How to Design a Self Stress-Management Program

Managing stress is essential for preventing serious illness or even death. According to Mayo Clinic, experiencing repeated daily stress factors, such as financial problems or a large work load, is detrimental to your health. Your body will treat these as threats and react with the natural stress response, which includes increased heart rate and blood pressure.



Creating a self stress management program can help you effectively deal with the everyday stress you experience. Once you know your triggers and coping skills, you can develop and implement a plan to keep your life (almost) stress free.

Instructions

Identifying Stress

• 1

  Identify your triggers for stress. A trigger is anything that will set off the stress reaction within your body. Triggers may not always be avoidable but can be dealt with. Examples of triggers include waiting in line at the grocery store or in traffic, listening to people argue, being hungry or tired or being late for work or an appointment.

• 2

  Write down all your triggers and keep the paper in a visible spot. Knowing your triggers will be important in developing coping skills. It may help to keep a small notebook or journal in your purse, backpack or wallet to record triggers for stress during the day.

• 3

  Think about your current coping skills for stress, then assess if those skills are positive or negative. Many people deal with or react to stress negatively. According to Mayo Clinic, some common negative reactions to stress include overeating, anger, smoking or drinking alcohol. Although these may initially relieve stress, these types of reactions make you feel worse later on.

• 4

  Write down your coping skills and label each one with a P (positive) or N (negative). You can also label your triggers with A (Avoidable) or U (Unavoidable). This will help you develop and implement an effective stress-management plan.

Coping with Stress

• 5

  Look at your list of triggers. Determine whether you can change the stress factor or change your reaction. For unavoidable triggers, you will need to alter the reaction; for avoidable triggers, you can alter the stress factor or situation.

  For example, if waiting in line at the grocery store is stressful for you, you can alter the stress factor by going to the grocery store at a time when it is least busy.

• 6

  Review your list of coping skills. Keep the positive coping skills and create alternatives for the negative coping skills. Your goal is to have at least 10 positive coping skills to use in times of stress.

  Write down a list of 10 realistic coping skills to help manage your stress. The coping skills need to be relevant to your interests and lifestyle. For example, if you hate basketball, shooting hoops is not a coping skill you will use. Choose activities you will enjoy and that make you happy.

  Some examples of positive coping skills are meditation, deep breathing, encouraging self-talk, laughing, yoga or exercise, talking with a good friend or taking a nap.

• 7

  Write down a list of support people. No one can deal with stress alone. You should have at least one or two friends or family members who can listen to you vent or help you get through a dark situation. Provide these people with your list of triggers and coping skills to educate them on your stress-management plan.

• 8

  Implement your stress management plan by utilizing coping skills during stressful situations. Be patient and keep practicing the skills on the daily basis. It can be several weeks or months until you see significant changes in your stress level and reactions.