Stress Relief:
Coping with Life in a Difficult World
by Jane Alexander
 My friend Liz is a highly successful lawyer in her mid-thirties. She has all the material trappings of success yet her life is spiraling out of control. She feels guilty that she doesn’t spend enough time with her young child. Pressure at work is intense and she frequently spends half the night working. She has been on six holidays so far this year (which sounds great), each time telling me, "Jane, I’ve really got to get my head together," yet each time she comes back more disillusioned. She is suffering total burnout, a classic victim of stress.
Even more distressing is the case of my niece, Kate, who at just nine years old already shows symptoms of severe stress. At school she’s under enormous pressure to do well in exams and has several hours of homework every night. She shows clear evidence of anxiety, has nightmares, separation anxiety and the start of obsessive-compulsive disorder. As far as I can see, it’s only going to get worse when she goes to her senior school.
I’m not usually a doom and gloom merchant but I’m getting increasingly worried about stress. It’s all very well and good to say that stress can be "good," that there is such a thing as "positive stress" but, in my experience, nobody I know is loving his or her stress. We’re getting ourselves into deep dark misery – and it’s getting worse. The 21st century is a more difficult place than we ever imagined. Life is changing faster than anyone could have predicted and the bottom line is that we’re just not coping...
These can be useful for occasions when you need immediate relief for tension and stress:
- Don't fly for the coffee machine or reach for a Coke - caffeine merely exacerbates your stress mechanisms. Drink a long cool glass of water or orange juice instead. Then get up, walk or jog around outside in the fresh air for a few minutes. At the very
least, get up and stretch - it gets the oxygen round your body, gives you fresh energy and stops rising panic.
- Vent your spleen (but not on other people!). If it's feasible, yelling your head off is a wonderful way of getting the stress out (I regularly scream like a banshee while belting along the motorway.). Or invest in a punching bag for the office/home
(wherever) and give it a good thump or six... - Practice constructive vandalism: Beat the hell out of bubble wrap. It sounds acutely weird but a professor of psychology, Dr Kathleen Dillon, has proved that popping bubble wrap (apparently the big bubbles work best) dispels pent-up nervous energy and muscle tension. She also points out that, unlike many other forms of stress-busting, bubble-popping requires no instruction and no practice. Try it – it really does seem to help...
>>> Click to Continue Reading "Stress Relief: Coping..."©
Copyright Jane Alexander. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in September 2002, as part of Soulful Living's "Stress Relief" Issue.
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