How to deal with stress and anxiety?What is the difference between stress and anxiety?

Stress is a feeling of physical and emotional tension. It is your body’s reaction to demand or a challenge. If it comes in short bursts it can be proactive, however if it stays longer than necessary it can take a toll on your body physical (literally your blood pressure will go up leading to more complications) and mentally.

To deal with stress my suggestion is to focus on the broad. Look at the bigger picture, take a wider perspective. For example, if you have an upcoming quiz that you are stressing about. Yes, you should do your best to study. However, if you stress about things you cant change in the past it won’t change anything. So, instead of stressing take a moment to broaden your perspective. For example, think about how this is only a single quiz. This quiz is only a single part that will count towards your grade. And your grade is only a single piece of your transcript. And your transcript is only that. It doesn’t define you because you have a whole life outside of it. You have family and friends and things you like to do and maybe a job. So, to destress take a moment to widen your perspective and do what you can to have a better potential outcome.

Anxiety is a normal and often healthy emotion, in appropriate levels. When you have it you feel anxious and your body is in high alert. However, like stress it can be debilitating when a person feels is in disproportional amounts.

If you have a short burst of anxiety focus on a task you can do right now. And taking a look at the broader picture might help, but if the broad picture overwhelms you focus on ONE TASK. Just one, you can do now. For example if you have anxiety about that upcoming quiz, and it gives you more anxiety thinking about how you’ll get into grad school. Focus on the quiz. Focus on one thing. For the quiz it will probably be studying, but what if that gives you even more anxiety. Then focus on something so specific if feels like basic work. For example, this may be making flashcards or starting by reading just the subsection of the first chapter. Slowly by completing this one task you will feel accomplished and know that you are capable of doing more. By the time you are done with these incremental tasks you will have studied for the upcoming quiz and hopefully your anxiety would have subsided.

For both stress and anxiety a good technique is to breath. When you feel them, take a deep breath and exhale slowly five times (or even more!). It could also help to take a walk for a couple minutes before returning (or not) to the work that brought on these feelings.

This advice that I am sharing with you are techniques that personally helped me. I am not a licensed therapist or psychologist. I am a friend sharing my story.

With Love💙,

Eyes 🧿

Originally published at http://loveeyesjewelery.wordpress.com on December 11, 2020.