Everyone suffers from stress at some point and it is a natural and necessary part of our lives. However at times it can become overwhelming and have a negative impact on our health. Try some of the tips below, not all of them will work or appeal to you choose those you can maintain a consistent habit with, consistency is more important than variety with many of the recommendations below.
- Being in nature and sunlight has been correlated to lowering the ageing process and reducing your stress response. Having enough sunlight before 12pm is crucial to help your circadian rhythms, you can emulate sunlight with a sun lamp.
- Recording your thoughts in a diary or journal can help you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings, track your habits so they are more reinforceable and detail out positive messages including what you are grateful for. One study showed that although you can do this daily, if you are in a very difficult situation it is more useful to this less regularly. There are digital or hard copy diaries that can facilitate this, options are in the resources.
- Meditation - mindfulness meditation has shown in experiments to reduce your negative thoughts not only when you meditate but the benefits occur even when you are not meditating. If you struggle to mediate you can do other things that have a similar effect such as mindful walks or adult colouring books.
- Exercise can prevent depression and stress and also alleviates the symptoms if you are suffering, our being active topic can you give you tips.
- Cold water swimming/showers have shown to have an anti depressant effect, increase immune response and decrease blood pressure. However this should only be considered for those fit and healthy and if trying for the first time, it should be treated with caution.
- Quality Sleep, a lack of sleep can be caused by depression and stress but also contributes to depression and stress.
- Cutting down on alcohol - drinking too much can create depression this is particular true if someone is alcohol dependent. View ways to cut down on alcohol.
- Calorie restrictive diet - it is believed this is a low-level stressor which gives us the benefits of stress without the negatives. View how your diet can impact your physical and mental health.
- Perception of your stress - if you perceive that the stress you experience is harmful, studies have shown that it will affect you more.
- Savouring experiences more has been shown to help people be less likely to suffer from depression and increase the happiness you feel in an event. Doing this with others has also been shown to increase your ability to enjoy the event as well.
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