Stress Management For Dummies Cheat Sheet

How to measure your stress

Recognizing stress symptoms and how often they occur can help you deal with stress. Use the previous two weeks as your timeframe and record the occurrence of the physical and emotional signs and symptoms of stress in the table below.

After identifying your stress symptoms and how often they occur, use the stress rating scale to find your score. If your score is high, or if you are experiencing any of the symptoms below with increased frequency or severity, there may be other factors besides stress that are involved.

You may want to consult with your family physician and let them determine the best way to help you manage these symptoms.

Stress symptom scale

• 0 = Never

• 1 = Sometimes

• 2 = Often

• 3 = Very often

  ____	Fatigue or tiredness	____	Feelings of helplessness or hopelessness
  ____	Pounding heart	____	Excessive drinking
  ____	Rapid pulse	____	Excessive smoking
  ____	Increased perspiration	____	Excessive spending
  ____	Rapid breathing	____	Excessive drug or medication use
  ____	Aching neck or shoulders	____	Feelings of upset
  ____	Low back pain	____	Feelings of nervousness or anxiety
  ____	Gritted teeth or clenched jaw	____	Increased irritability
  ____	Hives or skin rash	____	Worrisome thoughts
  ____	Headaches	____	Impatience
  ____	Cold hands or feet	____	Feelings of sadness
  ____	Tightness in chest	____	Loss of sexual interest
  ____	Nausea	____	Feelings of anger
  ____	Diarrhea or constipation	____	Sleep difficulties
  ____	Stomach discomfort	____	Forgetfulness
  ____	Nail biting	____	Racing or intrusive thoughts
  ____	Twitches or tics	____	Feelings of restlessness
  ____	Difficulty swallowing or dry mouth	____	Difficulty concentrating
  ____	Colds or flu	____	Periods of crying
  ____	Lack of energy	____	Frequent absences from work
  ____	Overeating	____	Your total stress-symptom score

Your stress rating

Identifying common thinking errors that increase stress

Your thinking plays a bigger role in creating your stress than you might imagine. How you look at potentially stressful events or situations can result in greater stress, less stress, or even no stress.

The important skill you need to master is knowing how to identify your stress-producing thoughts and how to change the way you think. The key here is recognizing your thinking errors.

Your thinking errors capture the negative, distorting elements in the way you see your world, others, and even yourself. Once you’ve identified an error, the next step is correcting that error. You re-frame the situation or event, bringing a more sensible you into the picture.

Following, are some important thinking errors to spot and correct.

• Catastrophizing and awfulizing: Exaggerating the importance of a situation or event and its impact on you. Put as simply as possible, catastrophizing and awfulizing is making a mountain out of a molehill.

• Can’t-stand-it-itis: Emotionally exaggerating an “I don’t like it” into something you feel is intolerable. You’re exaggerating your inability to cope with a situation.

• What-if-ing: Worrying about something that has a low probability of happening (usually accompanied by some form of catastrophizing and awfulizing).

• Overgeneralizing: Taking a single instance of something negative and applying that belief to a much larger group or process. The key words often heard here are “always,” “never,” “nobody,” “everybody,” and so on.

• Mind reading and conclusion jumping: Thinking you know what others are thinking or coming to a conclusion about something without enough evidence.

• Comparativitis: Comparing yourself unfavorably to others and putting yourself down, and possibly resenting the other person. It’s normal to make comparisons. What’s stressful is turning a comparison into a thought that makes you feel upset, angry, anxious, or depressed.

• Personalizing: Blaming yourself, unreasonably, for the actions of others.

• Emotional reasoning: Letting your feelings alone interpret the reality of a situation.

• Filtering: Focusing on the negatives and disregarding the positives.

• Magnifying/Minimizing: Exaggerating or minimizing aspects of a situation or circumstance, either blowing them out of proportion or minimizing their importance.

• Should-ing: Demanding in an absolute way that the world and others in it must be more like you or live up to your expectations.

• Self-rating: Rating your entire self-worth on the basis of a trait, ability, or performance, or making your self-worth dependent on the approval of others.

How to manage stress with imagination

Stressed? Imagine that. You’ll probably feel better if you can release that stress-producing thought and replace it with a relaxing, calm image. Here’s how to put your mind at ease:

1. Find a place where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes and get comfortable, either sitting in a favorite chair or lying down.

2. Think of an image — a place, a scene, a memory — that relaxes you.

   Use all your senses to bring that imagined scene to life. Ask yourself: What can I see? What can I hear? What can I smell? What can I feel? What can I taste?

3. Let yourself become completely immersed in your image, allowing it to relax you completely.

   Use your breathing as a tool to help you deepen your relaxation. Simply breathe more slowly and more deeply.

How to control stress through tensing and relaxing your muscles

Looking for a way to control stress? Progressive relaxation, which involves systematically tensing and relaxing your muscles, is a healthful way to release muscle tension and a proven approach to a more relaxed, less stressful state. Follow these steps for a calmer, more collected you:

1. Lie down or sit, as comfortably as you can, and close your eyes.

   Find a quiet, dimly lit place that gives you some privacy, at least for a while.

2. Tense the muscles of a particular body part.

   Begin by simply making a fist. As you clench your fist, notice the tension and strain in your hand and forearm. Without releasing that tension, bend your right arm and flex your biceps, making a muscle the way you might to impress the kids in the schoolyard.

   Don’t strain yourself in any of these muscle-tensing maneuvers; don’t overdo
   it. When you tense a muscle group, don’t tense as hard as you can. Tense about three-quarters of what you can do. If you feel pain or soreness, ease up on the tension, and if you still hurt, defer your practice till another time.

3. Hold the tension in the body part for about seven seconds.

4. Let go of the tension quickly, letting the muscles go limp.

   Notice the difference in how your hand and arm feel. Notice the difference between sensations of tension and relaxation. Let these feelings of relaxation deepen for about 30 seconds.

5. Repeat Steps 1 through 4, using the same muscle group.

6. Move to another muscle group.

   Simply repeat Steps 1 through 4, substituting a different muscle group each time. Continue with your left hand and arm, and then work your way through other major muscle groups.