How to Cope with Stress - Stress Management Tutorial and Exercises
by Joyce Henderson, RN
The Stress Recovery Cycle
While the physiological response to stress takes only seconds, recovery to equilibrium requires about thirty minutes. Time is needed for:
- emotional release
- processing the event
- perhaps, physical rest
- return to schedule
- restoration of equilibrium.
Far too often the scenario is something like this: you awake a few minutes late, have children to get off to school, can't find the car keys, have to cope with traffic driving to work, arrive late for work and can't find a parking space. In the space of the first one hour of the day, you may have confronted six to twelve stressful events, with only a few minutes between them, not nearly enough time for restoration of equilibrium. And the day is only beginning.
When there are too many stressors back to back, your body never has a chance to through the recovery cycle. What is needed is a comprehensive plan for daily coping with stress.
There is no quick cure. A day off? A week off? Both may help, however, a better approach is to reduce the accumulation of overwhelming stress by becoming more stress-resistant. Identifying sources of stress helps, but it is more important to identify your own responses to stress and learn how to modify them.
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