[UPBEAT MUSIC] - The topic of today's video is on some general concepts that would be covered in a general psychology course to help people better deal with stress. Before I begin, I do want to say that this video is meant for academic purposes only, and not as a replacement for the help of a licensed mental health professional. If you feel that stress is causing a big disruption to your life, please make sure you discuss these concerns with a professional. 

Now that I got all that legal stuff out of the way, let me dive into some of the different ways of looking at stress management. One of the first things I wanted to mention is that our understanding of how to deal with stress isn't to try to get a person to remove all stress from their life altogether. This wouldn't be too practical, since life is all about stress. 

Also, it isn't even that good of an idea. Good stress, or eustress, is actually pretty beneficial. It's only the bad stress, or distress, that is detrimental to our overall well-being. So the first thing we need to do is identify the difference between the two. 

Remember, if you watched my general overview video for stress and health, that the biggest factor in knowing whether we are talking about eustress or distress is whether our performance is increasing or if it's suffering. Put another way, eustress leads to us doing better and causes us to improve our performance. Distress does the opposite. It leads to us feeling a sense of not being able to keep up. 

Often, the line between eustress and distress can be drawn at that moment where you start to feel overwhelmed. I know for me, I can tell when something really challenging gets to the point where I start to feel kind of like I'm drowning. This should be a big red flag that causes you to do something to change the situation so that it's more manageable. 

Now that we're able to identify how to know if stress is causing a problem for us or not, let's talk about how to deal with that stress through coping skills. We largely break down coping into two categories-- problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. With problem-focused coping, the goal is to deal with the problem itself. 

So for example, if you feel that your boss at work is being really mean to you, then directly address the problem. Maybe this could mean talking to your boss and seeing if you can work out the problem and maybe develop a better relationship with them. Maybe this means looking for another job, where you feel more comfortable. 

The key to problem-focused coping is that you are directly addressing the problem at hand. This is a much more efficient and direct way of managing stress, because it directly addresses the problem that is causing the stress and seeks to make it better. The difficulty with this is that not every problem can just be fixed. For example, what if you go to your boss to talk to them, but they refuse to talk to you? Maybe you can't find another job because you really depend on the job you have, or there are no other jobs that pay as well, or maybe no jobs available at all. 

In this case, you may have to employ emotion-focused coping. With emotion-focused coping, you aren't seeking to actually change the cause of the stress. Rather, you're trying to change the way that you respond to the stress. 

While this may not be as efficient, because the stress will still remain, it is often the only tool that we have available to us. After all, as I mentioned earlier, stress is a part of our life. While we may try to cut out all the bad stress that we have, sometimes, it just isn't possible. 

With emotion-focused coping, we're looking at different practices that can help us better deal with the stress that we have in our lives. I like to divide them up into those practices that are immediately helpful versus ones that have more of a long-term benefit. The techniques that are immediately helpful are meant to assist you kind of, like, in the heat of the moment-- so when you're experiencing that initial reaction of being stressed or angry and just need to do something to help yourself calm down so that you can think clearly. 

These include things like breathing techniques, body tensing, affirmations, reframing, and exercise. There are a whole host of different breathing techniques that are available. Most of them involve a person simply focusing on their breathing and attempting to control their breath. 

The one that I like to do is called 4, 8, 12. So basically, what 4, 8, 12 is, is that you breathe in slowly through your nose and hold the breath for 4 seconds, then slowly exhale through your mouth. Repeat this again, but hold it for 8 seconds. Then, 12 seconds. Repeat this process as many times as you need until you start to feel it work. 

This is helpful because you can do it in public, around other people, without them really knowing what you're doing. Also, the length of time you hold your breath isn't really that important. There are people that do 5, 15, 20, and some people that do 3, 6, 9. Do what feels comfortable for you, and do what is realistic for you to do. So basically, don't do something that is going to be uncomfortable for you. 

The key is to just focus on your breathing and to try to control it. After all, think about when you're really stressed out, or when you're maybe really angry. Generally, our breathing starts to increase, and some people can even have this so bad that they start to hyperventilate. By doing these breathing techniques, it helps pull our body out of that natural reaction that we have. 

Likewise, body tensing can help work against the natural tendency we have to tense our bodies when we're stressed. With body tensing, what you do is tense various parts of your body, hold that tensing for a certain amount of time, and then relax. Some people like to start at one part of their body-- like, they may start with their feet, and then work their way up towards their head. Others simply tense their whole body. The key here isn't so much the tensing, but rather the forcing of your body to relax and to let go. 

Affirmations are the repetition of comforting words that are directed at yourself and usually not said out loud. For example, if I'm nervous about a job interview, I may have an affirmation that I'll tell myself beforehand, like, you are a strong and confident person, and you're going to be great in this interview. I like to think of affirmations as the opposite of what most of us naturally do when we're nervous, which is to start thinking about all the things that will go wrong. 

Reframing involves changing the way you're cognitively appraising or perceiving a situation. Often, we have a tendency to see events as being much more stressful than they actually may be. For example, if I'm stressed out from being in traffic, then all of a sudden, a person cuts me off, the event itself probably isn't necessarily that bad. What makes it worse is me thinking about how much that person wasn't paying attention, or how bad of a driver that person is, and how they could have caused an accident. 

Reframing would look at a situation like that and say, I don't know why that person did what they did. Maybe they had a good reason to do it, like there was an emergency, and they were in a hurry to get somewhere. Some people are hesitant to do this, because they feel like they're kind of, like, lying to themselves. However, it isn't necessarily lying if you never even really knew the real reason to begin with, and just assumed the worst-case scenario. 

We make situations much worse by assuming things that make these types of events seem like they're a lot worse than they actually may have been. All that reframing does is changes the way that you're making these assumptions in order for them to be a little bit more positive. If you'd like to know more about breathing techniques, body tensing, affirmations, or reframing, I'd suggest doing a little searching online. There are tons of videos that can help walk you through each of these different skills. 

One of the best ways to handle stress, both in the short term and long term, is with exercise. When we exercise, our bodies naturally start to release endorphins that help us get more of a sense of well-being and relaxation. It helps to force us from a sympathetic nervous system state into a parasympathetic one. People who exercise regularly usually report having fewer issues with managing stress, and also, exercise helps mitigate against some of those negative health consequences of stress overall. 

Social support has also been identified as a very important long-term factor in helping people better deal with stress. This means having someone-- whether it's family, friends, a religious group, or a therapist-- that you can talk to and receive support from. It doesn't really matter how you get the social support, just that you have some sort of support system in place. It also means that you use it. Many people are hesitant to talk openly about their problems, but we've seen time and time again that people that do generally tend to manage those problems a lot quicker and a lot more effectively, and in a much more beneficial way than those who don't. 

In closing, I wanted to mention that everyone has developed, throughout their lives, some mechanism for dealing with stress. Many times, this can be unhealthy habits, like anger, emotional eating, or the use of alcohol and drugs. These unhealthy coping mechanisms only compound the problems we face and lead to greater problems down the road. Learning how to properly manage stress in a healthy way is a lifelong journey. 

Think of the different coping skills in this video as being tools in your toolbox. Some things may work better than others. Some of the skills may work in certain situations, or for only a short period of time. Learning to use them and learning what works best for you is something that only you can discover. 

Please let me in the comments section if you do try any of these techniques out for yourself, or if you happen to have any other techniques that you'd like to share that have been beneficial for you. Thanks for watching, everybody. Have a great day. 

[UPBEAT MUSIC]