Dealing with What You’re Dealt
YOU’RE OVERWORKED, OVERWHELMED, AND OVER IT.
Some days you run around frantically trying to stay on top of everything; though you get it all done- it’s hard to do it all day-after-day-after-day. Other days you can barely take out the trash or feed yourself because you feel so burned out. The stress is stealing your sleep, wreaking havoc on your appetite, maybe even killing your sex drive. It is for sure messing with your zest for life.
Your doctor, family, and friends all say the same thing: decrease your stress level. But how can you possibly lower your stress given your work schedule and expectations, volunteer efforts, kids’ needs, health status, and the to-dos that relentlessly stack up each day?
You may find yourself coping with the stress in a variety of ways – zoning out with social media or online surfing, eating, not eating, shopping, not leaving the house unless you have to, gambling, working harder, hardly working. These don’t seem to help, though. The good news is that there are effective, surprisingly simple ways to manage your stress levels so that you can stay productive while still feeling satisfied with life.
In therapy for stress management, we focus on finding the key issues that keep you up at night, problem solving so that they feel more in your control, and learning coping skills to combat the mental, emotional, and physiological effects of stress.
