Stress and anxiety are among the most significant mental health challenges we face today. In this video, discover practical strategies to manage stress, build resilience, and prevent relapse. Empower yourself with the tools to thrive in even the most challenging situations. Watch now and take the first step toward a healthier, more balanced life!
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See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
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00:00Stress is part of our everyday life. We need to learn to manage it. Sometimes we need to
00:11learn to manage it as it happens, whether we need to self-regulate during the event
00:16itself. We can use some breathing techniques, we can use combined paired muscle relaxation
00:23breathing techniques, we can even use some temperature control, we can use ice cubes
00:31to help us regulate. So this would be during the stressful event. Following the stress
00:37itself, we need to de-stress daily as it goes, so as to avoid building up stress daily. What
00:44we usually would recommend is once you're done with your daily activities that you find
00:50some time for yourself. But you can do something you like, going to the gym, going for a run,
00:57doing some hobbies, painting, coloring, some Legos, some Sudoku, any mind games. We can
01:04also de-stress by using our senses. So we have five senses, so we can watch videos,
01:13we can watch movies, we can watch old pictures on our phones that bring us good emotions.
01:20Another one is our hearing sense, we can listen to music. We can have some music and we have
01:26our own playlists that we like, that we can use to de-stress, maybe even on the drive
01:33home after work or after the caterer's heat. Another sense is our smell, so maybe using
01:43nice perfumes, fragrances around the house. All these are ways to de-stress, even a spa
01:50or a good bathing time. It's a good activity for de-stressing. One of the other things
01:59is guided imagining. It's really useful. It's where you imagine yourself in any place
02:04you want to be. And again, you use your five senses to really feel that place, whether
02:09it's what you see, what you hear, what you smell, are you at night, are you in the morning.
02:20So you use your senses to really feel the place you're in. Sometimes de-stress is too
02:26much. Maybe we need to push these thoughts away because I need to take care of myself
02:30now, I need to eat, I need to sleep, I need to drink, I need to exercise. And then maybe
02:36tomorrow will be a better time to deal with the stress. So take it easy and take care of yourself.
02:42Our stress is caused by our thinking. So sometimes we use something called CBT,
02:49which is cognitive behavioral therapy, to identify our maladaptive thinking techniques.
02:56Cognitive is basically understanding our thoughts, what evidence we have for it,
03:01is it just a judgment? Do we have all the facts we need for our situation? We do something called
03:10Socratic questioning regarding what's the worst that can happen and what if this was real? Then
03:16we do something called detecting our cognitive distortions. So do we have all or none
03:25thinking? We have black and white. We have overgeneralization. Do we minimize? So we check
03:34what kind of thoughts we usually go to, what are our cognitive distortions. And then we use CBT to
03:44restructure how we're thinking, change the way we're thinking about it, and then defining what
03:51we would like to do to improve our situation. We have mindfulness and we have meditations.
03:57They're actually kind of like the opposite of each other. So mindfulness is when we need to
04:04be more in the moment of here and now. These are some skills and techniques that we use to train
04:10our mind to focus more. So we can be mindful to our thoughts internally. We can even be mindful
04:18to our emotions and we do some body scans to our bodies and feelings. Or we can be mindful to the
04:26externals. So what's happening around us? What's the situation? What can't I see? What am I judging?
04:34What am I missing? So it helps me be more focused, more oriented to what's going around me so I can
04:42manage the situation better. For the meditation, I need to take a good resting position. So I need
04:49to choose a quiet room. I need to choose some music that would help me or the guided applications.
04:58The room temperature needs to be in the way I like it, whether it's cold, whether it's hot,
05:04no matter. It's according to each person's preference. Following that, we lay in a position
05:10whether you can lie on your back, you can lie cross-legged, you can sit cross-legged. It
05:15differs from one person to another. Meditation is clearing your head from whatever thoughts are
05:24usually going through your head and just enjoying and listening and interacting with whatever feeds
05:31you and listening to. So it could be you're in a forest, you're listening to the sound of the stream
05:38and it's a video that keeps going on or it could be sounds of the ocean, it could be sounds of
05:44birds. There are different methods of meditation. It's used to unplug from what's happening around
05:52me as opposed to mindfulness which actually gets me more into the here and now.