Techniques for Coping with Stress  

Searching for how to make stress less stressful? Using key insights and techniques catered to coping with stress can be useful tools for improving mental and physical health. For most of my adult life, I believed that stress was hazardous to our health. As such, my understanding was that it should be managed or avoided.  I recently learned that stress can in fact be helpful to us when we reframe it in a positive way.  

What is Stress?

Let’s back-up for a minute and define stress. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Stress is defined as any type of change that causes physical, emotional, or psychological strain. Stress is your body’s response to anything that requires attention or action.”   I like this definition because it has some positive elements to it. Stress by this definition can be viewed as creating motivation to act. This can be helpful in pursuing our goals and dreams.   In fact, research shows that when viewed this way, stress can have far less of a negative impact on our health. 

Causes of Stress

Typically, we feel stress when we believe that we are losing control over some aspect of our lives.  Our physical response to stress when we view the situation negatively, often results in a cascade of hormones. This can cause our bodies to make our heart beat faster and our blood vessels to constrict. Over time a persistent stressed state can lead to chronic health issues.

Health Risks of Stress

Mental or emotional stress triggers our bodies primitive survival mechanism to illicit the fight, flight or freeze response. If we are under constant stress, it can lead to mental and physical illness including anxiety, depression, weight gain, diabetes, fatigue, headaches, and stomach aches. It can also cause flare-ups of inflammatory diseases like Crohn’s disease.^2,3   

Additionally, when we attempt to cope with stress by eating high fat, sugar and salt containing foods we set ourselves up for a roller coaster of insulin spikes and drops. This can lead to cravings and weight gain. Not to mention the guilt that often comes along after emotional eating, which can lead to more negative stress and the unhealthy cycle repeats.  Other negative ways of coping with stress include alcohol and other substance abuse. 

Coping Strategies

Everyone experiences stress, so how do we cope with it in a way that avoids negative health outcomes? It turns out that our thoughts about a stressful situation play a key role in how our bodies respond.  Studies demonstrated that those who reframed a stressful situation, or their physical response to it, in a positive way did not suffer the negative physical effects of the stress.

When we view a situation as motivating, energizing, or as an opportunity to move forward is in support of something that has meaning and purpose for you, the physical effects are no longer negative. 

Reframing

In her TedTalk ‘How to Make Stress Your Friend‘, Kelly McGonigal PhD, health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, explained that when we view our stress response as helpful in support of courage, energy, and strength, then we avoid its negative effects.

Our thoughts about a situation are the main determination about how it will affect us physically.^4,5  Therefore, it is helpful to reframe a situation where we believe that we have little or no control, to focus on the things that we can control. It is also helpful for us to think about the bigger picture and our place in it. 

Social Support

A second finding Dr. McGonigal discusses to better cope with stress involves social connection.  The studies revealed that people who turned to others for help in stressful situations, were more resilient in coping with stress.  Also, those who gave help had better health outcomes as well.  Interestingly, when helping others deal with stress, we also reduce our own stress.  In either situation, our bodies excrete the positive stress hormone Oxytocin. Oxytocin has been shown to be protective of our cardiovascular systems when dealing with stress.  Hence, a great way to deal with stress is to seek help or give help to others. 

Other Techniques

Other ways to manage stress is through breathing techniques, mindfulness, and being present. 

Summary

1. Reframing your belief about your body’s physical response as a positive.  For example, when preparing to give a speech and your heart rate goes up and you start to perspire, tell yourself that this is a good thing because my body is preparing me to focus and give a good speech. View it as a helpful response because in reality it is.
2. Seeking or giving support from or to others in a stressful situation causes us to release Oxytocin, the protective stress hormone.
3. Breathing techniques such as:
   • Box breathing – 4-4-4-4 breaths (breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 4 counts,  hold for 4 counts, repeat 3-4 times)
   • Inhaling deeply and exhaling while counting down from 10 to 1 slowly, repeat 3 times
   • Inhale 5 counts, exhale 10 counts, repeat until you feel more calm
4.  Meditation – close your eyes, slow your breathing, picture a beautiful place, and imagine yourself there, repeat a mantra like ‘I am safe, I am calm, I am in a beautiful quiet place’

Hopefully, you see how reframing a situation to view it in a positive way can make it work for you. However, if it does not seem like the situation is one you can view as beneficial in some way, then consider using some of the techniques discussed above to calm your mind and reduce the negative effects of stress.   

Sources

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31961190/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5137920/
• https://www.healthline.com/health/crohns-disease/stress-flare-ups#:~:text=Although%20stress%20doesn’t%20specifically,living%20a%20healthy%2C%20fulfilling%20life.
• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702613482119
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374921/