Understanding stress and anxiety,why does it matter?...4 Simple and Easy Tips To Reduce Stress

1. Difference between stress and anxiety,Why Does It Matter?

What's the difference between stress,anxiety, and worry? And why does it matter?

Most people talk about stress, anxiety and worry interchangeably as if they're the same thing. 

For example: 

"my test really stressed me out. I was so worried about it."

 or

 "I'm so worried about this upcoming performance that is making my stomach hurt." 

Now the lack of differentiation between these different aspects of anxiety leads to difficulties in knowing how to resolve the effects of them.So we're first going to talk about the difference and why it matters.

Worry:

Worry is the thinking part of anxiety. It happens in our frontal lobes,the part of our brain that plans and thinks and uses words, and it has to do with thoughts like;

"Is she mad at me?" 

or

 "what's going to happen at my upcoming performance?"

Now we humans have developed this part of our brain for important reasons. Worry helps us solve complex problems by thinking about them, perhaps over and over again. 

But if worry becomes distorted, compulsive, or stuck into a repetitive cycle then we can develop disorders like depression and anxiety.

Stress:

Now stress on the other hand is the physiological response to fear. So it's what's going on inside of our bodies when we're reacting to something that's perceived as threatening or dangerous.

It's the fight, flight freeze response.

It's rooted in the reptilian brain. It's instinctual and unconscious. 

Stress serves a perfect function in helping us to escape real threats. For example, the sweating that comes along with stress helps us stay cool or the adrenaline helps us perform in situations where we have to run away or fight off a physical threat. 

However if stress becomes chronic and remains unresolved it can have serious consequences in our body: high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer and chronic illness are all associated with stress.

Anxiety:

Anxiety is the intersection of these two reactions the thinking and the biological response.

It's rooted in the limbic system and it has to do with this feeling of foreboding or dread like something bad is going to happen.

Anxiety helps people be watchful for danger but if it dominates our lives,it can make it hard for us to feel joy and to move forward in the direction of our values.

 If we want to learn to manage our anxiety we need to learn to tailor our interventions to the different aspects of stress. 

So in order to manage our worry we need to target those thoughts with cognitive interventions-changing how we think and changing what we're constantly imagining and visualizing in our minds. 

And if we want to change the stress response we need to take a bottom-up approach incorporating our body's reactions and responses into interventions that change those reactions and responses into a healthy way. 

The first step of emotion management is awareness. Start to pay attention to what it feels like when you're having an anxious response. Is it rooted in your mind?

 Are you having thoughts or imagining some future catastrophe? or is it rooted in your body? are you having these physiological reactions like an upset stomach or a sweaty hands? 

As you start to pay more attention to these reactions and gain more awareness around them you'll develop greater abilities to learn how to respond to these these instinctual reactions in a more helpful way.

See if you can distinguish between the two aspects of anxiety- the worry and the stress.Maybe even spend some time writing about it. 

2. Tips for dealing with stress:

 Now let me share some tips on how to deal with stress in a more efficient way:

Nutrition:

One of them is nutrition. It's very important to eat healthy, we all know that but do we take time to prepare good and quality food? What we need now is a healthier lifestyle. So make sure you have the right vitamins and nutrition that you need.

Sleep:

Second thing is sleep.It's very important to sleep well.

 So one of the things that you can do is get rid of your smartphone close to your bed because the radiation will have an impact on your sleep,that's what research shows us.

Not only that,it's very important that you can have an empty mind when you go to bed,so please try to avoid the last 30 minutes before you go to bed to go check Facebook,Twitter, internet,watch the late-night news,etc because you will take those impressions to bed and somehow they will keep on working.

 Also if you're in a very busy period then you know that there's a lot of things you can't forget;now make sure that you have a piece of paper and a pen next to your bed so when you wake up suddenly like oh I can't forget to do this or say that, write it down, so you can forget it and the next day it will be on that piece of paper.

If you don't write it down somehow all night you will be busy with I can't forget I can't forget I can't forget and you won't have that deep sleep.

Exercise:

 Another thing we can do is movement. 

We all know that being physically active has a very good impact on our mental health, but sometimes that's the big challenge to really go to that fitness or really go and run in nature or really go whatever do.

 So make it a habit how can you somehow keep the energy flow,so you will feed yourself in that sense.

Energy:

And that may be the last thing I can give you is ask yourself  what gives you energy?what is it that makes you happy? is it playing with your kids? is it cooking? is it working in the garden? or walking in a forest?or is it maybe just reading a book?

It's very important that we create this work-life balance and that you do those things that feed you- that give you a pleasant feeling.