How To Deal With Stress:
An Online Anti stress Center
On this page:
A Diagram Showing Stress At Work
Stress is a problem for everyone
Deal with the root causes of stress and leave behind all those strategies that serve only to mask its effects.
Stop existing and start living: learn practical methods to help you stop it taking over your life. Find total stress relief by learning how to manage stress from its roots.
Believe me, coping with stress becomes so much easier once you understand the principles behind it.
Everyone is affected, in one way or another, so it is essential that we all have an informed knowledge of what it is, how it manifests itself and how to deal with it.
What are the symptoms to look out for?
If you are ignoring this important issue thinking " this site does not concern me," you might just be wrong since you won't see the truck com
ing when it hits you.
Can stress affect your overall health? Yes, it certainly can.
(Learn to deal with stress: See the what is stress page for more information on symptoms of stress.)
The problem manifests itself in so many different ways (too many for this site to address), as such it pays to be prepared for it.
By now you are probably thinking: how can this site help?
Deal with stress:
Take it from me; a professional who has spent the last 15 years helping people in dealing with emotional stress (learn more about me), stress is a real chameleon in the affairs of life.
From my experience, I have learnt to recognize all the colours and shades of stress. I have become so bewildered by my observations of how stress impacts on the lives of many people, whilst they remain oblivious to it.
Like a parasite, the tensions, it creates are able to weave themselves around the mind of anyone, and like a leech, suck the life out of them.
For the above reasons, I decided to create this site to share my experience and enable people with the information, they need to set them free from the chains of stress.
In addition, the site also acts as a hub where people can share their experiences of the strategies that worked for them.
(Learn to deal with stress by checking out our relaxation forum)
Stress reducers: relaxation and exercise
Deal with stress:
It has mostly been known that activities like relaxation, exercise, massage, etc. can reduce stress levels.
If you struggle with recurring high levels of stress, however, it is likely that you have wondered why these stress-reducing activities fail to keep your stress levels down permanently.
Almost like a tug of war, you go to the gym or practice relaxation strategies only to find that your stress levels soon begin to drift upwards again. So, you go back to your stress-reducing activity, and the cycle goes on and on.
If you struggle with stress, I'm sure you recognize what I am talking about.
Our mind-set plays a major role in the recurring nature of bad stress.
The stress-reducing activities are really important, and I always advise people to get into the habit of using them regularly. (Check out some interesting Ideas on the best ways to relax)
However, the biggest contributing and mostly overlooked factor in the experience of bad stress is our mind-set.
My theory is this; if you add activities that are geared towards changing your stress inducing mind-set to your usual stress reducing activities, you will soon be able to say farewell to bad stress for good. With these mind-set skills, you will be able to sniff out the psychological effects of stress and stop stress before it can have an impact on you.
(Learn to deal with stress by reviewing our Biggest causes of stress forum)
How To Handle Stress Using Our Mind-set
Our mind-set can be a really complicated thing.
I remember one cold winter's day when I was walking from where I had parked my car going to my office. The road was covered with hard ice and was very treacherous.
I found myself almost slipping with every step.
I can remember seeing an image in my mind of myself falling backwards, hitting my head and fainting. As a result of the image I hung on to anything I could find for dear life.
Then it happened…
I noticed this young teenager who must have been about 16 years old skidding over the ice. He had his hands behind his back and was moving calmly and elegantly across the ice, one foot after another in a skating fashion. It was clear he was not concerned at all.
I was absolutely gobsmacked and slightly ashamed that I had let the ice threaten me insuch a manner. I knew how to ice skate so I decided to do what the teenager was doing.
Almost instantly the ice did not feel so threatening any more. I already had the skill to master it. All it took was for me to realise this and apply the skill
To develop the necessary mind-set skills to deal adequately with stress, you need to become familiar with the colour of your stress.
We all get stressed due to different reasons and each person's experience of stress will be different from everyone else's. This in itself can make stress a complex thing to grapple with.
(Find useful advice and learn to deal with stress in our advice on anxiety section)
Stress Management Strategies Using Stress Colours
Deal with stress: To simplify the understanding of stress, I like to think of stress in three colours.
The diagramabove shows the relationships between the stress colours.
- Red stress which is caused by feelings of irritability and anger (fight)
- Blue stress which is caused by feelings of sadness and depression (freeze/ given up)
- Green stress which is caused by feelings of fear and anxiety (flight/ avoid)
An explanation of the diagram
Our life experiences affect us by either making us increasingly irritable, sad or fearful.
Our experience of bad stress increases as our irritability, sadness or fearfulness increase. In other words, if we are more prone towards red stress, we become increasingly stressed as we become gradually more angry.
In the same way, if we are more prone towards blue stress,we become increasingly stressed as we become progressively depressed.
Likewise, if we are more prone towards green stress,we become increasingly stressed as we become increasingly anxious.
As the diagram shows anger sadness and fear can also feed each other, intensifying the experience of bad stress.
If anger is turned inwards it tends to lead to self-attacking thinking and behaviours which bring on feelings of depression.
Likewise we may blame others for making us feel depressed which ignites feelings of animosity towards the blamed person.
In a similar way anger may lead us to become anxious of the damages we might cause others and the possible repercussion to ourselves and feelings of anxiety may cause us to rely on anger as an instrument to keep us safe.
( Deal with stress: See how our anger disorder forum can help you.)
Our stress colours also determine the way we react to our physical symptoms of stress.
Deal with stress: We experience more anger towards other people since red stress makes us blame other's for the physical symptoms of stress we see in ourselves.
In a simillar way we become more depressed (self hatred) since blue stress makes us blame ourselves for our physical symptoms of stress ( we see ourselves as weak, failures, useless worthless etc.).
(Learn to deal with stress: Find out more about depression in our Situational Depression page.)
Likewise, as a result of our physical symptoms of stress, we experience more anxiety and feelings of being more unsafe since green stress makes us vulnerable to attacks from others (i.e. verbal or physical attacks, negative judgements or rejection).
Important Stress management tip:
Our reactions to physical symptoms of stress and the negative reactions to subsequent ineffective behavioral and decision-making processes we exhibit can lead to various emotional disorders.
As such it is important to take note of what these reactions look like so that we can protect our emotional health.
(Panic attacks often occurs at the heights of our stress levels. Click here to learn more about panic attack disorder.)
In my professional opinion looking at the maintenance of stress through stress colours in this way is one of the most effective stress reduction tips I can suggest as it gives you a bull's eye insight on the mind-set skills you need to target to defeat stress.
(Learn to deal with stress: Click here to find out how medication for stress can help you manage stress better.)
Even a reliance on stress and anxiety medication will fail to produce the degree of long term progress you can achieve from addressing your mind-set using the ideas suggested here.
( Deal with stress: See how our depression forum can help you.)
Controlling Stress by Mastering Your Stress Colours
Learning to deal with stress by Identifying the colour of your stress:
Your stress related difficulty is due to red stress (irritability and anger) if you have a tendency to
- be Impatient
- be prone to shame
- be short tempered
- be increasingly critical of others
- be frequently cold and less empathetic towards others
- personalize things and conclude people are purposefully doing things to hurt you
(Learn to deal with stress: Click here for self help anger management strategies.)
Important note: It is good to see these characteristics of red stress on a sliding scale. In other words the more stressed you become, the more intense your exhibition of these characteristics become.
Your stress related difficulty is due to blue stress (sadness and depression) if you have a tendency to
- Self-criticize a lot
- Feel guilty a lot
- Be prone to shame
- Feel self-pity
- Ruminate (reflecting on past negatives and worrying about how this proves that the future
- will only be negative)
- Become depressed about depression
( Deal with stress: Learn how to overcome depression.)
Again just like with red stress, the more stressed you become, the more intense your exhibition of these characteristics becomes.
Your stress related difficulty is due to green stress (anxiety and fear) if you have a tendency to
- Be prone to shame
- Make negative predictions about your future
- Worry in a dysfunctional way
- Become fearful of fear
- Worry about worry
- Avoid things on a regular basis
- Procrastinate a lot
( Deal with stress: See our Anxiety pages for more on Threats and anxiety)
Again like the other two stress colours, the more stressed you become, the more intense your exhibition of these characteristics becomes.
( Deal with stress: See how our panic attack forum can help you.)
Developing Your Stress Management Plan
Master your stress colour:
Deal with stress: Once you have been able to identify the colour of you stress, then it is a simpler task to step through each identified characteristic and learn or develop the particular skills needed to overcome bad stress.
The aim of this site is to provide you with the know-how. All you have to do is to navigate to the section of the site which focuses on your type of stress and begin the process of learning the various ways to manage stress that have been suggested.
Try it out for yourself and see if it works? I only ask that you pay it forward and give feedback in the stress therapist forums. Help others by telling what has helped you the most in your quest to find ways to relieve stress.
Find out about the most likely traps you might fall for as a result of your stress colours.
If you stress is irritability and anger related, learn how to see the bigger picture and not respond impulsively to assumptions.
For anger: Learn how to manage your temper and set yourself free from the frequent anger outburst.
Prevent yourself from making mistakes you might regret for a life time.
Learn how to access your wise mind so that you can make wise decisions and take wise actions when someone annoys you.
( Deal with stress: Is controlling anger possible? Click here to find out.)
Learn not to be so fearful and guilty about anger. Learn how use anger safely. Learn how to make anger work better to your advantage.
For depression: Learn to recognize self-criticism for what it is and find out how to use self-criticism better to your advantage. Recognize how toxic guilt and shame can be and find out how you can be more balanced in your thinking.
This will ensure that you remain a nice, kind thoughtful person without the strong feeling to punish yourself that is so common in depression. Learn how to place the past in the past and focus on a promising better tomorrow.
Learn how to live above the shadow of failures and mistakes. Learn how to turn mistakes into tools for self-betterment.
Learn to open your mind to vast possibilities and opportunities that are already around you.
(Learn how to deal with stress: See our beating depression page.)
For anxiety: If you stress is fear and anxiety related, learn mind skills that will help you cope better with the fear of negative judgments from other's.
Learn to stop making negative predictions about the future and maximize your opportunities in the present.
Learn to know how to use worry as a tool to effectively manage your concerns about your future and learn to see anxiety as a friendly and essential emotion for survival.
( Deal with stress: See how the what is stress forum can help you.)
Are your stress colours mixed?
Deal with stress: We all experience all three stress colours in varying degrees. It is common that one stress colour might overpower the other stress colours, however, many people experience an intense amount of two or all three colours interchangeably.
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You can tell that you experience mixed stress colours if you often find yourself experiencing moderate to intense anger sadness and anxiety interchangeably and regularly.
Your personal stress management plan may require you to understand all the colours to some degree.
Here, all you have to do is to choose one of the stress colours (if you can select which is the strongest, the better) and work your way through each colour as described above.
Let's work through a few examples to show how these strategies can be applied.
Case examples of stress
Case example 1: stress and depression
A client once told me that he spent his whole life trying to be successful; believing that success was what he needed to make him feel OK. After reaching the top of his chosen career group (earning over one hundred thousand pounds a year) he realised that he did not feel as successful as he had expected.
He kept trying harder, determining to reach 101% perfection. Unfortunately, the harder he tried the more desperate he felt (the expectations he placed on himself were greater than his abilities to cope) until he suffered a breakdown and lost everything he had worked so hard for.
What colour of stress is depicted here? If you thought blue stress, you'd be correct.
This client's problems were driven by blue stress characterized by his feelings of sadness and depression.
So the mind-set skills he would require the most are skills that will help him criticize himself less, learn to see the positives in experiences of failure, learn to stop discounting positive experiences etc.
Case example 2 stress and anxiety
Another client's life was overruled by a strong need to think ahead of all the people she met and every situation she encountered.
She needed to have a planned action or response for every situation, otherwise she would feel vulnerable. She struggled with a huge amount of "what if" thoughts (like "what if I fail," "what if I make a fool of myself" and "what if they are horrible to me").
As a direct result of her need to have everything planned, her life became monotonous, boring, uneventful and predictable. She stuck with what she knew best (i.e. anything that won't lead to pain or failure).
This meant that she had to settle for low grade jobs, which served to make her increasingly dissatisfied with her situation. Eventually, the level of shame she began to experience became so unbearable that she also suffered a breakdown.
What colour of stress is depicted here? If you thought green stress, you'd be correct.
This client's problems were driven by green stress characterized by her feelings of fear and anxiety.
So the mind-set skills she would require the most are skills that will help her worry less, learn to live more in the moment as opposed to worrying about future negative outcomes etc.
Case example 3: stress and anger mixed with anxiety and depression
Sometime ago, a young mother of two (first child; a girl who was two years of age and second child; a boy three months old) informed me that she felt like running away. She just didn't feel like she could cope with the demands that her children were placing on her.
To make matters worse, her husband, the kids' father was never around to help look after them (He was always at work). As she was not working at the time, she felt guilty about asking him for help, especially as she knew that his job was very stressful.
Her frustrations led her to thoughts of smacking, hurting or deserting her children. She felt constantly irritable whenever she was home with the kids and was always snapping at them.
This led to an intense amount of guilt, as she struggled to understand how she could have such thoughts against children she loved so dearly. She feared that something was wrong with her since she could not shake the frustrations off no matter how hard she tried. Eventually, she also suffered from a breakdown.
What colour of stress is depicted here? If you thought red stress, you'd be almost correct.
This client's problems were indeed mostly driven by Red stress characterized by her feelings of irritability and anger. However, her feelings of guilt and fear suggests that her stress colours are somewhat mixed.
As a result of this, the mind-set skills she would require the most are skills that will help her understand people's motives better, communicate her feelings of upset better, learn to stop taking things too personally, etc.
This client will, however, also benefit from knowing how to appropriate blame and responsibility in a balanced way as well as understanding that it is normal to feel frustrated under certain circumstances.
( Deal with stress: See our anger disorder pages.)
So how can this site help you?
Deal with stress:
- You get free access to numerous articles on stress management like this one.
- If you patiently read each page of this site carefully, and follow all the guidelines methodically, you will be able to uncover the shades or types of stress that are affecting you and learn how you can break free from them.
- Even if you cannot pinpoint effects of stress in your life at this moment, you will be able to find out how stress would impact on you if it were to strike.
- You will learn practical strategies that work for your particular type of stress and have an Idea of how long it will take for you to beat it.
- You will begin to enjoy life again, just like when one client made me smile when she said, "I didn't realise this before, but as I was walking down the town, coming for my appointment, I started to notice so many beautiful colours. I had completely forgotten they existed. Now even the aroma coming from the bakery catches my attention." She made this statement because she was beginning to feel alive again.
Act now!
Deal with stress:
Hopefully, I have been able show you how important it is to equip yourself with the knowledge provided for you here- free of charge.
If you have any questions, whilst exploring the information on this site, why not visit the various forums that have been made available and ask your questions. l am certain you will get a suitable answer.
Spread the word. Tell others about the articles on stress you have found most useful.
Don't hesitate to take action now, deal with stress: stop existing and start living.
Claim your Free Cognitive Behavioural Stress Therapy Sessions Here
More Stress Management Links
A page describing the connections between stress and situational depression.
Best ways to relax forum: A forum to have all your questions on relaxation answered. If relaxation is not working for you, why not drop in and find out what you can do to make it more useful.
Is anger or anger disorder controllable? Join the discussion and find out
Who is stresstherapist.net? find out about me: Adewale Ademuyiwa, BcSHons Comunity Specialist Practice, Post Grad Cert in Cognitive Behavioural therapy, DipHe Mental Health Nursing, Diploma in Mentoring in Public practice. Address:- Watford, Hertfordshire, Uk
be happy: Adewale Ademuyiwa's answer to a specific question about being happy
Aspergers and stress: An online interview with Robyn Steward ( a brilliant lady I met who has aspergers syndrome) on her view of the effects of stress on people with aspergers. She is also an international speaker on the subject of the autistic spectrum of disorders
Are you trying to find out if a book really meets it's claim when its suggests it has the answer to stress, depression, anxiety, panic attacks and anger disorder. If this is you, you might fond these pages helpful
Natural Depression Treatments: A review of a book that reveals the secrets to the natural treatments for depression
On these group of pages, I aim to help to help you pinpoit the things you do that increases your experience of bad stress and suggests practical steps you can take to change them.
Self Help Anger Management: How to manage your anger or rage when you feel you have been treated unfairly. If you find yourself in a situation where you perceive you have been treated unfairly, there are a number of things you can do.
Overcoming Low Self Esteem: Stop the worrying and the headaches. Solve many of life's problems by using your unmet needs. Learn how you can use your unmet needs to deal with low self esteem and achieve a happier lifestyle.
The intention of this page is to provide a list of therapist from various fields to help add value to the experience of vistors visiting stresstherapist.net
Fun ways to relax: Some interesting and cheap ways of relaxing at home
A place to ask questions about anxiety
Panic attack forum:Let stresstherapist.net help with your panic attack
Overcome depression: On this particular page you will find 3 easy steps that will help anybody to deal with the lack of motivation that is always present with depression.
I Cannot Cope Anymore: Inability to cope is not caused by an inherent internal weakness. The aim of this page is to show that it is the circumstances in life that cause us to learn to cope poorly with emotions.
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