DR. PARINAZ HUMRANWALA

STRESS MANAGEMENT

Stress is felt when you are unable to handle your tasks or responsibilities or when you tend to worry excessively over trivial matters.

Some stress is useful and normal. Stress can motivate you to work hard or react quickly. It can help you finish your job on time before the deadline. The stress to win the race can help you finish that last lap of the race faster than others.

TOO much of anything is bad including STRESS.

Recurrent and long lasting stress can have bad effects. It can lead to headaches, upset stomach, back pain, non-specific bodyache and sleeplessness. It can weaken your immune system, making one further prone to diseases. It can make you moody, gloomy, miserable, tensed, irritable, short-tempered, intolerant, sad or depressed. Relationships may start to suffer, and performance at workplace or school or college may get affected.

UNHEALTHY WAYS OF COPING WITH STRESS

When under stress, there are high chances that you may resort to unhealthy or wrong ways of dealing with it. These coping strategies may temporarily reduce stress, but they cause more harm in the long run. Identifying these and avoiding them in stressful situations can be a great motivator to deal with stress using healthy ways. Few unhealthy ways of coping with stress –

• Smoking and drinking too much
• Overeating or eating less than normal appetite
• Addicted to TV or computer or video games
• Withdrawing from friends, family, social activities
• Using pills or drugs to relax
• Sleeping more than the required hours of sleep
• Procrastinating tasks in order to avoiding facing them
• Filling up every minute of the day or doing nothing for the entire day so to avoid facing the problematic situation.
• Venting out your stress on others like lashing out, angry outbursts, and physical violence etc.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO DEAL WITH STRESS

Stress is a fact of life for most people. You may not be able to get rid of stress, but you can look for ways to lower it. You can learn new ways to manage stress. To get stress under control, you need to firstly find out what is causing the stress in your life. Try and look for ways to decrease the amount of stress. Try to check if you can change the situations that are leading to stress in your life. Once you identify the stress and its causative factors, learn new healthy ways to reduce it so that it is no more harmful to you and your family.

• Everyone feels and responds to stress differently. Keeping a stress journal may help you find out what stresses you and how you deal with it. Write down when something makes you feel stressed or bothers you. Then write how you reacted and what you did to deal with the stress. Keeping a stress journal can help you find out what is causing your stress and how much stress you feel. It can help you see whether the way you deal with it is healthy or unhealthy. Then you can take steps to reduce the stress or handle it better.
• More tasks can be done with less stress if you plan well. Try to learn better ways to manage your time. List down things in order of priority and finish the most important tasks first.
• Take good care of yourself by taking plenty of rest. Eat well, eat healthy and stick to a fixed eating schedule. Do not smoke and drink.
• When you find yourself worrying, try to stop the thoughts by finding better and more important things to do. Instead of brooding on the problem, work towards finding a solution for it. There will be certain things that you cannot change, do not stress yourself over them. Move on to other things. Learn to say "no" whenever necessary.
• Talk about your concerns and requirements to a friend or close acquaintance. It can help reduce stress and can reduce negative feelings. Assertive communication can help you express how you feel in a thoughtful, tactful way. Don’t let frustration over power you.
• Do not shy away from asking for help. Sometimes stress is just too much to handle alone. You may also want to see a counselor if needed. They can guide you to solutions.
• Talk, laugh, cry, and express yourself when you need to with someone trustworthy.
• Do relaxation methods that help lighten up your mind and body. This can include breathing exercises, muscle relaxation exercises, massage, yoga, or relaxing exercises like tai chi.
• Laughter really can be the best medicine. Try to look for humour in life. Do not take stressful situations as times of life and death. Whenever in any situation remember “This too shall pass”. Every problem will pass and give way to happier times.
• Regular exercise is one of the best ways to manage stress. Walking is a great way to get started. It helps in directing the excess energy in physical activities.
• Find a hobby that can help you relax. Do something you enjoy. Social work or work that helps others can be a great stress reliever.
• Set targets which are achievable. If you start to feel overburdened by a particular project, put it aside for some time and do something else that is not so challenging. But after that go back to the same project and deal with it differently so that it does not stress you out.
• Praise yourself even for small achievements; enjoy your success no matter however small the accomplishment.
• Take regular breaks because they re-energize and refresh you thus enhancing your creativity.
• Do not give others your permission to ruin your mental peace.
• Do not get very dependant of house help, try to manage a few things yourself too.

Just like we have our daily routine activities which we must do everyday like brushing, bathing, eating, it is important to practice these methods on a regular basis. If your default mode is to take stress and deal with it in an unhealthy way then you can’t apply these principles for a week and expect changes immediately. Stress will quickly take over if you let it, so practice healthier ways of dealing with stress as a routine. The more you practice, the better you will get at dealing with stress.

UNCONTROLLED STRESS CREATES HEALTH ISSUES LIKE –

High Blood Pressure, Diabetes Mellitis, Cardiac ailments, Depression or mental instability, Obesity (excessive compulsive over-eating), Weight loss, Migraines, Skin ailments like psoriasis, lichen planus etc., Asthma, Irritable bowel syndrome, Insomnia and the list is endless.

HOMOEOPATHY - A SOLUTION TO MITIGATE STRESS

Along with pranayama, yoga, relaxation music and exercising, HOMOEOPATHY can help to deal with stress. There are several cases of low, medium and high stress especially related to city- life, work stress, exam stress, competition and achievement stress etc. that can be dealt along with HOMOEOPATHIC medicine. It helps to keep the mind calm and the patient can deal with the stress in a healthy way.