How To Deal With A Stressful Situation?

There are moments in life that have a great impact on us. On the other hand, each human being will react differently to adversity. Still, we all go through a stressful situation. Therefore, we want to tell you how to approach it.

That’s right, throughout this article we will take a tour in which we will talk about coping with a stressful situation. In addition, we will tell you some strategies so that you can face it when it occurs. Join us!

Stressful situation, what is it?

Stress, according to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, is the ‘tension caused by overwhelming situations that causes psychosomatic reactions or psychological disorders’. 

So, a stressful situation has to do with what stuns us and that, in addition, can cause us discomfort, be it physical, psychological or social. Now, let’s remember that the fact that our health is affected will not depend on a single factor.

So, what generates stress can be associated with several factors. The causes of stress can be diverse, we show you some of them:

• Overload and lack of job satisfaction.
• Take on an illness.
• Problems in relationships with a partner, family, friendship, work.
• Exams
• Moving.
• Not knowing how to say no.
• Not having free time.
• The death of a loved one.
• Lack of time to devote to leisure or perform tasks.
• Traffic jams.

Although it may seem that all causes are mental, there are some physical causes. For example: overexertion, poor posture, lack of sleep, hunger, unusual weight variations, frequent headaches, and atopic dermatitis, among others.

Strategies for dealing with a stressful situation

There are different ways to approach stressful situations. By facing them, we increase our well-being, therefore, there is an improvement in our quality of life. However, these strategies require dedication. Let’s see some.

Communication to deal with a stressful situation

We communicate constantly. However, the question is, do we do it assertively? Communication of this type requires that we be aware of the message we want to convey and that we manage our emotions and thoughts so that, by telling the other, it reaches the most effective way possible.

On the other hand, when we talk about communication, we are not only referring to what we communicate through written language, but also what is projected through body language. So, assertive communication implies that we take all these areas into account.

Why can communication help us to cope with a stressful situation? Because, by transmitting the right message, we put a barrier to the tension that could be generated by not expressing what we think. In addition, it is also a good way to ask for help, joining forces to face a certain challenge.

Emotional management

This is an essential issue to deal with a stressful situation. It consists of doing good emotional management. At first it may be complex, but once we get used to knowing when is the right time to express them and how to do it, it will be easier.

Imagine that you have so much stress at work, mixed with anger, and you would like to throw everything on the floor. The most correct thing in that situation would be not to do it, so that it does not get out of your control. However, you can find another time to express what you feel, for example, through meditation!

Resilience after a stressful situation

We can all develop this ability. It’s about overcoming problems. That is, keep going when adversities multiply. On the other hand, resilience has to do with the support elements that a person has -which can be human, but also material-, as well as with the attitude or their effective hierarchy of priorities -not the ideal, but the that you actually use to make decisions.

To manage time

We can feel overwhelmed that we don’t have enough time to do everything we want to do. It is worthwhile that we stop to think about what our priorities are, and according to these we will establish a schedule of activities.

The idea is that we follow it. For this, it is essential that we do not set such high goals, and that we be disciplined. This will help keep us from self-sabotaging.

Follow a routine

Routine reduces daily cognitive wear and tear. We make a decision and we always apply the result, which means that we do not have to go through the same crossroads every time. This makes it easier for us to dedicate resources to other decisions, so that making them becomes a less threatening, stressful situation.

Routine provides us with security, because we have something clear about what we are about to do. On the other hand, it helps us to keep our time organized, and if we have healthy habits, it will affect our well-being.

Let it flow

It consists of not anchoring ourselves to a situation. There are some problems we can fix and some we can’t; In many cases, the difficult thing is to distinguish one from the other.

Letting flow also means not swimming against the current; adapt, accept what we cannot change. Being rigid only increases in many cases the stress we have to endure, until it reaches a point where we break.

Stay in the present moment

When we are left thinking about what would have happened if, or what we should have done, we are giving enormous importance to the past. Thus, in many cases we hurt ourselves, because we feed emotions such as shame, sadness or guilt.

Emotions themselves have valence, but they are not bad or good . On the other hand, its effect on us, its way of conditioning our state of mind will largely depend on how we manage them. On the other hand, one of the worst ways to do this is to turn the thoughts they inspire around and around, as if they were gum.

Something similar happens when we are locating ourselves all the time in the future, we feed anxiety, which can cause us great discomfort. Thinking about it is not bad, what hurts us is to drop anchor in that place.

To cultivate the present moment we can resort to mindfulness techniques that invite us to develop full consciousness. In fact, there is research that supports the value of practicing them, Shapiro, Carlson, Astin and Freedman in their article published in the Journal of clinical Psychology,  show us the effectiveness of Mindfulness to treat both physical and psychological symptoms.

Now, let us bear in mind that, since we cannot always do everything, it is worth asking for help. There are expert professionals who can act as a support during these difficult times, such as psychologists.

There are thousands of stressful situations, and they will cause more or less discomfort depending on different variables. The fundamental thing is to take into account some strategies so as not to harm ourselves. Understand that negative emotions are part of the way, and that it is not bad to feel them, but it is to contain or ignore them without managing them.