Articles on Stress Management

Stress: How much is too much?
To get an idea of the level of stress you are currently operating under, read each of the events listed below and calculate the number of events which have occurred in the last year… (Read more)

Choosing better sleep habits
Getting a sound night’s sleep is crucial to mental and physical health. Studies show that even one night of broken or poor sleep lowers our IQ by up to 5 points. If you think that you “just can’t think straight” after a restless night in bed, you are right… (Read more)

More great sleep habits
Following on from Choosing better sleep habits, we look at more ways to ensure that you get a good night’s sleep. Given the important role of sleep on our mental health and physical performance, it makes to sense to take care of our bodies both by day and night. Try these tips for a better night life… (Read more)

Coping with Anxiety (1)
Is anxiety getting the better of you? Is it controlling the way you live your life? Has your quality of life diminished because of chronic low-grade anxiety or are you experiencing acute anxiety attacks in addition to a daily dose of anxiety… (Read more)

Coping with Anxiety (2)
Anxiety got you by the throat? Or perhaps it has your stomach in knots and your heart in a vice. Help is at hand. Following on from Coping with Anxiety (1) here are some more tips for dealing with those anxious feelings that just won’t seem to go away… (Read more)

Anxiety: The new plague of the millennium
Stress and anxiety have overtaken the contagious diseases that once plagued our grandparents and are regarded as the new epidemics of the 21st century. Having developed vaccinations for any number of communicable and deadly diseases, we are now left with the unease of the mind… (Read more)

The Benefits of Positive Thinking
There are probably a thousand books available on the benefits of positive thinking and the use of affirmations. Affirmations are “affirmative” statements about yourself, such as “The interview will go fine. I will get this job!” Or “I am happy and calm. I am in control of my life”… (Read more)

Food and Mental Health
The food we eat has an important effect on the way we feel. And the more stress we are under, the more important it is that we eat regularly and well. A poor diet is known to lead to minor ailments, such as indigestion, as well as major diseases such as heart disease, and cancer. But just as we must be careful with our diet if we wish to remain healthy physically, it is also important to take care of our mental health via the food we eat… (Read more)

5 ways to beat stress
Hands up who’s feeling stressed? Stress is a highly contagious “dis-ease” and few of us are immune to its effects. Over time, stress can have serious effects on the way our bodies function, often leading to physical as well as emotional illness. It therefore makes good health sense to address the early signs of an overstressed system. Here are some great ideas to help inoculate you against this modern epidemic… (Read more)

5 Ways to Clear Thinking
Mental clutter is like physical garbage; it clogs our lives and stops us from seeing the big picture. Here’s how to get rid of it… (Read more)

Pamper Yourself – You’re Worth It!
Feeling run down? Feeling unappreciated? Feeling depressed? Feeling anxious? Sounds like it’s time you booked yourself in for a well-earned tune-up. Neglecting your physical health will ultimately lead to poor mental health, so check out the super pampering tips below to get you back into peak running order. Your mind will thank you for it… (Read more)

Learning to relax (1)
Continually stressed to the max? Do you have days when you want the world to just stop? Perhaps learning to relax should be on your agenda: here are some helpful tips on getting back into your comfort zone… (Read more)

Learning to relax (2)
Correct breathing is an essential part of learning to relax, so today we’ll look at how to recapture the way we all used to breathe as a matter of habit. Breathing plays a large part in the ability to relax because breathing has a psychological as well as a physiological effect on the body. Just as thoughts can change breathing patterns, so too can the way we breathe affect the way we think. Slow breathing promotes calm. Rapid breathing encourages over-stimulation of the nervous system… (Read more)

Learning to Relax (3)
Relaxing doesn’t always mean taking an hour to go through a full yoga relaxation routine. Taking time out can also be as simple as stopping everything for three to five minutes and focusing on the outside world. Making a habit of taking short breaks in your daily routine can do wonders for your overall mental health and productivity. Try it… (Read more)

Learning to Relax (4)
As children, we all knew intuitively how to relax. We didn’t need special classes on how to “let go”, or special mind and body routines that would help us to relax. We just did it! So, with that in mind, let’s revisit the typical things we did as a child when we relaxed, and see if we can incorporate some of these natural, basic activities into our everyday lives… (Read more)

Stress Relief with Aromatherapy
Smell is one of our five basic senses and is strongly associated with mood. Often a brief whiff of a particular fragrance can carry us away to other times and other places. The smell of canvas may remind us of camping holidays in our childhood, the smell of moth balls can bring back memories of Grandma and Grandpa and long-ago visits to their home when we were small… (Read more)

Seven Goals for Good Mental Health
Feeling less positive than you’d like? Lost that spring in your step and the joy of living? Is depression and anxiety starting to encroach on your day-today life? It could be time for a mental and physical tune-up… (Read more)

Garden your way to Peace
If stress and anxiety are regular visitors to your world, then it may be time to head out into the garden for some drug-free (and cash-free) therapy. Any seasoned gardener will tell you that gardening makes you feel better, but as is required by scientific theory, all hypotheses must be proven, and the good news is that gardening has been shown to be beneficial to your mental health… (Read more)

Sex and Stress
Well, we all suspected that sex can reduce stress levels but now scientists in the UK have proven that the physical act of sex can reduce stress, bodily tension, and lower blood pressure… (Read more)

Just what is stress anyway?
Stress is the definitely the pop disease of the 21st century. Just a few years ago, the condition was simply known as “stress.” Today it has many common subcategories such as road rage, telephone rage, image stress, technostress, mid-life crisis, early mid-life crisis: the list goes on… (Read more)

Stress and Television
Want to feel more relaxed and in control of your life? Want to lower your overall stress levels and feel free from worry and niggling anxieties? Want to build up your coping reserves so that when stressful events occur you are better able to cope? Then turn off the TV at least one night a week... (Read more)

Junk Food and Mental Health
Would it surprise you to know that a diet rich in junk food makes for an increase in the occurrence of mental disorders? This is the latest research emerging from the Annual Society for Neuroscience Conference in California. But it hardly needs to be spelled out to us that eating too much junk food is not only bad for the way our bodies look, but also how our brains work.. It’s yet another case of garbage in, garbage out… (Read more)

Cleaning Up Our Act
Not too many of us made it through childhood and adolescence within being told on numerous occasions to clean up our room. Most of us hated it! But, in hindsight, when our mothers hounded us to “clean up our act” they were unknowingly giving us a gift. A gift that we can use to our advantage for the rest of our lives. So how can cleaning up our room in adolescence have an effect on our later lives… (Read more)

De-Stress the Natural Way
Changing your mood can be something that can be achieved with just a little effort and a surprisingly short space of time. Here are some ideas that can turn a gray day into a sunny one, often in just a few minutes... (Read more)

Dealing with Reality
One of the many causes of emotional breakdown is failing to deal with things as they really are. When we deny reality, we are asking for trouble... (Read more)

Practical Ways to Build Self-Esteem (1)
We are not born with high self-esteem. Or low self-esteem for that matter. Self esteem in either form is bestowed upon us by our primary caregivers, usually our parents. It is modified over time by our peer group, and significant others... (Read more)

Practical Ways to Build Self Esteem (2)
Lani is 28 and hasn't had a serious relationship for over four years. She believes that she is dull and unattractive, and this is confirmed in her mind by the fact that men show little interest in her. A couple of "arranged" dates set up by friends failed miserably... (Read more)

Practical Ways to Build Self-Esteem (3)
In our last article on Self-Esteem, we looked at the cases of Lani and Kane. Lani was attractive but believed she wasn't. Kane was a success in anyone's book: except his own. Let's find out why both Lani and Kane have such a warped sense of their own self-worth... (Read more)

Using Food to Change Mood
Prefer a natural alternative to changing your state of mind? While major chronic mood disorders require counseling and intermittent drug treatment, often we can make small but significant changes to our diet and lifestyle to assist us to get out of a bad frame of mind... (Read more)

Are You Running the Show or is the Show Running You? (1)
There are all sorts of formal definitions for what stress is, but one of the basic criteria that characterize stress is: do you feel in control of your life, or do you want the world to just stop while you catch your breath? (Read more)

Are You Running the Show or is the Show Running You? (2)
In Are You Running the Show or is the Show Running You? we looked how having an external locus of control, i.e. feeling that you are at the mercy of people and events, can make for increased anxiety and depression levels... (Read more)

Music Therapy
Music as a form of therapy is a powerful aid to stress release and is useful for a number of conditions including anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, even autistic spectrum disorders... (Read more)

Are You Lonesome Tonight?
The relationship between loneliness and mental health is a well established one. In fact, the relationship between loneliness and health issues of many persuasions has been well documented by numerous researchers... (Read more)

Sing Your Way to Calm
Anyone who has suffered from debilitating anxiety will know that correct breathing is one of the principal weapons against anxiety and panic attacks. There are countless references to the importance of breathing correctly in many schools of relaxation therapy, including yoga... (Read more)

Stress and Digestion
Stress affects most organs of the body and the stomach is no exception. Stress can cause those familiar knots in the stomach, some types of ulcers, constipation, diarrhea, poor absorption of nutrients leading to further ill health, and oversecretion of stomach acids... (Read more)

Five-finger relaxation technique
Interested in a fast, yet effective way to relax? Like all methods of relaxation, this exercise is simple. But, of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will, by definition, be easy for you to relax immediately... (Read more)

Is noise driving you mad?
Have you ever noticed that when a person gets momentarily lost while driving in the car, the first thing they do is to turn off the radio or CD player? (Read more)

Anxiety and sleeping problems
If you're an anxious person, chances are you also experience sleeping problems from time to time. Depending on individual anxiety levels and environmental stressors in your life, the natural sleep process can be easily disturbed by stressful events which, in turn, lead to further stress and fatigue... (Read more)

Do you indulge in "Stinkin' Thinking"?
Stinkin' Thinkin', otherwise known as thinking negative thoughts, is a common but unhelpful pastime. Imagine all the extra energy and creativity we could muster if we weren't bogged down by thoughts of doom and gloom. Let's have a look at some of the most common forms of "Stinkin' Thinking... (Read more)

Stop talking dirty to yourself!
In "Do you indulge in Stinkin' Thinking", we looked at all the ways we tie ourselves up in knots by the way we think. Today we look at how to go about untying those knots, so that we can let go of self-limiting thoughts and behaviors and get on with our lives... (Read more)

Dealing with negative people
Do you know someone who never has a good thing to say about anything or anybody? Nothing ever seems right for these people; the weather is either too hot or too cold, or they complain that others are never doing the right thing. Over time these people can really bring you down... (Read more)

Dealing with your own negativity
In "Dealing with negative people", we looked at strategies for coping with negative friends, family and co-workers. Negative people can really sap your happiness levels and over time really bring you down... (Read more)

The Power of Friendship
In the recent blogs, Who is your best friend? and Be your own best friend, we looked at the importance of befriending yourself and genuinely liking what you see when you look in the mirror.... (Read more)

Smash those irrational beliefs (1)
Many of us lead limited lives, never reaching our full potential because of irrational beliefs. Somewhere during the course of our early life, we have picked up these beliefs and made them our own. But we can change the way we think about ourselves... (Read more)

Smash those irrational beliefs (2)
Today we continue on from "Smash those irrational beliefs (1)" and look at more limiting ways in which the things we think about ourselves and the world around us work to our disadvantage. In the last blog, we looked at a host of irrational beliefs and the truths that lie behind them... (Read more)

Do you suffer from Mondayitis?
Do those Monday morning blues descend with monotonous regularity at the start of every week? Are you blaming your job, or the fact that everyone goes back to work and school and a week of household drudgery awaits? Well, maybe the famous Mondayitis is not all psychological in origin... (Read more)

Lift your spirits with a "Happy Box"
Sometimes the world does not seem such a wonderful place; the skies are gloomy and so are you. Your problems seem overwhelming at present and you are enveloped in a cloak of doom and unhappiness... (Read more)

Have you got your priorities right?
Perhaps you've heard the story of the professor and his philosophy students before, but it's a good metaphor for discerning what is important and what is unimportant in our lives. Let's have another look at this story that's traveled the world a thousand times over, yet its message still rings true... (Read more)

Reclaiming your place in the world (1)
Compared to our parents and grandparents, most of us live in an overwhelmingly synthetic environment and our bodies struggle to maintain our connectedness with the natural world around us... (Read more)

Reclaiming your place in the world (2)
In "Reclaiming your place in the world (1)", we looked at the subtle but significant effect that our day-to-day environment has on our mental well being. We saw how troubled children with diagnosed behavioral disorders responded to small but significant changes in their environment... (Read more)

Do you have problems? Join the club!
Everyone has problems, although when we are going through a dreadful time it is very easy to look at others and wonder why their lives are so good compared to ours. They may seem to roll through life smoothly, while we stumble and lurch from one disaster to another... (Read more)

Could YOU have a breakdown?
There isn't a person alive who is so strong, both physically and emotionally, that they are impervious to having a breakdown. Mental collapse can happen to anyone. Yet not everyone will experience clinical anxiety, depression, and other emotional disorders during the course of their lifetime... (Read more)

Inoculating yourself against a breakdown
Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow take steps to prevent ourselves having a breakdown? As we read in "Could YOU have a breakdown?" emotional collapse can happen to anyone given the right circumstances... (Read more)

Is your past affecting your present?
Did you choose your life partner because he or she was physically attractive to you and has qualities that you find important? You may believe that you chose your partner based on the thoughts and feelings you had about them at the time you met them. But other, deeper forces may have been at work... (Read more)

Are you pulling the plug on life?
Do you find yourself unhappy and frustrated for much of your day? Have you lost that sense of joy in your life? When was the last time you were truly happy? Here is a simply, yet effective way to increase your happiness quotient, and recapture the essence of your own powerful life-force... (Read more)

Friends and Mental Health (1)
It goes without saying that having good, stable friendships is important to your mental health. So how do you know which of your friends are contributing to your health and which are subtly, or not so subtly, undermining it? Most times we know instinctively which people are "good" for us... (Read more)

Friends and Mental Health (2)
Last blog we looked at the importance of having positive people in our lives and the detrimental effect that negativity from others can have on our mental health... (Read more)

Still holding onto that grudge?
It's only human to feel resentful when somebody hurts us, particularly when they hurt us emotionally. Personal attacks bruise our self esteem, shatter our confidence, and cause profound disturbances which may leave deep wounds in our hearts... (Read more)

The Old Wives Were Right: Tea Is Good For Stress
Remember in those old movies where the hero or heroine would undergo a trauma or suffer a terrible shock and some motherly type would step in with the classic line: "How about I go put the kettle on?" The next scene would demonstrate the apparent miraculous qualities of tea to perk up our hero or heroine (it was usually a woman) and step back into the fray again... (Read more)

The Stress of Constant Noise
Never underestimate the effect of unwanted sound on your stress levels. Although many of us live in cities and are used to a certain level of noise, when that noise reaches a certain threshold, the symptoms of stress will begin to manifest... (Read more)

The Power of Laughter
They say that laughter is the best medicine and they're not wrong. Not only is laughing fun to do but it has long-term health benefits, especially for mental health. And it also contributes to you leading a longer (and happier!) life... (Read more)

Stress: Always Look for the Bigger Picture
It's a strange fact, yet I encounter it over and over again. The people who have relatively minor worries in their lives often stress more than those who have genuine life-threatening or life-destroying illnesses. Now this doesn't seem to make sense... (Read more)

Dogs, Unconditional Love and Mental Health
I read in the recent weekend paper where our local animal shelter had registered an alarming increase in the number of dogs and other pets being handed in because the owners could no longer keep them. Skyrocketing pressures on the family budget appear to have claimed yet another victim: The family pet... (Read more)

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