Monthly Archives: October 2014

How to Manage Stress

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managing stressStress is something everyone lives with to a degree. Some people have high levels of stress while others have low levels. The amount of stress that you personally entertain has a lot to do with your mental health and your personality. However, if your stress levels reach beyond what is mentally healthy, you have a responsibility to help yourself manage them. People can be prone to high stress for a number of reasons, internal and external, but it is necessary for people to recognize this trend in their lives and correct it before it does damage to themselves and to the people they are close to. A stressful personality is draining to everyone it effects and warrants immediate attention.
There are two primary ways of treating stress and anger problems. One of them is the cognitive behavioral side of stress management. This may involve personal reflection and implementing new mental health practices that you invent or that you read about, or it may involve help from a second party in the form of counseling or other types of relational support. This refers to thinking critically about your negative thought patterns, reevaluating them to set yourself up for healthier thought patterns and then working on yourself in order to execute them.
Once you have created a mental health plan for yourself, a part of executing it is determining the causes of stress in your life and eliminating them. Some elements of your life that create stress are actually toxic. such as an abusive significant other or a hostile work environment. It is mentally healthy to eliminate these elements completely. Other elements in your life that stress you out may be areas that you need to work on yourself in order to change. It could be that a time management problem you have is making your job stressful, or a problem with personal irresponsibility is making your relationship stressful. Sometimes it is merely a performance anxiety complex you have that induces your stress. These areas are things you are personally responsible for eliminating to achieve better mental health.
And lastly, filling your life with things that make you happy and feel purposeful are essential to stress management. Some of these things will be purely for fun, such as time to watch movies, some will be for health, such as a regular yoga practice, and some will invigorate you by being more challenging, such as training for a sports competition. All of these efforts create balance and mental health, which control stress.

How to Manage Anger

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managing angerThe quest to manage anger is a complicated one. Many people’s anger problems are deeply rooted and require more than a little effort to get to the bottom of. There are a number of measures one can take in order to bring their anger under control, but it is coming to understand your anger problems that presents a challenge. It is not easy for anyone to be objective about themselves and their personal flaws, anger issues being no exception. This is why it is very important to think critically about the severity of your anger problems and determine carefully what to do about them.

Severe anger ploblems require serious mental health counseling. Do not be capricious about the damage that a serious anger problem can inflict on your life. Intense anger issues can do damage to your medical and mental health, your personal relationships and your professional reputation. If you are prone to frequent, explosive bursts of anger, you have a severe anger problem and you should pursue counseling before trying anything else.

If your anger problems are occasional, moderate or mild, there is a little more flexibility in how you go about managing them. If you feel confused about how to get your anger problems under control, counseling can be a valuable option for you. Sometimes simply having a credible opinion and sounding board to bring your thoughts to can do a lot to resolve mental issues. If you do well caring for and teaching yourself, however, you may also do well controlling your anger through reading and applying self-help literature, practicing relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation or yoga, or routinely engaging in a recreational activity. Many people find that outdoor activity helps them melt their anger.

However you choose to work on your anger problems, it is important that you take seriously the implementation of you anger management process before your relationships, health and professional standing decline.

Causes of Stress Problems

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stress causesStress is a very common condition to live with in our society. Every adult person has known the feeling of stress, and most have felt it for an extended period of time. Mental health specialists estimate that adults experience stress at a greater rate today than any other time in history due to mental disorders, heavy expectations (both real and perceived), an overwhelming amount of information to process and exposure to negative realities. Many things come together to create the condition of stress, and more awareness needs to be brought to the matter.
Sometimes stress can simply be attributed to a mental disorder. Stress is an aspect of essentially every mental disorder recorded. Mental disorders damage a person’s ability to cope and process reality in a sound way, making their lives more volatile and out of control. Stress is a natural response to this condition, even if the individual is not aware that they have a mental disorder.
The expectations placed on the average working adult are heavier than they have been at any other time in history. In order to stay competitive globally, employers increasingly expect more from employees over time rather than less. Since the recession of 2007, for example, the job market of North America has been deemed an “employers market,” meaning that the higher than average jobless rate gives more power to employers than employees, forcing heavy performance expectations onto employees.
This is a trend in both the United States and in Canada, causing employee stress levels to sky rocket. In the United States, the working class felt the blow, and suddenly trades workers, teachers and administrative professionals alike felt the pressures of working more than one person’s job. In Canada, agricultural trades, lumber mill employees and oil workers of Fort McMurray employment were forced to adjust to double shifts and back-to-back work stints.
Because of the internet and the global spread of marketing and media, there is a vastly greater amount of information to process every day than there used to be. We receive messages from ads, commercials, news sources, websites, television programs and other media that bombard our senses and over fill our minds to the point of stress. Though this is something we are forced to live with, mental health professionals feel unanimously that this is not good for mental health. In the same vein, we are routinely exposed to tragedy, disaster, violence and other catastrophic world events through these same mediums that make us experience compassion fatigue, which induces stress.

Causes of Anger Problems

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anger causesA temper does not look good on anyone. Being quick to anger is never a positive attribute of someone’s personality. In fact, it is an attribute that frequently drives people away because of how destructive it is. A study out of the University of California estimates that one in five North Americans have a serious anger management problem. Unfortunately, anger problems are not typically taken as seriously as they should be in our culture. A majority of people who have anger problems are still functional, and therefore are not properly encouraged or accommodated to receive anger management counseling. There is a great deal of awareness that needs to be gained for what anger problems are and where they come from.

Everyone gets angry from time to time. A degree of anger is healthy and normal. There are life elements that warrant an angry reaction, for example, when you have been wronged by someone else. Serious anger problems, however, are bursts of anger that are not warranted, occurring too frequently and too explosively. When someone does not have the ability to deal with their anger in a healthy manner, they have a real anger problem. However, anger problems are often just a side effect of a more deeply rooted problem, such as a mental disorder. Anger is a common attribute of depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder and anxiety, as well as many others. People develop anger problems because they cannot cope with life circumstances. Anger is one of many modes that people turn to in order to express the inability to cope, along with addiction, depression, fear and manic behavior. It is a very common one to turn to for those who were raised by people with anger problems.

If you wish you could control your anger problems but your own efforts seem to fail you, there is a very good chance you are in need of anger management counseling. There is no shame in seeking help. A third of North American society has some kind of mental problem, and caring professionals are eager to help you get yours under control.