Conquering Stress

Often a good massage, particularly in conjunction with relaxing music, can be an adjunct to a larger program of stress relief. One of the most common effects of stress is severe muscle tension, particularly in the neck, shoulders and calves. Massage helps solve this physically and it has psychological overtones of doing something good for oneself that contribute to the effect.

Curing Stress – Pruning the Roots

Stress is the result of both external and internal factors - what happens combined with how you evaluate its seriousness and your ability to cope.

Curing Stress – Techniques

Something as simple and old-fashioned as a walk in the park can be helpful. It's not simply an old wives tale that fresh air and sunshine can be relaxing. It's also true that moderate exercise helps relieve many of the accompanying physical symptoms of stress.

Stress and Alcohol

Moderate alcohol intake, to be sure, can have beneficial effects. Research suggests that small amounts can even improve mental functioning and increase performance in problem solving while stressed. But, there are also studies that demonstrate that large quantities, particularly, when consumed for long periods, actually increases stress levels.

Stress and Diet

Supplements can be helpful if your diet doesn't contain a large enough amount of chemicals that help reduce stress.

Stress and Exercise

Stress often produces excessively tense muscles, particularly in the neck, shoulders and calves. Exercise can help loosen those up, both as part of a general warm-up period and during the main workout.

Stress and Money

The bottom line is that money issues are often stressful for just about everyone. But this is not inevitable. Many people, perhaps more in the past than the present, led very happy lives with almost next to nothing in the bank.

Stress and Parenting

Stress need only come into the equation when you come to believe that there is simply 'no way' to solve a problem you 'must' solve. Tossing away both those false alternatives leaves you still with a problem, but not that which only adds to the burden - stress.

Stress and Parents, Teenage Dilemmas

Contemporary society presents many circumstances that can encourage stress for teens. One of the chief potential stressors is often found right at home: parents.

Stress and Your Health

Since stress, in one definition, is just a person's 'fight or flight' response to a perceived threat, it can have a positive effect. It triggers the release of biochemicals that can help heal infections from bites, punctures or other damage.

Stress and Your Mate

Reducing stress in relationships can be achieved by a series of techniques almost anyone can adopt. Evaluating problems objectively, looking long-term, reminding oneself and each other of the values that formed the relationship initially can go a long way toward lessening the perceived severity of problems.

Stress around the Holidays

During the holiday season - Christmas, Hanukkah and others - people will often experience elevated levels of stress. But it need not be so.

Stress at Work – The Cause

The single most-often cited reason for stress in the workplace boils down to that - demands, but without the resources to meet them. When an individual is placed in the irresolvable conflict between "I must" and "I can't", stress is the inevitable result.

Stress at Work – The Cure

Being placed in situations that demand the impossible almost inevitably lead to stress. Unrealistic deadlines to meet useless goals, enforced by unreasonable managers - are an all too common scenario.

Tackling Stress in the Modern World

Psychology, though still in its infancy as a science, is starting to compile a set of good data on neurobiology, nutrition and a host of other factors relevant to stress. Figuring out useful treatments from this bewildering array of studies will take time, but progress is being made.

The Effects of Stress

Though some of the effects of stress are still hotly debated within the medical and psychological communities, there are some that are broadly agreed on. Rapid heartbeat, raised blood pressure, a rise in blood sugar level and a lower digestive rate are just a few of the physiological effects of stress.

What Causes Stress?

The underlying causes of stress often have less to do with the external circumstances than an individual's expectations for the future and their evaluation of their own capacity to meet them.

What Is Stress?

To most people 'stress' brings to mind something unpleasant. But many psychologists write about stress as something that can have positive effects.