Share Your Thoughts & Ideas About Managing Stress

@Machka9 Just read your story and wow! My thoughts go out to you and your Hubs.

During my last doctor’s visit, I told my doctor that I was finally ready to do something about the excess weight and was considering joining another weight loss program. She recommended this app in conjunction with the other program. I did the other program for a few days, didn’t like how it tracked so I cancelled my membership. I have continued to use this app for a little more than 2 weeks and as of yesterday, have lost 9 lbs.

I work about a mile away from home and currently it takes me about 5 minutes to drive to work. I can’t wait for the warmer weather so I can walk or ride my bike.

I was diagnosed with tendonitis in the shoulders and arms. Once I’m feeling better and no longer have pain shooting down my arm, my goal is to get back into kickboxing. It’s a great way to relief stress and get a full body workout. As I’ve said in the past, it’s better I punch a bag than punch a person.

bellacelina2 wrote: »

I listen to heavy metal, deathcore especially, I dont know why, but listening to heavy metal just helps take the stress away. I recommend it

ninerbuff wrote: »

Machka9 wrote: »

One thing I wanted to find, during some of the busiest most stressful times over the past few years, was 5 minute stress relievers.

As mentioned above, when I could I would try to do some strenuous exercise because that burned off some of the frustration and got the endorphins going

Or I would try to do little things that needed to be done, over which I had some control, because that helped me feel slightly more in control of the situation.

I searched for other de-stressing ideas and unfortunately, so much of what I read about de-stressing and trying to relax was about adding extra things to your day. Taking a yoga class, going for a 1-hour massage, travel, etc. Those things are great if your stressful situation isn't very time consuming. But when your stressful situation takes up most of your day and when you cannot get away from it, the last thing you want to do is to add more!

So I began collecting stress relief ideas. I've got many I've collected listed in a blog on my website, but I don't think I can share that here.

Where I'm going with this is an answer to the original post: we want to know what resonates with our community!

What about brief stress relievers or stress relievers that can be easily incorporated into a busy day? For example, I found that getting up from my desk at 11 am and climbing several flights of stairs helped. Climbing the back stairs of a tall office building is incredibly boring but gave me time to think and sort things out.

What about stress relievers that may help, in some way, solve the problem? For example, when my husband came home from the hospital, I started ordering groceries online and having them delivered. I've done that for almost 3 years now and it is fantastic. I've also had someone to do our lawns from time to time and have had a house cleaner come in.


Just a few of my thoughts.

If you want intensity and it winds you out quite quickly, then if you can get your hands on a boxing bag and some gloves and wail away some frustration or anger, at the same time improving your fitness. I've had many a client just want to box with me for 30 minutes because they've told me how much it destresses them and they aren't hurting anyone in the process.

I've been thinking about it a bit more and I think, in general, I find that calming options do not help me destress. If anything they make me feel more stressed because I keep thinking about all the other things I should be doing or could be doing.

Whereas, listening to loud music (for me it was often Mars, the Bringer of War from The Planets by Holst), running or cycling hard ... or if I had the option of a boxing bag and gloves ... actually release the stress. I don't think so much about all the other things going on in my life because I'm in the moment and if there is exercise involved, I feel like I've accomplished something. If nothing else, I've burned some calories!

Alex wrote: »

We Want to Hear From You!
How do you handle stress? What can we do to help?

April is Stress Awareness Month. At MyFitnessPal we’re using this occasion to talk about how stress affects the body, and even changes how you eat. Personally I have done a lot less cooking and eaten a lot more takeout this past year.

Our goal throughout April is to help you manage stress through nutrition & movement. We’re thinking things like yoga routines, audio meditations, calming recipes, stress-relief plans, and tips on reducing anxiety through nutrition.

But what do you think? People experience stress and find relief in different ways—we want to know what resonates with our community!

Reply in the thread below and tell us:

• How do you manage the stress in your life?
• What would you like to learn more about for managing stress?
• What other resources would you like to see?

Thanks in advance for your input!

stress is not an individual problem it's a political and a social societal problem stress is caused through external structures, especially those which put un attainable expectations on persons and others that perpetuate oppression like racism. Capitalism is also a huge reason for stress.

To reduce stress we need societal changes, not more walks or bubble baths, or other things that privileged people only can afford...

Reading things doesn't necessarily trigger *realizing* them, but realizing certain things (in my gut) helped me reduce and manage stress. There are quotes or short statements that help me hang onto those realizations:

"People are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them." - Epictetus

When something undesired happens, consider what I have done to create, promote or allow that situation. (Not for self-blame, but as a way to identify the factors I control or influence, so may be able to use as levers for change.)

I don't think this helps anyone else, though, because it's the "realizing in the gut" that matters.

For me, some important realizations arrived when I was going through chemotherapy for breast cancer. It's an unpredictable process. I was worrying and planning and obsessing in advance . . . usually, as it turned out, about things that never happened. I'd gone through that unpleasant anxiety for nothing; it just made my possibly-short life less pleasant. On the flip side, other things happened that I'd never anticipated, and I dealt with them reasonably well. The anxiety/obsession part came to seem optional. Rational planning and preparation can be helpful; once that's done, I need to let it go, skip the anxiety/obsession/worry on the emotional front. That's a stress reduction.

These days, once I've made reasonable preparations and plans (for anything), I'm working to have the minimum number of preferences and expectations. That helps me enjoy pretty-good things that happen, when once I would've been comparing them negatively to my preferred or expected ideal, such that the present moment would be less satisfying by comparison. Being open to enjoy what comes (if possible) leads to more moments of enjoyment.

Realizations are pretty squishy, but they're important to me because of the idea inherent in that Epictetus quote, for me: I pretty much 100% control my own thoughts, attitudes, and reactions. Perfectly? No. But increasing that self-management is a practice.

I'm sure you've heard of mindfulness and "being fully present" as a way to relieve stress.

But why do we need to be fully present in each moment?

This is an honest question.

Why can't we let our imaginations take us away?

Your thoughts?

This article is interesting ...
How to Live in the Present Moment: 35 Exercises and Tools (+ Quotes)
https://positivepsychology.com/present-moment/

In it, it says, "When we are aware and present, we don’t need to worry about getting caught up in thoughts of our past or anxiety about our future" (which is what you said as well, @AnnPT77 ).

Evidently mindfulness and living in the present moment are ways to stop dwelling on the past and to stop worrying about the future.

For me ... the past is what it is. Good or bad, it is how I got here. There is no sense dwelling on it in a negative way because, after all, there is nothing I can do to change the past. I can only change what's happening now. However, like to remember good, interesting, challenging, adventurous moments of the past now and then.

For me ... I don't like to think about the future very often because we don't know what will happen in the future, and there's no point worrying about it. I do have occasional worries, and when I do, I try to change something now that might improve the situation in the future. For example, I was worried about my job situation as I get older ... so I got my Master's degree which may improve my odds in the job situation as I get older. I am also trying to get more skills. I worry a bit about my husband, but I have been developing some plans around that.

But often I would rather not focus on the present either.


I'm a long distance cyclist ... who hasn't been able to ride long distances in recent years because of my husband's situation.

One of the things that got me through my long, long bicycle rides is a tactic which I think I would like to start employing again more often. One of the reasons I miss my long, long bicycles rides is because I miss doing this.

For me, a long, long bicycle ride has a mental flow something like this:

1. Focus on getting settled and comfortable on the bicycle.
2. Mind dump - this is where I randomly think about whatever. I just let my brain go wherever it wants to go. That takes up the first hour or two on the bicycle, depending on how much I have on my mind.
3. Organise - during the mind dump process it will become evident that there are a few things that are priorities. So I'll kind of organise my thoughts into a few priority areas such as a university project (or two), work, project at home, etc..
4. Problem solve - I will think about each of the priority areas in turn and try to solve whatever is bothering me about each. It might just be a matter of breaking down the project into manageable steps and deciding what I need to get to complete it. It might be selecting a topic for a paper and deciding on a theme/focus. Or maybe figuring out how a procedure should work at work.
5. By this point, I'm usually somewhere around 3-6 hours into a ride depending on how long I take to Problem Solve. Unfortunately, most of my longer rides these days end at about 3 hours, so I don't really get into the Problem Solve step very well. I barely finish the Mind dump and start to organise things and the ride is over. However, if my ride is still going, at this point I take a deep breath and relax. I've got a plan for each of the significant problems I have identified.
6. Then I move into "story telling". This is where my imagination kicks in. I might see an old abandoned house tucked into a grove of trees and form a story around that house and area. I might design and decorate a "dream house" from top to bottom. There are all sorts of directions I could go. I might see a funny sign and I'm off with a little story about it. These stories can take me several more hours but I usually feel really mentally relaxed when I've created a few stories.
7. And I'll intersperse the stories with math (if my ride is 200 km and I'm at 140 km, I am 7/10ths of the way through the ride), prayer for family and friends and situations, and periods where I just look at the scenery.
8. Toward the end of the ride, the focus returns to being settled and comfortable on the bicycle. I'm usually starting to feel restless ("are we there yet?") ... and what I'm going to do when it does (hot shower, food).


I'm starting to think that my long rides were very beneficial to my mental well-being ... and I'm wondering how I might recapture that.

However, for me, I find that meditation, mindfulness exercises, etc. take me from Step 1 above right to the end of Step 7 without going through all the steps in between ... and that is just entirely disconcerting and very stressful and upsetting. I survived one rather long guided meditation/mindfulness exercise a few months ago by heading into Step 6 and creating my own story around it all. That wasn't too bad - at least my story amused me.

Generally, I try not to get into those situations. But I might need to see about trying to increase my cycling distance.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

@Machka9, it sounds like you already have a lot of self-insight about what helps you. Good show!

(Tongue in cheek, I might say that you wouldn't have discovered that that's what you do during a bike ride, had you not been present in the moment on some long bike rides, to notice yourself going through that sequence, and realizing that it was helpful to you. 😉)

Thanks!

In cycling circles, a common question comes up with regard to long distance rides: "What on earth do you think about in all those hours out there ... don't you get bored?"

So I began to think about what I thought about in all those hours out there ... and why I didn't get bored. And I realised there was a pattern.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Like you, I don't generally struggle with negative, stressful thought patterns. Still, there are times when "be in the present" mindfulness can help me, for example by bringing my attention to small, immediate pleasures, like how nice a food tastes, or birdsong sounds; or how good a deep slow breath of fresh air feels . . . when I might otherwise be distracted by non-present trivia that's less rewarding.

I think I do this when I've got my good camera in hand and I'm crawling around the yard trying to get a photo of a water drop or lying on my back on the sidewalk on a cloudy day under the rose bush to get this ...