How To Deal With Stressful Situations?

There are moments in life that make a big impact. However, each person reacts differently to adversity. As we all need to deal with stressful situations at some point, we want to offer advice on the matter.

A long this article, we will talk about how to deal with a stressful situation . In addition, we’ll share some strategies to help you tackle them.

Stressful situations: what defines them?

Stress can be defined as “tension caused by intense situations that give rise to psychosomatic reactions or psychological disorders”. 

Thus,  a stressful situation has to do with what stuns us and that, in addition, can cause us discomfort, whether physical, psychological or social. However, whether your health will be affected or not will depend on several factors.

The causes of stress can be diverse. Following are some of them:

• Work overload and dissatisfaction.
• Facing an illness.
• Problems with your partner, your family or your co-workers.
• Evidences.
• Changes.
• Not knowing how to say no.
• Not having free time.
• The death of a loved one.
• Lack of time to devote to leisure.
• Backlog of tasks.
• Traffic jams.

While it may seem that all causes are mental,  there are some physical causes. For example: overexertion, poor posture, lack of sleep, hunger, unusual weight variations, frequent headaches, atopic dermatitis, among others.

Strategies for dealing with stressful situations

There are different ways to handle stressful situations. By learning to deal with them, we increase our well-being and, as a result, we improve our quality of life. However, these strategies require dedication. Let’s look at some of them.

Communication to deal with stressful situations

We communicate constantly. However, the question is: do we do this assertively? This type of communication requires us to be aware of the message we want to convey and to manage our emotions and thoughts so that our message reaches the other person as effectively as possible.

On the other hand, when we talk about communication, we are not referring only to what we communicate through written or spoken language, but also to what we project through body language. Therefore, assertive communication implies that we must consider all these areas.

Why can communication help us to take on a stressful situation? Because, by properly conveying the message, any tension that might be generated by not expressing what we think is avoided. In addition, it is also a good way to ask for help, adding strength to face a given challenge.

Emotional Management

Emotional management is essential when it comes to dealing with stressful situations. At first it can be complex, but when we learn how to express our emotions and when is the right time to do it, everything gets easier.

Imagine that you are feeling very stressed and irritable at work and that you would like to let everyone know how you are feeling. The most correct thing in this situation would be not to do it, so that it doesn’t get out of your control. However, you can find another time to express what you feel. For example, through meditation.

Resilience after a stressful situation

We are all capable of developing resilience. It’s about overcoming problems and moving forward when adversity is against us.

Furthermore, resilience has to do with the support a person has, both human and material, as well as the attitude or experience of prioritizing activities.

organize time

We can feel overwhelmed when we think we don’t have enough time to do everything we want. It’s worth stopping to think about what our priorities are and, accordingly, establish a schedule of activities.

The idea is that, in fact, we will follow this schedule. For this, it is essential not to set goals too high and to be disciplined. This will help us not to self-sabotage.

follow a routine

Routine makes the daily cognitive wear decrease. We make a decision and apply the result, and that means we don’t have to go through the same decision-making process over and over again. This makes it easier to devote resources to other decisions to turn them into less threatening and stressful situations.

Routine gives us security, because we are clear about what we are going to do. In addition, it helps us organize our time and, if we have healthy habits, this will favor our well-being.

let it flow

That means not getting stuck in a situation. There are problems we can solve and others we can’t. In many cases, the difficult thing is to distinguish one from the other.

Letting it flow also means not swimming upstream. We need to learn to adapt and accept what we cannot change. Being rigid, in many cases, only increases the strain we have to bear, until we reach a point where we break.

live in the present moment

When we are thinking about what would have happened if we had said or done something different, we are giving a lot of importance to the past. As a result, in many cases we end up doing ourselves wrong because we harbor emotions such as shame, sadness, or guilt.

While emotions can have their value, they are not always easy to classify as good or bad . On the other hand, their effect on us and the way we condition our moods depends, in large part, on how we manage them. One of the worst ways to manage them is to chew your thoughts like chewing gum.

Something similar happens when we focus on the future all the time. By doing this, we feed anxiety, which can cause us great discomfort. Thinking about the future is not a bad thing, what is harmful is anchoring ourselves to that place.

mindfulness

To cultivate the present moment, we can use mindfulness techniques that prompt us to develop mindfulness. In fact, there is research that supports the value of practicing them.

Shapiro, Carlson, Astin and Freedman, in their article published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology , show us the effectiveness of mindfulness in treating both physical and psychological symptoms.

However, we should keep in mind that as we can’t always handle everything, asking for help is not a bad idea. Specialized professionals such as psychologists can help us through these difficult times.

There are thousands of stressful situations, and they cause more or less discomfort, depending on different variables. A key thing is to consider some strategies to prevent us from harming ourselves. It is necessary to understand that negative emotions are part of the journey and that it is not bad to feel them, but contain them or ignore them.