Ways to deal with stress

WAYS TO DEAL WITH STRESS

 Stress is a reaction to a situation where a person feels threatened or anxious. Learning healthy ways to cope and getting the right care and support can help reduce stressful feelings and symptoms. After a traumatic event, people may have strong and lingering reactions. These events may include personal or environmental disasters, or threats with an assault. The symptoms may be physical or emotional. Common reactions to a stressful event can include: disbelief, shock, and numbness feeling sad, frustrated, and helpless difficulty concentrating and making decisions headaches, back pains, and stomach problems smoking or use of alcohol or drugs Healthy Ways to Cope with Stress Feeling emotional and nervous or having trouble sleeping and eating can all be normal reactions to stress. Here are some healthy ways you can deal with stress: Take care of yourself. Eat healthy, exercise, get plenty of sleep, and give yourself a break if you feel stressed out. Talk to others. Share your problems and how you are feeling and coping with a parent, friend, counselor, doctor, or pastor. Avoid drugs and alcohol. These may seem to help, but they can create additional problems and increase the stress you are already feeling. Take a break. If news events are causing your stress, take a break from listening or watching the news. Recognize when you need more help. If problems continue or you are thinking about suicide, talk to a psychologist, social worker, or professional counselor.

Teenage stress: what is it? Stress is the way your body responds to challenges or difficult situations and gets you ready to face them with attention, energy and strength. When you feel you can cope with these challenges, stress gets you ready for action and gives you the motivation to get things done. Everyone experiences stress, and some stress can be OK. There’s nothing wrong with your teenage child if they’re stressed. But if stress goes on for too long, or your child has more stress than they can cope with, it can interfere with sleep, thinking and learning. And it can get in the way of your child enjoying life. Signs of teenage stress Signs of stress in teenagers can show up in their behaviour, emotions, body and thinking. Behaviour signs If your child is stressed, you might see some changes in your child’s behaviour. For example, your child might: not want to take part in activities they usually enjoy, refuse to go to school, or not do as well at school seem nervous or anxious sleep too little or too much eat more ‘comfort food’ than usual, or eat less food overall drink more caffeine products, or take over-the-counter painkillers, use alcohol or other drugs, or gamble behave aggressively. Emotional signs If your child is stressed, you might see changes in your child’s emotions. For example, your child might: be cranky, moody, cry or feel sad, down or hopeless, feel that ‘nothing is going right’, or have emotional ‘ups and downs’ for no obvious reason worry about missing out on what peers are up to find it hard to relax or switch off, especially from social media. Physical signs Sometimes you might see physical signs of stress. Your child might: feel sick – for example, have headaches, shoulder pain, stomach aches or jaw pain get frequent colds or infections lose or gain weight have panic attacks, dizzy spells, fast breathing or pins and needles have changes in their period. Thinking signs Stress can affect your child’s thinking. You might notice that your child is: finding it hard to concentrate and stay focused having trouble remembering things, organising, planning or making decisions making snap decisions or errors in judgment. Causes of teenage stress Many things can cause stress in teenagers. These include: school, especially homework, exams and pressure to do well relationships with friends, boyfriends and girlfriends life changes like leaving school, getting into university or getting a job too many things to do, and feeling unprepared or overwhelmed by tasks family conflict big decisions, like deciding whether to talk about something sensitive or important lack of sleep.

In general, you can help your child with stress by: actively listening when your child wants to talk letting your child know they can talk with you about anything, even difficult topics spending time with your child, especially when you know they’re feeling stressed doing things that make your child feel good, like cooking their favourite meal, letting them choose what movie to watch, and so on.