Stress Management
Introducing Stress Management
There are very many proven skills that we can use to manage stress. These help us to remain calm and effective in high pressure situations, and help us avoid the problems of long term stress.
These skills fall into three main groups:
- Action-oriented skills: In which we seek to confront the problem causing the stress, often changing the environment or the situation;
- Emotionally-oriented skills: In which we do not have the power to change the situation, but we can manage stress by changing our interpretation of the situation and the way we feel about it
- and Acceptance-oriented skills: Where something has happened over which we have no power and no emotional control, and where our focus must be on surviving the stress.
In the rest of this section of Mind Tools, we look at some important techniques in each of these three groups.
This is a much-abridged excerpt from the Understanding Stress and Stress Management?module of Managing Stress for Career Success, the Mind Tools Stress Management Masterclass. As well as covering this material in more detail, it also discusses:
- Long-term stress: The General Adaptation Syndrome and Burnout
- The Integrated Stress Response
- Stress and Health
- Stress and its Affect on the Way We Think
- Pressure & Performance: Flow and the Inverted-U?/li>
These sections give you a deep and robust understanding of stress, helping you to develop your own stress management strategies for handling unique circumstances.
Warning:
Stress can cause severe health problems and, in extreme cases, can cause death. While these stress management techniques have been shown to have a positive effect on reducing stress, they are for guidance only, and readers should take the advice of suitably qualified health professionals if they have any concerns over stress-related illnesses or if stress is causing significant or persistent unhappiness. Health professionals should also be consulted before any major change in diet or levels of exercise.
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