Stress Management Skills, Series #1

We are living in a fast speeding society, which increases the competitiveness and pressure. Burn out, anxiety and feeling stressed are increasing and impairing the relationships and mental, social, and academic functioning. So I decided to write about stress.

• How do you manage stress? How do you cope with it?

• Do you feel overwhelmed?

• Do you feel like you cannot handle it anymore?

• Do you resort to eating as a means to cope? Does it work?

• Or maybe you stop eating because you lose your appetite?

• Do you try to give yourself a break by drinking alcohol? Does it make the problems disappear?

• Do you become irritable, short tempered, and even aggressive (verbally or physically)?

• Or you rather sleep off your stress and just want to be in bed?

• Do you stop your healthy routine such as exercise, good eating habit, and relaxation and just focus on the problem on hand?

If you say yes to one or more of the above listed coping strategies, you are not alone. Many people cope with stress by eating, drinking alcohol, or distracting themselves in other ways. The problem is that all these coping skills may help for a brief moment but in general they are maladaptive behaviors that usually, in long term, magnify and worsen the problem. Let’s start by looking at what stress is. Why do we have such negative perception about stress? Why are we running away from it? To read more on this subject follow Dr. Bita’s series on Stress Management. info@drbita.com