stress management

Good morning! I wanted to tell you all about my weekend, which was pretty good – but I decided to save room to talk about this great topic today. Let’s discuss Stress Management.

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A few weeks ago I went to a Dallas Dietetic Association meeting and the presenter was a clinical neuropsychologist who works at Texas Health Dallas, which is a hospital in our area. He works closely with a dietitian, who invited him to come present about Stress Management at our meeting.

Dr. Don Hafer was the presenter and his presentation was fantastic. Stress management is no new concept to me, as I’ve done a lot of work on myself in this area and employed a number of techniques and strategies he shared. However, his presentation was very timely for me, as it was such a great reminder that I need to be constantly working on stress management – especially right now as I’m under a tremendous amount of pressure!

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When I tweeted about the event, people were very excited and asked me to share what I learned. I apologize it’s taken me so long – I haven’t had time to review my notes since then!

I’m sure most of us know what stress is, what some of the symptoms are and how to tell when you are stressed. Many of you may not know that stress is an actual biological change in the hormones and body’s actions and responses. I’m not going to cover that part of the presentation, but if you have questions – just email me and I’ll share with you the information.

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Dr. Hafer stated there are two types of stress: positive stress and negative stress. I was baffled by this revelation. Even though we may not realize it, there can be good stress in our life, which can impact your body much in the same way negative stress does.

Examples of positive stress:

• Work promotion
• Marriage
• New baby
• Perfect golf game
• Graduation

While we would all agree these are good things in life – they are still sources of stress that need to be balanced along with the negative stressors.

Examples of negative stress:

• Financial difficulty
• Traffic
• Illness
• Loss of job
• Death of a family member

Dr. Hafer stated we need to either decrease the amount of stress in our lives (both good and bad) or increase our coping abilities. Because he identified that stress can be both from positive and negative sources, he said it was unlikely we’d be able to decrease the amount of stress. Rather, we need to make room for the positive stress in our life – by ridding ourselves of the negative stressors to the best of our abilities.

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Our interpretation of the event is what dictates our reaction and can either increase or decrease our stress to a certain event. There are both internal and external factors that affect our interpretations, so not everything is at our control. However, I think his point was the internal factors are things within ourselves that we can change – whereas our external factors will have to be managed just like the stressful event.

Internal factors:

• Beliefs, values & goals
• Experiences
• Attitude/personality make-up
• Thinking

External factors:

• Life events
• Environment

We talked a little more about the effects of stress on our bodies. As you become stressed it releases hormones in your body that can raise your heart rate and blood pressure. These same hormones can make it harder for your body to breathe. These hormones can have a profound impact on your body, causing 100% of illnesses (according to Dr. Hafer) our bodies experience.

Probably the most interesting part about the presentation was the identification that the hormones released in a stressful situation are different for men and women. Men’s bodies release testosterone, which makes them more aggressive and potentially angry. In women, higher levels of oxytocin are released (also known as the letdown hormone for you science friends). Oxytocin makes women want to talk and bond more. This explains the radical differences in men and women when it comes to a stressful situation like a fight or disagreement.

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Then we talked about stress management techniques. He had some wonderful suggestions that applied to everyone. I’m not going to go over all of them, because I think most are pretty common. I do want to give you a few specific ones I found to be the most interesting or helpful.

on emotional eating:

Emotional eating is a pretty common stress response for many people. Dr. Hafer said studies have shown that dieters tend to overeat when stressed, while non-dieters under eat while stressed. So don’t forget that emotional eating can actually go both ways.

The best tactic he had for emotional eating was asking people to write down everything they planned to eat BEFORE they ate it. Just copying down the things people planned to eat made them more aware and responsible for their eating habits when stressed. I personally thought this was genius.

on escaping yourself:

There are actually several here, so let me give you a few different options:

• First, volunteer and help others. Dr. Hafer said he sees extremely depressed patients who don’t even feel capable of taking care of their self. But, he encourages them all to volunteer and focus on other people rather than what’s going on with them and their problems. This helps these patients escape their own stress and focus on positively helping others.
• Second, don’t have venting sessions with friends. A support group is a magic thing and can really help you to see people’s different opinions. But getting together with a group of friends and only focusing on the negative doesn’t help anyone. If there is one person in your life or support group that is constantly negative, you have to either ignore them or remove them from the situation. You all know I’m on a major negativity clean-up from my life right now and for me, this involves avoiding certain blogs or people I follow on twitter. They just induce negativity in me the second I see them say something negative. Don’t be afraid to do this.
• Third, prepare for potentially stressful events by scheduling time to plan. If you know you have a stressful conversation, meeting, etc – set aside 15 minutes to just focus completely on that event. Write down your tactics, questions, concerns, worries. Look within yourself and see why you are feeling stressed. After your 15 minutes, move on. Anytime you start to feel stressed or anxious about that event, refer back to your planning and know you have covered yourself.

• I’d add that if you can find a quote or funny video that can instantly cheer you up or adjust your mindset, use that. I received this quote in a fortune cookie about a month ago and I carry it around in the back of my cell phone’s case. Anytime I take my phone out to change the battery (which is several times a day) I see this quote and it reminds me to focus on calming down and relaxing myself.

know yourself:

You know your own stress triggers and stressful warning signs. Be on the lookout for these throughout the day. For Dr. Hafer, he stated he raises one shoulder up to his ear when he feels stressed. This is an early warning sign for him and he can recognize by this sign that he’s feeling stressed and take precautions to avoid the stress.

Dr. Hafer gave everyone at the meeting a stress dot to wear throughout the night. These dots are a sticker that change colors based on your body temperature changes. They can indicate levels of stress. I wore mine as long as I could, until it fell off, and it was such a neat way to be in touch with my body and know how I felt. It was interesting to see that even getting up to walk around made my dot change colors to look slightly more stressed. That’s an important reminder that stress is related to your body, not necessarily to your mental state.

focus on your body:

Focusing on body is the fastest way to calm down physically. Whereas some of the other tactics focused on clearing your mind, these strategies focus completely on stopping any biological harm from stress.

• Calm your breathing: Breathe with your diaphragm (your stomach) and take deep breaths concentrating on making sure your stomach is coming in and out. Practice breathing in very deeply for 5 counts, then breathing out deeply for 5 counts and then resting (no breathing) for 5 counts. This will take 15 seconds, and if you repeat 4 times – you will have 1 minute of deep breathing. If you do this strategy 15 times per day, you will train your body to automatically calm down more efficiently. Try this technique while sitting at a red light, when taking the elevator or while going to the bathroom (seriously!).
• Progressive muscle tightening: If you find your body sore at the end of the day, try this technique to relax your body. Tighten the muscle groups that are sore (usually your shoulders or neck) for 5 seconds. During this 5 seconds tighten these muscles as hard as you can, then release. You should feel instantly relieved and you can repeat this as often as you need to relax your body.

Like I said – there were many other techniques, but these were the most interesting that I found I had not heard about using before. If you need more ideas, just let me know and I can pass along more to you.

The last thing I want to mention is the importance Dr. Hafer placed on having a healthy lifestyle for stress management. When you eat a healthy diet and exercise, you reduce the number of physical stressors on your body and immune system. This allows the body to react to stressful events much more efficiently than if you were not taking care of yourself. So keep that in mind as another benefit to live healthy!

I’m so appreciative I was able to attend this excellent seminar by Dr. Don Hafer!

What are your stress management techniques?