Coping Strategies for Managing Stress

Coping Strategies For Managing Stress

Stress, is defined as a person's adaptive response to a stimulus that places excessive psychological or physical demands on a person. Stress manifests itself differently from person to person. A stressful situation for one person could very well be tolerable to a person of substantial hardiness and optimism. Many people incorrectly assume that a susceptibility to stress is a sign of personal weakness or cause for embarrassment, but stress affects everyone. We as people need to learn how to identify some of the coping strategies and techniques useful in helping to alleviate stress.

"Coping is defined as the constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person." In short, it is what you think and what you do when dealing with the demands of stressors. An individual may not be able to eliminate all stress from your life, but there are steps one can take to reduce stress. Many strategies have been developed to help people manage and cope with stress. There is no single right way of coping with a given stressful situation. Each of us must figure out what works best for us.

Unfortunately, many People cope with stress by eating, drinking, smoking or doing drugs. Some people do not even deal with it at all. "In the short term, unmanaged stress management can lead to fatigue, sleep disorders, eating disorders and other unhealthy symptoms. Long-term unmanaged stress management can lead to major health problems such as heart decease, high