Our Voice

Source: Monstera Pexel

In our fast-growing world, stress has become one of the most common causes of depression and anxiety. While everybody tends to pass stress off as a problematic issue, we should know that stress is a very normal vital part of life for any individual as it helps to show that we are mentally healthy.

As taste differs for everyone, so does the cause of stress for each person differs. For instance, individual A could get stressed all day because of an argument with a friend, while individual B would shrug it off as just an argument.

What is Stress?

According to the oxford dictionary, stress is the pressure or worry caused by the problems in a person’s life. Stress is also a way of your body protesting against situations or conditions that it detects as threatening or harmful to it.

Stress is also defined as any change in your body that causes physical, emotional, or psychological strain.

There are four major kinds of stress, namely;

1. Physical stress: These include stress caused by trauma, intense physical labor, environmental pollution, fatigue, illness, dehydration, dental challenges, etc.

2. Psychological stress: These include stress caused by fear, frustration, grief/bereavement, shame, jealousy, anxiety, panic attacks, self-criticism, self-loathing, and information overload.

3. Psychosocial stress: Stress caused by parenting, marital issues, divorce, unemployment, isolation/boredom, loss of investments, and lack of social support.

4. Psycho-spiritual stress: This is stress caused by the conflict of values or morals, loss of purpose, lack of sense of meaning, joyless striving, etc.

Eradicating stress from our daily lives is impossible, so people, over time, have come up with ways to cope with the presence of stress in their routines. Numerous methods have been found effective in coping with the pressures that come along with stress, and some of these methods are what we will be sharing with you in subsequent writing.

FIVE (5) WAYS TO COPE WITH PEER PRESSURE AND STRESS

There are many ways to cope with pressure or stress, but we will be focusing on five in this short text.

1. Eat well and Exercise regularly: Having good eating habits helps reduce stress in the long run. If you eat nutritional diets at the right time, you save yourself from falling ill so easily. Exercising, of course, is great for coping with stress. When you say the word exercise in a room full of people, they tend to think of the coordinated workout or intense physical training they see on televisions or even in gyms. That (coordinated and physical training) is also part of exercising, but it doesn’t always have to be like that. Just taking evening strolls to the park or the mall could pass for an exercise. Riding your bike during the weekends, practicing dance routines, engaging in sports, and every other little task that ensures your bones are in motion is also exercise. So do not strain yourself.
2. Sleep well: A well-rested mind is a mind that can function properly. Always ensure to make your sleep a priority. A person is meant to sleep for up to eight (8) hours to be fully productive.
3. Take a break: Take a break from work, break from school, and take a break from parenting!! Go on trips, visit fun places, see a movie, or go to a friend’s place or you could take the time to relax and take a rest.
4. Make time for your hobbies: Spending more time doing what you love to do also helps you cope with pressure. Take time out of your busy schedules to visit museums that you love so much or visit an art gallery, read a book, play video games, or whatever your hobbies are. It helps relieve you of the burden whatsoever that you may be carrying.
5. Talk about your problems: We are all familiar with the saying, “a problem shared is a problem half solved .”Well, it is true: many people have been known to go mad because of the inability to share their problems with anybody. Suppose you are wondering who you should entrust with information like the problems in your life. In that case, you could find a person whom you feel is trustworthy enough to know these things, or better still, you could always get professional help from a certified therapist closest to you.

As we all know, stress cannot be completely eradicated from our lives, but sticking to these five points as I have listed above would help you down tune the effect of stress (physical or mental) in your life in the long run.