How To Conquer Stress While Radically Increasing Your Happiness and Wellbeing! [#Infographic]

 

 

 

Stressed About Being Stressed At Work? Here's How To Drastically Increase Your Workplace Happiness Levels!

 

 

It is the human condition to never feel like we are in the right place at the right time. Most of us are always either running late, or behind, which leaves us in a constant state of anxiety.

 

The more things we accumulate in our lives to save us time, the more complex our time becomes. If you are having a hard time dealing with the stressors of daily life, you are not alone.

 

Seven out of ten people report that they feel anxiety or stress on a daily basis. A whooping 24% reporting feelings of being extremely overwhelmed.

 

What is contributing to so much grief in our lives? It is a combination of all the demands on our time, and our endless need to worry about what we can, or can’t, do anything about.

 

What is the reality of stress?

 

Although most of us say that we worry continually about things in our lives not getting done, or done properly, in reality only 15% of the things we worry about ever really come to fruition.

 

Even when the worse case scenario comes true, we almost always rise to the occasion. When the worst happens we experience little problem dealing with what comes our way.

 

The major things that people stress out about are money, work and the economy. They are all themes over which we have no control, but they effect how satisfied we are with life, and the overall quality of it.

 

Almost half of all adults say that stress is a contributing factor to them losing their patience, and not behaving the way they would like.

 

When you are stressed out you are more likely to take out your feelings on others. You are also more prone to lose your temper and react in unproductive ways.

 

Those unproductive behaviors can spill out into your marriage and family relationships.

 

Is there an acceptable level of stress?

 

There is no way to completely eliminate stress from our lives. Stress is something that is virtually impossible to avoid. Not all stress is bad.

 

There are some stressors in life which can be healthy and lead to positive outcomes. The problem with stress is not the stressor itself, but in the perception of it, and the response to it.

 

Long term anxiety can have disastrous results on your health. Those who are under extreme amounts of stress producing situations can experience weight gain, memory loss, sleep disturbances, heart disorders, and skin problems.

 

If you are now stressing out about being stressed out, you are one of the people who could use some de-stressing tools.

 

What are the ways in which you can deal with workplace stress?

 

The best way to deal with workplace stress is to learn how not to internalize it, or allow it to take control over your ability to be rational.

 

Those individuals who are able to look at stress in a positive light, and deal with it effectively, are more likely to be well adjusted and have less negative health consequences.

 

Since there is no way to live a life without stress, developing better coping skills is the only way to decrease its harmful effects.

 

Try the following to cope better with what life can throw at you

 

Get out, get moving

 

When you begin to feel the stress building, it is time to get out and get moving. Taking a break and gaining distance from something always makes it look smaller and insignificant.

 

It is easy when you are in the thick of something to lose perspective on its importance. The next time you are at work and something gets you to the boiling point, go for a walk.

 

Just 15 minutes away from the office to clear your head will allow you to calm down and think more rationally, The key to coping with stressful situations is to deal with them without emotion.

 

In the heat of a stressful situation, that is rarely possible. The world is not going to fall apart if you excuse yourself for 15 minutes to clear the slate and start again.

 

Call a lifeline

We all have that person in our lives who is the voice of reason. When you feel as if you have gotten to the point where a solution is impossible, pick up the phone and talk through the problem with someone you trust.

 

It isn’t the “yes man” in your life. You want to turn to someone who can be objective and can put some realism into the situation. They are able make the answer more clear.

 

Find that friend who is capable of presenting both sides, and allowing you to talk through your own thoughts.

 

Keep pictures of fun things at your desk

 

If you can’t escape physically, try to do so mentally. Keeping pictures of your last vacation, happy family, or your last fun excursion will allow you to escape mentally to a time when you were able to feel freedom from the daily grind.

 

Day dreaming is the best way to get lost for a bit and find some tranquility from it all. Just immersing yourself into something positive will bring out the positive in any situation you are facing.

Header Image Courtesy of:  Wikipedia

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety Reduction and Stress Management

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most well validated, time limited and effective forms of treatment for people with mild to severe anxiety problems.

CBT works by helping clients to quickly and effectively identify and change their negative anxiety eliciting thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The goal here is to replace negative thoughts and emotional reactions patterns with more positive and calming thoughts and feelings.

Anxiety problems are defined here in terms of the extent to which the person’s fear or anxiety response significantly interferes with how they function on a day to day basis in typical environments such as home, work or school.

Insurance companies love CBT because it gets lasting results in as few as 5-10 sessions. Therapeutic changes from CBT are skills and research based.

Results are usually as or more effective then drug treatments, which often have undesired side effects. Positive treatment outcomes are not only very strong but they are also long lasting with positive results indicated through 2 and 5 year follow up studies.

The 2 Core CBT strategies in the management of anxiety are: 1) Cognitive Restructuring; and, 2) Relaxation Training.

Changing Your Thoughts to Change Your Emotions

In Cognitive Restructuring the CBT therapist teaches the client how to identify their negative self-talk or the internal speech choices that elicit the client’s anxiety response. Negative self-talk is sometimes referred to as “stinkin-thinkin.”

For example, many people actually think their way into heightened fear or anxiety states that paralyze or compromise their ability to constructively interact with people in social situations. An anxious person who is about to give a public presentation may think negative thoughts to themselves like:

“This is going to be so embarrassing” or “I’m so scared right now…I can’t do this!”

In more serious conditions like panic disorder, people can think thoughts like:

“I’m having a heart attack” or “I’m going to die!”

Strong research in cognitive behavioral therapy has demonstrated very clearly that these kinds of negative thoughts or internal appraisal statements often create negative emotional reactions that can be as intense as those experienced in real situation of threat or danger, that actually happen, sometimes in the real world.

This is because our brains are often unable to distinguish between what’s going on in the real world and what we tell it is going on through the filters or lenses of our thoughts and appraisals. When you change the scary unrealistic appraisals, you change the scary unrealistic emotions like fear and anxiety.

The CBT Journal - Recording Thoughts and Emotions

One of the CBT therapist’s most important teaching and learning tools is the CBT Journal or CBT worksheets. The client brings her journal with her into situations where she becomes disproportionately anxious.

She then records her fear inducing thought statements as close to when they happen in actual situations, so she doesn't forget them later in therapy.

The CBT therapist and client then work on developing alternative, more relaxing and positive self-talk statements for those situations.

In most cases they will also use visualization techniques to practice being in those anxious situations, quickly stopping the negative thoughts and replacing them with more positive self-talk statements or appraisal statements.

In cases involving some phobias (i.e. fear of flying) these "exposure techniques" are taken into the real world. In what's also called "systematic desensitization" the phobic client is gradually exposed to the places and situations that causes their intense fear, while at the same doing cognitive restructuring and self-induced relaxation.

Relaxation Training - Mastering the Relaxation Response

The Cognitive Behavioral Journal also has a section in it for measuring the level of anxiety a person experiences in each targeted situation.

A common strategy applied here is called “scaling” where the client assigns a number on a scale of 1 to 10 to subjectively measure and communicate the emotional intensity of the experience to the therapist. 10 usually represents intense anxiety or even panic. 1 represents a neutral emotional state where the client is not relaxed but not anxious either.

In most cases, the client will also find a 1-10 scale to measure the clients increasing ability to self-induce relaxation through relaxation response training. In this case, 1 represents the lowest level of relaxation and 10 represents the deepest level of relaxation, characterized by measurably decreased pulse, respiration and muscle tension.

The goal of relaxation training is to teach the client how to self-invoke the “relaxation response” on those occasions when she is most likely to become anxious.

The most common evidence-based relaxation training goals are to teach 1) diaphragmatic breathing; 2) systematic muscle relaxation; and, 3) calming meditation practices.

The Relaxation Response is a teachable skill like learning to drive a car or learning to ride a bike. With 1-2 months of daily relaxation practice (20 minutes per day), an anxious person can learn to totally relax their mind and body in just a few seconds, in situations where they really need to.

The relaxation response is used to replace the anxiety response the same way that positive thoughts are used to replace negative thoughts in cognitive restructuring.

Cognitive restructuring and relaxation training work synergistically to transform automatic anxious emotional thoughts and feelings into more controlled, more relaxed thinking and emotional responding .

According to best-practices or evidence-based approaches to the treatment of anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the best forms of counseling for anxiety currently available.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is practiced by trained Psychiatrists, Clinical Psychologists and Master's level Professional Counselors.

image curtosey of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/muha/1103442787/