How to get fast stress relief....

Today's Post: Friday, 1-13-2012

There are three ways to get fast stress relief.

1. Escape soon.

2. Get Powerful help right away.

3. Use the quick ways to lower your body’s stress relief.

You tend to be stressed by events that threaten to harm you and that you haven’t enough resources to turn off.

1. The first method can work. In some situations, you can get out of the situation where you are threatened. When you turn off the threat by getting away from the situation where it exists, you can lower your stress level.

Here’s a common example. Successfully landing a job with nicer and saner or less stressed people and a stronger company for which you can do more can be a great way to escape a job with mean, incompetent, or abusive bosses or coworkers. They may still be just as hard to take. But once you are no longer there, your stress stops!

2. Get powerful help right away.

Often stress is caused by a problem money or expertise or knowledge will solve.

If you have a problem that costs more money to fix than you have, you may have a friend or relative who can give that to you or even lend it to you in a way that you’ll be able to pay back. This can be an enormous relief.

Or if you can get some money from a relative as a gift, get a loan from a friend, and pay for some of it with your credit card, that can also solve your problem and cut your stress too.

Sometimes you may be totally unable to solve a problem or escape a threat because you lack the knowledge or expertise to do so. If you can afford help and get a referral to someone who has what you lack, that also works!

This even works for countries! When the United States entered World War II, Winston Churchill put his feeling of stress relief very well. “I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

Both of these two methods work best the sooner you can use them because you are under stress for a shorter time and less likely to be harmed by the threat.

One study of people who lived unusually long lives found that, more than shorter lived people, those who lived long tended to have used one of these methods to escape or overcome a very large source of stress at least once.

3. Fast physical stress relief when needed:

But what about being under stress suddenly when something happens that is out of your control to prevent?

What happens when you have too many small stresses gang up on you all at once or for too long?

Often your body goes into flight or fight syndrome too much or stays in it too long and totally wears you out.

Then that makes the original problem worse and can make you sick or speed up your aging process.

Learning and doing Tai Chi or some forms of Yoga or meditation ahead of time and doing it every week can make this less likely.

So can doing regular exercise.

These things increase your ability to tolerate stress or prevent your body from over-reacting.

But, if you have too much of this stress reaction or can’t turn it off when you need to, what can you do to give yourself a stress break that works FAST?

a) How about one you already know how to do that takes -- and works -- in about 30 seconds?

Believe it or not, yawning and stretching while you do also drops your physical stress significantly.

It feels strange at first to do this on purpose instead of automatically when you need more oxygen or to wake up more when needed. But it’s easy enough to do, you don’t need a lot of practice.

What you do need to practice is noticing when you are a bit too stressed and getting in the habit of always using it when that happens.

b) Another method that’s almost as good and one that helps stop you from mentally obsessing about something that’s stressing you is to stop and do a set of a very vigorous exercise. Do 20 fast pushups or squats or jumping jacks. Run fast in place for 30 seconds. It works. And it works right away too.

It works for two reasons. You have to focus hard enough on doing it, you stop obsessing because you have to concentrate on your exercise to do it that vigorously. But you also get the extra oxygen and blood circulation from doing the exercise and when your body goes into recovery mode from the exercise slowing your heart rate and breathing, your body turns your physical stress response down too.

c) For those who aren’t in a situation where slowed reactions would be dangerous or where they can’t drink due to addiction problems, drinking one or possibly two alcoholic drinks right away can do this too. This works quickly and within a few minutes.

It works surprisingly well for temporary stress relief. That’s one reason for the popularity of drinking. And it’s one of the several reasons that moderate drinkers have better health than people who don’t drink.

But drinking more is unwise. It adds very little more stress relief, costs you more money, and makes dangerous and added problems more likely. Worse, you then wake up with a hangover and still have the original problem too!

d) Find a way to laugh. Truly, a merry heart is one of the world’s best medicines!

Like yawning or vigorous exercise, laughing is hard wired to turn down your physical stress. And it’s VERY effective.

You can laugh at how ridiculous your efforts to solve the problem have been.

You can laugh at how crazy our world is.

You can go hang out with friends who laugh and make you laugh.

Or you can watch a movie or a video or a TV show that makes you laugh.

Of these, hanging out with friends who laugh or watching comedy that makes you laugh tend to work best.

In a recent email, health writer Frank Mangano added these ideas:


e) Go outside. Sunshine even through dark overcast boosts your vitamin D levels and positive brain chemicals enough to brighten your mood. Recently they found out that compound you smell or breathe in from trees boosts your mood.

Weather can be intense enough to relieve stress like vigorous exercise since it commands your attention.’

And sometimes being outside shows you scenes of enough beauty to engage your emotions in a positive way. This too commands your attention long enough to turn down stress.

If the outside air is clean, taking deep breaths of it can enhance the effect.

Or if you walk briskly that lowers your stress from the exercise and from being outside too.

f) Have a Hobby and spend some time doing it.

You control doing it. You can be creative doing it and engage your ability to solve other problems. You enjoy doing it and are usually good at it.

Each of these things and feelings turn down your stress response.


g) Talk to someone

This can be someone who can help you with the problem. This can be someone who shows they care and support you when you talk about your problem. Or it can be someone interesting or fun to talk that simply distracts you from what’s stressing you. (It’s one of the reasons Facebook has become so popular.)

h) Take time to breathe deeply for a few minutes.

Like yawning this boosts your oxygen in your system. It takes your mind off what’s stressing you as you do it and boosts your circulation and lowers your stress as your body recovers from it just like vigorous exercise does.

i) Get a pet

If you are in a living situation where you can and you can support one and aren’t allergic, getting a pet you are good to can help lower stress enormously.

Being nice to your pet and having them respond can make you feel empowered even if you have felt powerless by what’s stressing you.

A pet can be glad to see you when no one else is. And a pet can show concern when they sense you are upset.

Simply put, pets are proven stress relievers.