Four Techniques to De-Stress in Tense Situations

Whether it's our finances, our relationships, or our health, life frequently throws havoc at us. Employers spend $300 billion annually on workplace-related stress, and 50% of workers in sectors including banking, charities, and healthcare are burned out.

As a result, we simply keep going despite everything while relying on adrenaline. We overbook ourselves, get more coffee, and answer one more email. We believe that if we remain fired up constantly, we will eventually succeed.

A tense mind versus a relaxed mind-

Never was stress intended to be a constant state of being. According to Stanford University professor Robert Sapolsky, you should only experience stress in the final five minutes of your life. Your stress reaction is meant to save your life when a wild animal is chasing you through the savanna; it activates your immune system, muscles, and attention to get you out of harm's way as quickly as possible. When an animal flees, their body immediately switches from "fight-or-flight" mode to "rest-and-digest," where the parasympathetic nervous system is at work refuelling them.

Since stress depletes your body, your health, and your vitality, it should only last a short while. It affects your decision-making and emotional intelligence, among other things. When you're tense, you're more prone to react to things than think things through rationally.

Additionally, you view the world differently. Because stress narrows our perspective, we are unable to see the wider picture. Our focus widens as we grow more relaxed. We actually notice more stuff. Participants in one study underwent a three-month meditation training programme. The attentional blink task, in which you watch images appear quickly one after another, was the next activity they undertook. Usually, when participants perform this activity, some of the target images escape their attention. However, following the mindfulness training, individuals were able to notice more of the target images than they had before the retreat, indicating that their mental state had improved.

The ability to attend more means that you are able to interact with others more effectively and are able to notice more things about them. For evolutionary reasons, humans become more self-focused under conditions of high stress and anxiety (or any other negative emotion): When our ancestors experienced high levels of stress, it was likely due to a survival crisis. Being self-centered helped you to preserve your life.

We are more prone to become upset if a colleague doesn't perform to our standards when we are under stress since we are less likely to recognise if they are worn out or sad. The day you will likely have more empathy is the day you are calmer and happier, when you will notice your colleague and take the time to reach out and see if there is anything you can do to support them.

Because you're not continuously exhausting yourself and living your days with your sympathetic nervous system in overdrive, you can manage your energy when you're calm. You can focus better and complete tasks more quickly when you are calm.

How to achieve mental tranquilly-

We are aware of how to become anxious. The majority of us are very skilled at triggering our adrenal glands and becoming tense. The question then becomes: How do you unwind? Numerous behaviours that not only feel good but also put us in a calmer, more relaxed condition, where we can better handle whatever life throws at us, have been identified by research.

Breathing.He looked down after the explosion and realised that his legs had been severely broken below the knee. He remembered a breathing practise he had heard about for extreme combat conditions in that instant of shock, panic, and pain.

He was able to fulfil his responsibility, which was to make sure everyone else in the car was okay. He had the foresight to order the call for assistance, tourniquet his own legs, and support them before he passed out, saving his life.

We sometimes take for granted the profound emotional control that our breathing provides. Your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for your body's calming response, can be activated through your breath.

Because 50% of veterans don't experience any relief from counselling or medicine for their PTSD symptoms, we turned to breathing to aid them. We started teaching the veterans various breathing techniques despite their scepticism. After the week-long treatment, several of them no longer met the criteria for having post-traumatic stress disorder, and that maintained for up to a year later. Within a few days, some of them began sleeping without the aid of medicine.

You may alter how you feel by controlling your breathing. In a different study, researchers monitored people experiencing various emotions and discovered that each emotion was associated with a unique pattern of breathing. After that, they instructed others in various breathing techniques before asking them how they felt. It came to light that performing those breathing exercises had in fact stirred up the feelings.

Self-compassion-We often judge ourselves worst. It's a misconception that being critical of ourselves will make us more self-aware and motivated to work more. In fact, a tonne of evidence suggests that self-criticism really undermines our capacity for resilience. When we are hard on ourselves, we are less likely to learn from our errors. Self-critical individuals frequently fail to recover from setbacks and have higher levels of anxiety and sadness.

Imagine someone who is participating in a marathon for the first time ever and trips and falls. You're a loser, you're no runner, someone on the sidelines yells. Why are you in this place? Head home. That individual is our inner, critical voice. Self-compassion is the ability to accept that everyone makes mistakes and that this is natural. You are absolutely fantastic, and you are crushing this.