Understanding Resilience and Stress

There is a lot going on in the world these days and life keeps happening with all its assorted problems. How can one build resilience to help lower stress? First, there is no one thing that works for everyone. No therapy technique, exercise or medication. There are, however, things that work for most people and sometimes it is a bit of trial and error to see what works.

The Importance of Good Sleep Hygiene

Good sleep hygiene is important. Getting 7.5-8 hours of sleep a night helps keep our bodies and brain in good working order and helps reduce stress. Non-medical things that can cause issues with being able to fall asleep are: Too much caffeine or having it late in the day; scrolling on one’s phone or tablet while in bed just before sleep; bright lights just before sleep, such as TV, phone and tablets and too much scrolling news feeds, during the day, that are triggering. If you are having sleep issues and you find yourself having some of the above habits, try limiting them first.

Managing Stress Through Body Awareness

Unfortunately, when people are under stress it often effects sleep as they often have unrecognized stress in their body and are regularly “Stuck in their heads” about stressful things. An exercise that works for many people is a body scan, taking time to notice whether there is stress in the body and if there is working on relaxing or calming those areas which, for some, can help one to fall asleep if done at bedtime. If done during the day it can help reduce current stress much of the time, (See the Relaxation Exercise under Resources, Self Help Exercises).

Other Helpful Coping Strategies

Other coping strategies to reduce stress that are often helpful are trying to see things objectively:

Acceptance

Acceptance – Finding ways to accept situations that are out of one’s control. By working on acceptance, one does not have to agree with or like what is going on but rather not letting the distress/pain from the situation turn into suffering. Suffering is a whole other level of pain, and thus can steal away from one, what is important to them in their heart such as enjoying time with family or friends.

Finding Ways to Stay Present

Finding ways to stay present – All we ever have is now. We do not have 5 minutes ago, and we may not have 5 minutes from now. In fact, we have a series of now moments. Some of us have our now moments, such as time doing things we enjoy or time with people, stolen away from us by stress or getting stuck in our heads about things that are out of one’s control. By being stressed or worried about what might happen or not happen in the future we often give up the things that are most import to us. We can also carry stress or sadness from things that happened in the past. Ask yourself, “Would I tell my best friend to give up the “Good stuff”, time with family, friends or what is important to them to rent space in their head to someone or thing that is out of control? (For further information on this please see my exercise “What’s Wrong With this Moment”, on my resource page.)

Free 30-Minute Consultation

If you have further questions, I offer a free 30-minute no obligation consult. Let me know if I can help.