How To Deal With Stressful Situations

There are times and situations in one’s life that have a great impact on us. But all people react differently when faced with adversity. As we all go through stressful situations, we think we will provide some good advice for dealing with stressful situations.

Throughout this article, we will talk about how to deal with stressful situations and we will share some strategies that can help you overcome them.

What are stressful situations?

Stress can be defined as “the tension caused by overwhelming situations that lead to psychosomatic reactions or psychological disorders. ”

A stressful situation is an overwhelming situation, whether it is physical, psychological or social. But whether your health will be affected or not will depend on several different factors.

The causes of stress are different. Here are some of them:

• Congestion and lack of job satisfaction.
• Disease.
• Problems with your partner, family, friends or co-workers.
• An exam.
• A transfer.
• Inability to say no.
• Lack of free time.
• A death. 
• Too many domestic duties.
• Traffic jams.

There are also several physical causes of stress such as overexertion, poor posture, lack of sleep, hunger, unusual weight gain / weight loss, frequent headaches, skin problems, etc.

Strategies for dealing with stressful situations

There are different ways to deal with stressful situations. When you learn how to deal with them, you will increase your well-being and thus improve your quality of life. But these strategies require dedication. Let’s take a closer look at some of them:

Communication

We all communicate constantly. But you have to ask yourself whether you are doing it in a confident way. This type of communication requires that you are aware of what kind of message you are trying to convey. You need to deal with your thoughts and feelings so that your message reaches the other person in the most effective way.

But when we talk about communication, we are not only talking about what you are trying to communicate through the written and spoken language, but also about what you are projecting through your body language. When you are confident when communicating, it means that you have to take all of these areas into account.

So how can communication help us deal with stressful situations? When you manage to get your message across, you will avoid any kind of tension that you might have felt if you had not been able to express yourself clearly.

Furthermore, it is also a good way to ask for help. This will therefore give you increased strength so that you can overcome life’s challenges.

Emotional handling

Emotional coping is important when dealing with stressful situations. It can be complex to begin with, but once you get used to the right times and occasions where you can express your feelings, it will be much easier for you.

Imagine that you feel really stressed and angry at work. You would love to tell everyone exactly how you are feeling. But you would probably lose control and make the whole situation worse. The good news is that you can find other ways or times to drain your emotions. It can be through meditation, for example.

Resistance to stressful situations

We are all capable of developing resilience. It’s about overcoming problems and making progress when all odds are against one. Resilience is also about how much support a person has – material support and support from other people.

Your expertise in attitude and priorities also comes into play here. While your options may not be ideal, learn to use them so you can make the best decisions.

Organize your time

You may feel stressed and overwhelmed knowing that you do not have enough time to do everything you want to achieve. It is worth stopping and thinking about what your priorities are. Once you establish them, you will be able to make a schedule of activities.

The idea is that you follow this schedule. To do this, it is important that you do not set high, unattainable goals and that you are disciplined. Thereby you will not shoot yourself in the foot.

Follow a routine to deal with stressful situations

Routine helps to reduce the daily cognitive effort. You make a decision and apply the results and this means that you do not have to go through the same decision making process every time.

This makes it easier for you to dedicate your resources to making other decisions and thereby you will reduce the amount of stress in your life.

Routine gives you peace of mind because you are more aware of what you are doing. In addition, it also helps you organize your time, and these healthy habits will have a direct impact on your well-being.

let it go

This means that you do not have to lock yourself in a certain situation. You will be able to solve some problems while others cannot be solved. But in many cases, it is most difficult to distinguish one from the other problem.

Letting go also means not going against the flow. You need to learn to adapt and accept the things you cannot change.

Avoid stressful situations by living in the present

When you think about what would have happened if you had said or done something else, you put too much emphasis on the past. By doing so, you will often end up being hurt and you will nurture the negative emotions such as shame, sadness or guilt. 

While emotions can be valuable, they are not always easy to classify as good or bad. Their effect on us depends a lot on how we handle them.

Something similar happens when you are constantly focusing on the future. By doing this you are simply nurturing your anxiety and this can make you feel bad. It’s not bad to think about the future, but problems start when you lock yourself in.

Mindfulness to deal with stressful situations

To get the most out of these situations, you need to consider some mindfulness techniques that will allow you to develop your attention. There is actually research that supports these techniques.

Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, and Freedman published an article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology that shows us the effectiveness of mindfulness in treating both physical and psychological problems.

But you have to keep in mind that you will never be able to handle everything that life exposes you to. Asking for help is never a bad idea. Experts such as psychologists can support you in these difficult times.

There are thousands of stressful situations and they will affect you in different ways depending on different reasons. An important thing will be to consider strategies so that you can avoid getting hurt. You need to understand that negative emotions are part of the journey. It’s not bad to label them, but it’s bad to keep them or to avoid handling them.