National Stress Awareness Day is on every first Wednesday in November. The feeling of being overloaded with emotional or mental pressure can result in stress when you feel unable to cope. Stress is a normal psychological and/or physical response to the day-to-day demands of life. During National Stress Awareness Day, it is important to spend 24 hours reinforcing the fact you are not doing yourself a favour by stressing about situations you cannot control.

Causes

There can be multiple reasons you may be feeling stressed and everyone has different stress triggers.

Common causes of stress include:

• Pessimism
• Negative self-talk
• Unrealistic expectations / perfectionism
• Inability to accept uncertainty
• All-or-nothing attitude
• Major life changes
• Financial problems
• Relationship difficulties
• Children and family
• Work or school
• Being too busy

Tips for Managing Stress

Identify the cause

If you are feeling stressed, the first step to feeling better is identifying the cause. By beginning to identify and understand the sources of your stress, you allow yourself to learn how to manage it.

Exercise more

Exercise is one of the most effective ways to combat stress. Although it won’t make your stress disappear it can help reduce the emotional intensity you may be feeling and can help clear your thoughts. Exercise can also improve your sleep, which may have been negatively affected by stress.

Eating healthier

A healthy diet can help combat stress in the long run. For instance, eating refined carbs, like crisps and biscuits, can cause a spike in blood sugar and when it crashes you can experience more stress.

Avoiding unhealthy habits

Unhealthy habits may provide a temporary relief but they won’t solve your problems and in the long term they will just create new ones. Therefore, avoiding alcohol, smoking and caffeine as a way of coping with your stress.

Helping others

Helping other people can be beneficial for your emotional wellbeing and can have physical benefits too. It can reduce stress, boost the immune system and send a rush of endorphins to your brain. Offering to help other people can also distract you from your own problems and seeing other people in worse situations may help put your situation into perspective.

Asking for help

Being able to talk through problems that are causing you stress can help put things into perspective and can even help you clear your thoughts. At CCS Care Services we offer support for all of our carers with our emotional support and wellbeing service.