3 Ways To Cope With Stress

Hearing the word ‘stress’ can make you feel even more stressed, can’t it? Especially during times of uncertainty, our stress can blast through the roof. While I’m sure many of you know what some of the psychological and emotional signs are of being stressed, here are a few: depression or anxiety, anger, irritability, restlessness, feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated, unfocused, having trouble sleeping, racing thoughts, problems with your memory or concentration. Ah, these all sound all too familiar.

So what can you do if you’re feeling stressed?

How can you cope with stress?

Here are a few things that you can start implementing today.

#1 Get To Know Your Stress

“But I don’t want to get to know my stress… I hate it and I want to get rid of it! Just show me how to get rid of it.” If you just scream-thought this, I understand. The thought of getting to know your stress is like being forced to become besties with your high school frenemy.

Take a deep breath and hear me out. First and foremost, it’s part of our human experience to get and feel stress. Stress isn’t going to just disappear or never resurface again, but what will happen is that you will get mentally stronger and will learn how to cope with and manage it. And so the first step to managing something is to first identify what it is that you need to manage. What causes you the most stress? Where do your thoughts drift when you’re stressed? How often do you feel stressed? What are your triggers? Once you get clearer on the how, the what, and the where, you’ll understand the why.

Think for a moment how powerful it is to understand WHY you’re getting stressed. There’s a good chance that you’re feeling the highest levels of stress because you’re feeling uncertain about something, so when you are able to answer the question ‘why?’ you’re gaining certainty. The more certainty you can give to yourself, the more you can learn how to cope and manage your stress.

#2 Find Healthy Ways To Manage Your Stress

So, now that you understand why you’re getting stressed, let’s talk about finding healthy ways to manage it. There are disempowering ways to manage stress and there are empowering ways to manage stress.

An example of a disempowering way looks something like this: you’re browsing through TikTok videos and you come across one that sparks your interest. As you’re watching the video you think to yourself, “damn, this girl is so talented. Her video is perfect. Why didn’t I think of creating something like this? OMG she has 41,000 likes on this video? Why am I so behind? Why didn’t I create my TikTok channel months ago? Why is everyone else living out MY dream? Why hasn’t my video gotten this many likes? Am I even being seen? OMG I’m so underqualified… I’m so behind… I can’t do this. Why should I bother trying? I’m just going to quit.”

Do you see what happened there? Overthinking, comparing, envious, and discouraging questions repeated in your mind over and over again caused you to doubt yourself. This mindset fed you the lie that you need to quit or that quitting is the only ‘logical’ solution to solving your stress problem. If you continue to follow these disempowering questions down the rabbit hole, you’re going to stay stuck feeling stressed.

If, instead, you focused on more empowering questions to manage your stress, it will look something like this: “damn, this girl is so talented. Her video is perfect. Why didn’t I think of creating something like this? OMG she has 41,000 likes on this video? *pause, breathe, remind yourself how awesome you are* Wow! Good for her. Even though it’s challenging to be happy for her, because she’s doing what I want to be doing, I’m really proud of her hard work. How can I view her success with this video as inspiration? How can I see her account as a guide to help me achieve my next step? What did this experience teach me? How can I get more clear on my goals?”

When you’re at the peak of the comparison related stress, remember that everyone is on their own path. Tell yourself: she started the climb up the mountain before I did, and that’s OK. I just stopped to take a drink of water, admire the view, and tie my shoes. I’m on my own path. I have a story to share with the world that nobody else can share, because my story is unique to me. We all have our own paths and there is room for everyone to climb the mountain.

In this example, the healthy management tool is shifting from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and choosing to change our behaviors despite the stressful thoughts we have. Remember that you are not your thoughts. In addition to mindset shifting, other ways to cope include: listening to music, journaling, make lists to prioritize bite sized tasks one at a time, recite uplifting mantras, make a list of your strengths and remind yourself of your power.

#3 Reach Out For Support

That list above of coping mechanisms sure does look pretty, doesn’t it? But they’re all ways of coping by yourself for yourself. What if you’re too far down the rabbit hole or you don’t know how to get started with the self-help coping strategies? Reach out for support. Please. It’s OK to ask for help. Actually, it’s MORE than OK. It’s the best gift you can give to yourself. When was the last time you spoke with your favorite relative? Or caught up with your bestie? It could be a few days or a few months, or maybe even years. Think about the people in your life who can help support you and reach out to them. Even if it means sending a text message right now.

If you’re not totally comfortable sharing your personal life with your friends and family, don’t worry, there are many other options for you! Even though we’ve been quarantined, there are life coaches doing phone sessions (yours truly included!) who are happy and available to assist you through the stress and guide you to reach your goals. If, however, you feel like your stress is way past the roof, reach out to a mental health professional. There are hotlines, therapists who are doing phone sessions, and lots of apps like Talkspace available for you.

Your stress is trying to communicate with you… do you know what it’s trying to say? “Come come, come on and let me out!” (Yes, I just quoted Christina Aguilera’s “Genie In A Bottle”) Don’t bottle up your stress. Feel it, identify it, call it out, and then manage it.

You got this, girl!