How to reduce stress for you and your family
Noise, the demands of technology, the cost of living, commuting, working long hours, relationships, etc - the cause of stress comes in many forms. Even though it's tempting to sweep under the carpet, stressful feelings, when not addressed, might be harmful to us and our family.
Many psychologists and school teachers are currently concerned about a rise in mental illness in children. There are doubtless complex reasons for this increase but, it's my belief, that parental stress could be a huge factor.
Stressed adults are regularly irritable, which means that they not only shout at their offspring, but also frequently argue with their partners. And this is not a happy environment in which to grow up. A recent review carried out for the Department for Work and Pensions found that the way parents relate to each other has a profound influence on children's long-term mental health.
What factors cause stress?
The worst stresses for people are often thought to to be:
Death of a spouse or close relative
Divorce or separation
Moving house
Illness
Losing a job
So, if you're going through any of the above, your stress levels are likely to be higher than normal. But plenty of other situations generate huge anxieties too. These include:
Being overworked
Difficulties with children
Feeling anxious about money
Commuting problems
The school run
Tensions with a romantic partner
Having no time to do what you want to do (including seeing friends or taking exercise)
How can you reduce stress?
A balanced life with limited stress (whatever that means for you) might seem like an impossible dream, but nearly all of us are capable of making changes to our routines in order to make our lives much more palatable - even if we can't achieve perfection.
First, you need to establish what your main sources of stress are, so that you can tackle them. My suggestion is that you keep a 'stress record' for a week. The best way to do this is to carry around a notebook at all times so you can write in it and also flick through the pages and compare one day with another. Obviously, if you prefer to do this in your phone or on your tablet, you can. All you do is to rate how stressed you are every hour that you're awake. Use a scale of 1-10, with ten meaning 'severely stressed'.
Give yourself the first rating when you've been up for about 30 minutes, then register your stress level every hour after that until you go to bed. It will also help if you quickly note down what you're doing at the time, and who you're with.
When the week is over, look carefully at your stress ratings. Almost certainly, you will notice that some days there are moments of extreme tension when you may well have rated your stress as high as 9 or 10 - and that often these are caused by the same situations or people. Once you've assessed exactly which situations cause you the most problems, you can think of ways to make changes.
How it helped my client
Magda* had come to me because she had a lot of anxiety symptoms. She felt that her life was 'all over the place'. I got her to rate her stress every waking hour during a week in January 2016.
Immediately, it became obvious that it was the start of her day that generated the most tension. She told me that normally all the family got up at the same time, and that it was chaotic. After breakfast, she would drive her two sons of 11 and 13 to school, which was only a mile away but took 20 minutes because the traffic was always bad. Frequently, she was then late in beginning her drive to work and tended to arrive at the office feeling harassed, miserable and tired.
So, we worked on how she might alter things and this is what she came up with. She opted to get up half an hour earlier and to have a quiet cup of coffee and a shower before waking the family. This made a vast difference to her state of mind.
Her next big change came after a discussion with her boys about the school run with her boys. It turned out that they didn't enjoy it any more than she did and they asked if they could walk to school, without her, instead. So her sons started walking on their own, which gave her time to make preparations for the evening meal before leaving for work. She soon made another change, which was to go to her office by bus instead of driving, which meant she could read a book on the way.
'Sometimes public transport isn't great to be honest,' she told me when we next met. 'But I feel much less stressed not having to drive, and my working day goes better.'
We then looked at other aspects of her life. She said she was 'appalled' that she hadn't spoken to, or met, any friends during the week she'd kept the record. She had also noticed that she hadn't had any exercise, or sex with her husband. She mentioned she hadn't realised how unbalanced her life had become.
Over the next few weeks, Magda made more changes. She booked a babysitter one night a week and she and her husband went out to play badminton before having a meal together. This helped their relationship and they started having more sex. They also agreed see more of their friends.
The last time I saw her, she looked happier and much more in control of her life than she had been at the start of the year. She says that keeping the Stress Record was a huge help. Why not try it?
*name has been changed.
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