medication or cultivating humor and laughter. But when your body overproduces cortisol, a stress hormone, you may begin to have physical and mental health challenges. The following coping mechanisms have been deemed ineffective and may exacerbate mental health problems. They may also be referred to as ineffective or maladaptive strategies. Besides removing clutter and giving you relief from a crowded space, cleaning is an effective mindfulness practice. One study found that students who washed dishes had greater states of mindfulness and positive moods.
What to do if you have trouble sleeping
Laughter fires up and then cools down your stress response. Stress relievers can help bring back calm and peace to your busy life. You don’t have to put a lot of time or thought into stress relievers. If your stress is getting out of control and you need quick relief, try one of these tips. This may involve setting aside small moments where you take a break from tasks, chores, and life’s daily stressors. Or it may include removing yourself from the situation that’s causing you to feel stressed.
Deep breathing exercises
This is just one example of how the Adaptive Coping Wheel can help us better deal with problems. The wheel is a reminder of different strategies that can help us effectively cope with a situation. This particular coping style employs cognitive strategies to process and make sense of the meaning of a situation (Algorani & Gupta, 2021). Social support is an extremely effective way to relieve stress.
- Be mindful of the things you can control and work on accepting the things that you can’t control.
- Keep in mind that there are many different ways to get more physical activity in your day too.
- Over time, chronic stress may lead to memory problems or difficulties with thinking or concentration.
- An estimated 60% reported increased drinking since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, including an increased number of drinks and an increased number of drinking days.
- The mere act of coming up with a list will get you out of your stressed, “spinning” right brain and back into your practical, list-making left brain.
- By taking control of your mental health and prioritizing your overall well-being, you can find a renewed sense of inner peace and balance.
Healthy Coping Skills for Uncomfortable Emotions
- The results also revealed that, overall, distancing yielded a stronger effect.
- Instead, it’s up to you to decide which type of coping skill is likely to work best for you in your particular circumstance.
- When you put a pen to paper and start detailing what’s going on, things really come into perspective.
- One night, when I was particularly worried and upset about something, I just walked back and forth along one safe, brightly lit block about twenty times.
Download 3 Free Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises (PDF)
