Attend Stress Management Counseling

Everyone suffers from stress from time to time, but sometimes stress can start affecting your life. Stress is how your body reacts to the demands in your life. However, if you experience severe stress, either acute or chronic, without learning how to manage it, you may need to go to counseling to help relieve this stress. If you get the right kind of counseling, you can make lifestyle changes and learn coping mechanisms to help with your stress management.

Getting the Right Help

 * 1) Find a licensed counselor. When you are looking for help with your stress, you can find a reputable counselor to help manage it. To find the best counselor, look for one that specializes in stress management techniques. You also need to make sure that the counselor is licensed to practice in your state.[[Image:Avoid Using Purple Prose when Writing Step 5.jpg|center]]
 * 2) *If you don't have time to attend in person sessions all the time, look into online counseling.
 * 3) Commit to counseling. In order for your counseling to be effective, you need to accept that you need help managing your stress. Stress management takes effort on your part to shift your thoughts and cope with your stress, so your involvement is necessary. You have to commit to any treatment plans that your counselor and you come up with in order for them to work for you.[[Image:Behave Yourself As an Adolescent Sent Away from Home Step 7 Version 2.jpg|center]]
 * 4) *This means you need to listen to everything that your counselor tells you in addition to do the stress relieving techniques given to you.
 * 5) Treat any co-occurring disorders. Extreme stress can cause many other mental disorders that need to be treated in addition to your stress. This includes anxiety, depression, and phobias. If your counselor diagnoses these in addition to your stress issues, you will be given additional treatments that will help those conditions as well.[[Image:Avoid Stress During the Holidays Step 1.jpg|center]]
 * 6) *Sometimes, the methods that are used to treat stress can help with underlying disorders. In addition, treating your stress can also help lessen your other symptoms.
 * 7) *Any excessive stress can also cause physical symptoms as well, such as headaches, nausea, high blood pressure, or heart problems.

Motivating Yourself to Go to Counseling

 * 1) Consider reasons why you don’t want to go. Even if therapy is helping you, you may have times when you do not want to go. This is normal, but it is important to consider why you don’t want to go so that you can talk to your therapist about it. Some questions you might ask yourself include: [[Image:Avoid-Stress-During-the-Holidays-Step-7.jpg|center]]
 * 2) *When did you start feeling this way? Can you connect it with a specific session?
 * 3) *Do you ever feel uncomfortable talking with your therapist or during your appointments?
 * 4) *If you are on medication, do you think it is affecting the way you feel in negative ways?
 * 5) Talk to your counselor if you don’t feel like going. Sometimes therapy may get tough and you may not feel like going to an appointment or at all. If this happens, then it is important to talk to your therapist about how you are feeling. [[Image:Get-off-the-Phone-Quickly-Step-5-Version-2.jpg|center]]
 * 6) *Call your therapist or talk to him or her in person. Try saying something like, “I have been feeling like quitting therapy because I was bothered by ___ after our session last week.”
 * 7) *Don’t abruptly stop going to therapy if you don’t feel like going. Make sure that you talk to your counselor before you make any decisions.
 * 8) Make a change to make continuing therapy easier. If there is something changeable about going to therapy that is causing problems for you, then you might need to change something to continue with your stress management counseling. This might be something simple that would be easy to change. [[Image:Get-off-the-Phone-Quickly-Step-14.jpg|center]]
 * 9) *For example, if the time of day is bad for you, ask your counselor about meeting at a different time. If the fees are too expensive, ask your counselor if he or she offers a sliding fee scale.
 * 10) Look for a new therapist if you feel uncomfortable. It is important to feel comfortable with your therapist. If you are not feeling comfortable with your counselor, then you can always look for a new counselor. [[Image:Get-off-the-Phone-Quickly-Step-13.jpg|center]]
 * 11) *Although it might be a little uncomfortable to end your relationship with a therapist, being honest about your feelings is important. Try saying something like, “I appreciate the help you have given me, but I think I am going to start working with a different therapist.”

Making Lifestyle Changes

 * 1) Identify your stress triggers. Before you can start stress management treatment, you need to work with your counselor to figure out the different kinds of triggers for your stress. Triggers can take many forms and will be different for each person. These triggers fall into four categories, which are:[[Image:Have a Balanced Life Step 7.jpg|center]]
 * 2) *Internal, which are the ones that relate to your personal feelings, goals, or expectation
 * 3) *External, which are stressful situations that happen to you
 * 4) *Acute, which result from specific and situations that are new and unpredictable
 * 5) *Chronic, which results from continuous exposure to stressful situations
 * 6) Avoid triggers when possible. There may be stress triggers in your life that you can avoid. Work with your counselor to figure out which triggers you can remove from your life. This may be hard, especially if there are people in your life causing you stress. [[Image:Protect Yourself After a House Fire Step 8.jpg|center]]
 * 7) *If there are people or certain situations that you can’t or don’t want to remove from your life, work with your counselor to figure out how you can make them better.
 * 8) *For example, if your friend’s constant discussion of wedding preparations are causing you undue stress, then you might ask her not to discuss her wedding planning as much when she is around you.
 * 9) Reframe your thought patterns. When you go to counseling for stress management, you can learn how to reduce your stress by changing your thought patterns. Your counselor may use cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to help you identify your stress triggers and then turn them around to more positive ones.[[Image:Be Friends With Your Midlife Crisis Step 4.jpg|center]]
 * 10) *Once you view the stressful situations in a more positive light, you will be less stressed on a regular basis.
 * 11) *For example, your counselor will help you take your stress reaction to getting stuck in traffic and turn it around to a more positive one. Instead, you can learn to think about it as more time to listen to your audio book, listen to your favorite music, or make phone calls.
 * 12) *It may be hard to go straight from negative stress to positive. Try to make the situation neutral at first by thinking about how the situation will not affect your enough for you to stress about.
 * 13) Laugh more. A good way to relieve stress is to have more humor in your life. When you are stressed, you may be less likely to allow yourself to find humor and joy in your life. Work with your counselor to learn to laugh at yourself and the situations around you instead of getting too wrapped up in the stress.[[Image:Change-Your-Life-After-Doing-the-Same-Thing-for-So-Long-Step-48-Version-2.jpg|center]]
 * 14) *Try to see humor in being cut off in traffic or other stressful situations.
 * 15) *If you can’t, go in search of humorous things, such as jokes or comedies, to help you laugh when you are feeling too stressed.
 * 16) Solve the problems you can. Some of the stress triggers in your life can be solved and taken care of by you. Work you’re your counselor to determine which triggers you can come up with a solution to solve. Then work with your counselor to come up with a targeted stress management, problem solving scheme for those triggers that will lessen your overall stress.[[Image:Find an Addiction Counselor Step 10 Version 2.jpg|center]]
 * 17) *This is especially true of internal triggers, which you put on yourself.
 * 18) *For example, you may be stressed because you may be up for a promotion at work. Instead of stressing about the situation, come up with a plan that helps you perform your job so you know you are doing your best. Once you accept there is nothing else you could be doing to secure the promotion, you can let the stress go.

Coming Up with Coping Mechanisms

 * 1) Write down your stressors. When you are dealing with stressful situations, they start to build up and fester, making you more stressed. Talk to your counselor about the benefits of keeping a journal. Write down every activity, thought, or event that makes you stressed. Once you start getting your stress out, you can work with your counselor to let those stresses go.[[Image:Avoid Using Purple Prose when Writing Step 4.jpg|center]]
 * 2) *You can also work with your counselor to identify places to change your thought patterns from the way you respond to stress.
 * 3) Find your happy place. Work with your counselor to create a mental place where you are happy and free from stressors. Then, when you find yourself in a normally stressful situation, mentally take yourself away from the stress and go to your happy place.[[Image:Balance-Work-and-Life-Step-3-Version-2.jpg|center]]
 * 4) *This will help you relax in the moment and let the stress fall away.
 * 5) *Transitioning to this will not be easy. Work with your counselor to learn ways to push away the negative situation so you can find your happy place.
 * 6) *Your happy place may be a cabin in the woods, a ski resort, a boat on a lake, or any other place that makes you relaxed and happy.
 * 7) Come up with a mantra. When you are dealing with stress, it may be hard to stop doing it. Work with your counselor to come up with a word or phrase to say to yourself to stop stressing about a situation. Ask your counselor for help learning how to come to push stressors out of your mind without them backing up.[[Image:Be-Friends-With-Your-Midlife-Crisis-Step-6.jpg|center]]
 * 8) *The phrase you pick can be as easy as “No” or something more like “Don’t do this to yourself.”
 * 9) *Once you determine your word or phrase, say it to yourself or out loud whenever you find yourself stressing about things.
 * 10) Do mindful deep breathing exercises. When you are in a stressful situation, try doing deep breathing exercises. Work with your counselor to learn how to visualize your stress leaving your body as you exhale.[[Image:Center-Yourself-in-Meditation-Step-2.jpg|center]]
 * 11) *The breathing exercises have the added bonus of calming your body as well as your mind.
 * 12) Exercise. Exercise helps boost your mood and reduce your stress. After a hard, stressful day, go for a run, do some yoga, go to a dance class, or take part in any physical activity that you enjoy doing. Work with your counselor to determine ways you can expel even more stress when you exercise by using positive thinking techniques to push away stressful thoughts.[[Image:Change-Your-Life-After-Doing-the-Same-Thing-for-So-Long-Step-50.jpg|center]]
 * 13) *This has the added benefit of improving your health as well.
 * 14) *Try to exercise at least three times a week to get the mood boosting help you need.
 * 15) Practice stress relief techniques every day. After all the hard work you and your counselor have gone through to relieve stress in your life, you need to make sure you stick to your coping strategies every day. Find time to do something that helps you reduce stress every single day, even if the say wasn’t that stressful.[[Image:Determine-What-Music-Player-Is-Right-for-You-Step-3-Version-2.jpg|center]]
 * 16) *This can be as simple as listening to your favorite song, watching your favorite TV show or movie, taking a long walk, or talking to your best friend. It depends on your personal preference.
 * 17) *This will give you an overall better attitude and help you combat triggers when they do start to stress you out.

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