Achieve Relaxation and Combat Stress Through Self Help

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It would not be possible, or desirable, to eliminate all the effects of stress in our lives. The aim of stress management should be to harness and control the effects of stress to help to enrich our physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Positive stress management involves recognizing the existence and type of stress and then taking remedial action. By getting to the root causes of your stress, you can not only relieve current problems and symptoms, but you can also prevent recurrences.

Remedial action falls into three main categories:

Change your thinking

Reframing

Refraining is one of the most powerful and creative stress reducers. It is a technique used to change the way you look at things in order to feel better about them. We all do this inadvertently at times. The key to refraining is to recognize that there are many ways to interpret the same situation.

It is like the age-old question: Is the glass half empty or half full?

The answer of course is that it is both or either, depending on your point of view. However, if you see the glass as half full, it will feel different than seeing it as half empty because the way we feel almost always results from the way we think.

The message of refraining is this: there are many ways of seeing the same thing-so you might as well pick the one you like. Refraining does not change the external reality, but simply helps you to view things differently-and less stressfully.

Positive thinking

When faced with stressful situations try to avoid becoming preoccupied with debilitating negative thoughts of powerlessness, dejection, failure and despair. Chronic stress can leave us vulnerable to negative suggestion, so try to focus on positives: