Tips for Dealing with Stress

Life can be stressful. Stress causes a lot of health problems, and it lends itself to emotional eating and bad eating habits. It can also affect your sleep, your digestive system, your hormones, and even cause muscular tension.

Getting rid of stress can help alleviate many of those symptoms and more. Finding ways to de-stress is important for your health, both physically and emotionally.

Here's some suggestions for getting rid of stress:

1. Stop and take a 5 minute break when your are getting stressed out. Find somewhere quiet, take a couple deep breaths and try and push the stress out of your mind.

2. Write it down. Even if you just throw away the paper later, you'll feel better getting it out of you.

3. Take a relaxing shower or bath. Lock the door, ignore the kids and hubby or whatever and just let go.

4. Cleaning. I know it sounds crazy but I feel so much better after getting some housework done, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment.

5. Try a support group or therapy. Having someone who's not involved in your day to day life to vent to can really help.

6. This may sound silly but try playing games or cards. With friends or alone this can help take your mind of what's bothering you for a little while. Obviously limit time spent playing video games, or find a physical game, like football or volley ball.

7. The "I did list". Instead of writing a "to do list" make an "I did" list. I write down all the things I got done, and instead of seeing all the things I didn't get done on the list, I see a big list of things I did get done.

8. Listen to some music. I'm one of those people that likes to sing along and sometimes I'll even dance around if no one's about.

9. Call a friend and talk about something. You can talk about what's stressing you out or about anything, I bet you'll feel a little better afterwards.

10. Consider Yoga or meditation, if that's not your thing maybe just find a class that you want to try. It will give you a break from thinking about your stress causer, and give you a chance to meet new people.

11. Try and stay positive. Glass half full kind of thing you know? It's easy to let stress get the better of you if you're only looking for the bad things. 

Of course no one can ever really relieve all their stress, but cutting it down as much as possible will improve your quality of life if nothing else.