Stress is an unintentional physical, mental, and emotional response when we’re feeling challenged and a pretty normal part of being a human. While a bit of stress can sometimes be an opportunity to grow and change, in the long term, negative stress can not only lessen your quality of life, but it can also adversely affect your health.
When your brain is stressed, it tells your body to release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that increase your heart rate and raise your blood pressure, inducing the fight-or-flight response. While that’s great if you’re dealing with an imminent threat, sometimes our brains and bodies don’t get the message that the threat isn’t imminent or that the perceived threat has passed.
Resilience is key to training your body and brain to reset when you feel stressed out. Improving the following skills can help you manage stress:
Time management – Whether at work or in your personal life, time management is key to preventing stress and overwhelm. This could be an entire blog post by itself but in short it can mean setting up systems to help you be more efficient, eliminating distractions to stay focused, and setting boundaries to limit interruptions.
Task prioritization – Make time for the things that matter most and are urgent. Then categorize other tasks by schedule, delegate, or eliminate based on urgency and importance. (Pro tip: Learn how to say “no”.)
Emotional awareness – Learning to recognize when you’re starting to feel stressed is incredibly important. Check in with yourself. Often.
Unfortunately, stress can lead a lot of us to fall into some bad habits or unhealthy coping mechanisms. Following is a list of healthy ways to cope when you feel overstressed:
Yoga
Tai chi
Meditation
Spend time with friends and loved ones.
Exercise - sometimes even just taking a short walk can lessen your stressin’.
We all get stressed from time to time. The way we handle it is what matters for our health in the long run. Don’t wait until your health is affected to adopt some of these stress-busting measures. Today is a great time to start!
About RevanRx
Everyone deserves to have their pharmaceutical needs met without fear or embarrassment. RevanRx is a full-service and compounding pharmacy, specializing in the unique needs of the LGBT+ community in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas.
We hope to increase patient adherence and access to care for those who would otherwise not feel comfortable receiving medications or medication counseling in a public setting, avoiding embarrassing public conversations, misgendering, or refusal of service. Visit us at Revanrx.com and like us on Facebook.