Overview
Yoga pose
Yoga poses, such as the warrior seen here, involve precise alignment of your arms, legs and torso. The balance of poses and breathing help you achieve stress management and relaxation.
Stress management offers a range of strategies to help you better deal with stress and difficulty (adversity) in your life. Managing stress can help you lead a more balanced, healthier life.
Stress is an automatic physical, mental and emotional response to a challenging event. It’s a normal part of everyone’s life. When used positively, stress can lead to growth, action and change. But negative, long-term stress can lessen your quality of life.
Stress management approaches include:
- Learning skills such as problem-solving, prioritizing tasks and time management.
- Enhancing your ability to cope with adversity. For example, you may learn how to improve your emotional awareness and reactions, increase your sense of control, find greater meaning and purpose in life, and cultivate gratitude and optimism.
- Practicing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, yoga, meditation, tai chi, exercise and prayer.
- Improving your personal relationships.
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What is stress?
Stress is a normal human reaction that happens to everyone. In fact, the human body is designed to experience stress and react to it. When you experience changes or challenges (stressors), your body produces physical and mental responses. That’s stress.
Stress responses help your body adjust to new situations. Stress can be positive, keeping us alert, motivated and ready to avoid danger. For example, if you have an important test coming up, a stress response might help your body work harder and stay awake longer. But stress becomes a problem when stressors continue without relief or periods of relaxation.
What happens to the body during stress?
The body’s autonomic nervous system controls your heart rate, breathing, vision changes and more. Its built-in stress response, the “fight-or-flight response,” helps the body face stressful situations.
When a person has long-term (chronic) stress, continued activation of the stress response causes wear and tear on the body. Physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms develop.
Physical symptoms of stress include:
- Aches and pains.
- Chest pain or a feeling like your heart is racing.
- Exhaustion or trouble sleeping.
- Headaches, dizziness or shaking.
- High blood pressure.
- Muscle tension or jaw clenching.
- Stomach or digestive problems.
- Trouble having sex.
- Weak immune system.
Stress can lead to emotional and mental symptoms like:
- Anxiety or irritability.
- Depression.
- Panic attacks.
- Sadness.
Often, people with chronic stress try to manage it with unhealthy behaviors, including:
- Drinking alcohol too much or too often.
- Gambling.
- Overeating or developing an eating disorder.
- Participating compulsively in sex, shopping or internet browsing.
- Smoking.
- Using drugs.
How is stress diagnosed?
Stress is subjective — not measurable with tests. Only the person experiencing it can determine whether it’s present and how severe it feels. A healthcare provider may use questionnaires to understand your stress and how it affects your life.
If you have chronic stress, your healthcare provider can evaluate symptoms that result from stress. For example, high blood pressure can be diagnosed and treated.
What are some strategies for stress relief?
You can’t avoid stress, but you can stop it from becoming overwhelming by practicing some daily strategies:
- Exercise when you feel symptoms of stress coming on. Even a short walk can boost your mood.
- At the end of each day, take a moment to think about what you’ve accomplished — not what you didn’t get done.
- Set goals for your day, week and month. Narrowing your view will help you feel more in control of the moment and long-term tasks.
- Consider talking to a therapist or your healthcare provider about your worries.
What are some ways to prevent stress?
Many daily strategies can help you keep stress at bay:
- Try relaxation activities, such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, breathing exercises and muscle relaxation. Programs are available online, in smartphone apps, and at many gyms and community centers.
- Take good care of your body each day. Eating right, exercising and getting enough sleep help your body handle stress much better.
- Stay positive and practice gratitude, acknowledging the good parts of your day or life.
- Accept that you can’t control everything. Find ways to let go of worry about situations you cannot change.
- Learn to say “no” to additional responsibilities when you are too busy or stressed.
- Stay connected with people who keep you calm, make you happy, provide emotional support and help you with practical things. A friend, family member or neighbor can become a good listener or share responsibilities so that stress doesn’t become overwhelming.
How long does stress last?
Stress can be a short-term issue or a long-term problem, depending on what changes in your life. Regularly using stress management techniques can help you avoid most physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms of stress.
When should I talk to a doctor about stress?
You should seek medical attention if you feel overwhelmed, if you are using drugs or alcohol to cope, or if you have thoughts about hurting yourself. Your primary care provider can help by offering advice, prescribing medicine or referring you to a therapist.
A note from Cleveland Clinic
It’s natural and normal to be stressed sometimes. But long-term stress can cause physical symptoms, emotional symptoms and unhealthy behaviors. Try relieving and managing stress using a few simple strategies. But if you feel overwhelmed, talk to your doctor.
Video Transcript
What Is Stress Management?
Our increasingly busy lives cause our minds a lot of stress. Stress is mental tension caused by demanding, taxing or burdensome circumstances. Stress doesn’t just affect our mental state and mood; it affects our physical health as well. When we are very stressed, a hormone called cortisol is released into our bloodstream, suppressing the functioning of our immune, digestive and reproductive systems. That is why it is so important to practice stress management in order to keep our minds and bodies healthy.
Stress management consists of making changes to your life if you are in a constant stressful situation, preventing stress by practicing self-care and relaxation and managing your response to stressful situations when they do occur.
Before we move on to stress management techniques, it’s important to note that not all stress is bad. Stress is actually a survival response when our body thinks that it is in danger. That is why our sympathetic nervous system kicks in and makes our heart rate increase and gives us a burst of the energy hormone, adrenaline, so that we can deal with whatever situation is being thrown at us. This is also called our flight or fight response.
The problem is when we deal with constant stress and worry, or when we don’t know how to properly manage a stressful situation. That’s why stress management is tremendously important for our health, quality of life and relationships.
Benefits of Stress Management
It has already been said that stress causes mental and physical strain, tension and even illness. It can affect all areas of our lives. Some examples of health problems stress can cause include:
This diagram below also shows ways that stress affects different aspects of our selves:
These are some ways that stress affects different aspects of our lives. 
Stress management is beneficial to reduce blood pressure, heart disease, digestive troubles and many more physical ailments. It also helps improve sleep, mental health, cognition and libido. There are simply too many benefits to list them all. It is clear to see why stress management is so important. Now, let’s learn some stress management tips.
Stress Management Techniques
There are many ways to reduce stress in your life, from exercise to journaling to meditation. Let’s look at some of the most common forms of stress management, including physical, mental, social, intellectual and environmental techniques.
Physical
There are various physical techniques you can use. One of these is yoga. There are many videos for this exercise involving body stretching and strengthening online. You can begin your day with 15 minutes of yoga to let go of tension in your body and to clear your mind.
A morning jog or other forms of cardiovascular exercise can help with releasing the happy hormones, endorphins, into your system and can help prevent feelings of stress throughout the day.
Progressive muscle relaxation is another option. This involves starting with your toes and moving all the way up to your forehead, tensing one body part for five to ten seconds and then releasing or relaxing.
You can also improve your nutrition to help manage stress. Cortisol, the hormone released when stressed, causes people to crave sugars and high carb foods. High sugar in the body can cause mood swings and energy crashes after the high. Diets rich in vitamins with vegetables and fruits can regulate hormones, mood and stress levels. Getting enough of the B vitamin complex can help people feel energized, which also reduces stress.
Finally, getting a massage can relieve muscle tension caused by stress, while getting enough sleep gives the body enough time to repair and rejuvenate every night.
Mental
Let’s now look at some mental techniques to manage stress. The first of these is meditation. This requires that you practice a state of ‘no mind,’ or a state of mind without or with minimal thinking. It is helpful to sit in a comfortable position, perhaps cross-legged and bring your focus to your breath, to a repeated phrase, i.e., ‘I am relaxed.’
Guided imagery is another technique. Close your eyes and think about all of the details, specifically regarding the five senses, of one of your favorite relaxing places like a beach, the mountains or a forest, and imagine that you are there.
You can also use deep breathing. Take two counts of breath in through your nose and two counts out through your mouth. Focus on your breathing while doing so.
It’s also helpful to be completely present. Take your mind off guilt and regret of the past, as well as worry and anxiety about the future. Take in the sights, smells, sounds and beauty in your current environment like you have never experienced it before.
The last mental technique is to listen to relaxing music to put your mind at a state of ease.
Social
There are a couple social techniques to try, including socialization and laughter. Talking with family and friends can provide a source of support, validation and laughter. Laughter, on the other hand, can release feel-good neurotransmitters, like endorphins, in the brain. It also causes oxygen to release into your system and saturate your organs. Laughing also raises your blood pressure, but only temporarily, then quickly goes back down, creating a feeling of deep relaxation and satisfaction.
Intellectual
Two intellectual techniques are creative activities or hobbies and journaling. Immersing yourself in a creative pursuit or hobby can take your mind off worries and raise self-esteem. On the other hand, journaling allows you to take your stress and unspoken feelings to paper before you go to sleep at night.
Environmental
Finally, try some environmental techniques to manage your stress, such as using counseling or support groups and doing volunteer work. Counseling or support groups provide opportunities for speaking with someone who understands your worries and are a healthy way to reduce stress. Volunteer work allows you to help others who are disadvantaged or in need. This can put your own problems into perspective, thus reducing your own stress.
As you can see, there are plenty of stress management methods that can reduce stress, anxiety and tension in one’s life.
Lesson Summary
Let’s review. Stress is mental tension caused by demanding, taxing or burdensome circumstances. When not properly managed, stress can lead to various health problems, including heart disease, depression, breathing problems and diabetes. Stress management consists of making changes to your life if you are in a constant stressful situation, preventing stress by practicing self-care and relaxation and managing your response to stressful situations when they do occur. Stress management can help lower blood pressure and physical illness and improve cognition. There are many stress management techniques to try, including physical, mental, social, intellectual and environmental techniques. Some of these include yoga, healthy eating, exercise, massage, meditation, deep breathing, hobbies, socialization, journaling, volunteer work and counseling groups.
Learning Outcomes
After this lesson, you should be ready to complete the following tasks:
- Define stress and recall its harmful effects on the body
- Explain what stress management is and its benefits
- Describe several stress management techniques
