Implementing Stress Management Psychology

Stress, or rather our inability to cope with stress becomes a problem for all of us at one time or another. Stress management psychology provides us with a way of looking at the stress and changing our reaction to it. How we look at a situation or a person determines how our body and mind reacts to stress.

While stress is caused by a mental and emotional response to a situation or change, stress often produces physical symptoms such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating and coolness in the hands and feet. Psychological stress management techniques help us gain control of the situation and ourselves.

Meditation

Taking a few minutes to step away from the world and meditate is a tried and true psychological method of stress management. Meditation has enormous health benefits in addition to stress relief. However, not every situation provides us with an opportunity to meditate. We should not, for instance, meditate when we are driving.

Take Command

One psychological method of stress management that has been highly effective in driving situations and situations that require our attentiveness is to take command. First take command of your breath. Become aware of your breath, and then begin slowing down your breath, deepening your breath.

Second, take command of your muscles. Notice the tension in your body. Let go of muscle tension, one muscle at a time. And finally take command of your mind. Notice your internal self-talk. Change self-defeating negative self-talk to a positive, affirming dialogue. By changing your thinking, you can more actively manage your psychological stress.

Be Prepared But Give Up The Need To Control

Perhaps one of the hardest psychological changes to make for stress management is to trade being in control for being prepared. If we are honest, there is very little that we actually control, or can ever hope to control. Yet many people equate not being in control with free falling.

Being prepared is a way of saying to ourselves, I don't have control over what will happen but I'm ready for it. Being prepared is reclaiming your personal power.

Our ability to cope with stress is dependent on our psychological response to stress. Each of us will find different ways of coping. We can adapt the psychological techniques that we've learned here with other methods of stress relief, such as diet and exercise and the use of stress management products, such as biofeedback, relaxation CDs, herbs and vitamins. Or we can let stress rule us and rule our health.