Stress...

First, recognize stress:

Stress symptoms include mental, social, and physical manifestations. These include exhaustion, loss of/increased appetite, headaches, crying, sleeplessness, and oversleeping. Escape through alcohol, drugs, or other compulsive behavior are often indications. Feelings of alarm, frustration, or apathy may accompany stress.

Stress Management is the ability to maintain control when situations, people, and events make excessive demands. What you can do to manage your stress?
What are some strategies?

1.Look around
See if there really is something you can change or control in the situation.
2.Set realistic goals for yourself
Reduce the number of events going on in your life and you may reduce the circuit overload.
3.Don't sweat the small stuff
Try to prioritize a few truly important things and let the rest slide.
4.Learn how to best relax yourself
Meditation and breathing exercises have been proven to be very effective in controlling stress. Practice clearing your mind of disturbing thoughts..
5.Change the way you see your situation; seek alternative viewpoints
Stress is a reaction to events and problems, and you can lock yourself in to one way of viewing your situation. Seek an outside perspective of the situation, compare it with yours. and perhaps lessen your reaction to these conditions..
6.Avoid extreme reactions
Why hate when a little dislike will do? Why generate anxiety when you can be nervous? Why rage when anger will do the job? Why be depressed when you can just be sad?.
7.Avoid self-medication or escape
Alcohol and drugs can mask stress. They don't help deal with the problems.
8.Begin to manage the effects of stress
This is a long range strategy of adapting to your situation, and the effects of stress in your life. Try to isolate and work with one "effect" at a time. Don't overwhelm yourself. for example, if you are not sleeping well, seek help on this one problem..
9.Try to "use" stress
If you can't remedy, nor escape from, what is bothering you, flow with it and try to use it in a productive way. [studygs.net,2011]

Anger Management - how to control your anger?

According to Dr. Tony Fiore, So. California licensed psychologist, and anger management trainer; it is known that, It's better to prevent unnecessary conflict than to manage conflict once the flames have started. And, learn to manage conflict by "using your head", rather than your heart.

Sometimes it's simply not possible to regain control over your anger in the moment. And if you can't control your anger during conflicts, you will cause (yourself and others) pain, and run the risk of permanently damaging relationships. So, i would greatly appreciate if you guys could spend some time to go through this article - you might able to learn some anger control techniques, at the end.

There is a common myth that all relationship conflicts should be “settled” in the moment while the intense feelings are present. If you do not do this, you may be accused of “avoiding” the issue. Once stress or anger levels escalate to a certain point, one or both partners reach a point of no-return, due to flooding of the brain with intense emotions. This makes it almost impossible to disengage from each other and stop the fight.

You know it is time to Retreat and Think Things Over when you are:

• Feeling overwhelmed during an argument
• Raising your voice to an unusual level
• Feeling your temper is out of control
• You notice your heart racing
• Sense your muscles tensing
• Can’t think straight and you start to feel hostile.


But what is Retreat and Think things overs mean?

“Retreat and Think Things Over.”
Basically this means to temporarily distance yourself from the situation for a period of time so that both of you can calm down. This allows your bodily systems to return to normal, and allows your normally good reasoning and thinking ability to return.

Why this tool works

Temporarily removing yourself from the situation allows your body to return to normal, provides a cooling-down time. It also allows your brain to return to its normal state where you can reason and think better.

This tool helps prevents you or your partner from saying unfair or hurtful things in the heat of battle—which can easily escalate into further conflicts and resentments, causing you and your partner to become even more emotionally cut-off and distanced from each other.

Some Basic Rules may includes as following:

While the concept of “Retreat and Think Things Over” is simple, it will not work very well unless the following rules are followed:

Rule #1: You can only use the tool for yourself - not your partner. It does not usually work for you to tell your partner it is time for them to retreat.

Rule #2: Announce that you need to take a time out and Retreat before you do it. This should be done using assertive communication in a way that clearly conveys your need to leave before thing get out of hand, as opposed to your leaving to merely avoid dealing with the situation.

Rule #3- You need to commit to a reasonable length of time to return and deal with the issue— no longer than several hours, as a general rule.

Rule #4: Don’t drink or use drugs to get high during this time. It will be much harder, if not impossible, to convince your partner of your sincerity in wanting to work things out if you return intoxicated or high.

Rule #5: Be very careful and very selective in who you talk to during your Retreat Time. While there is a natural tendency to contact a friend or family member who is sympathetic, you should be careful.

Somehow, people might ask: Why is this important?
There should be no doubts; it is because they may have a permanently negative view of your partner, even after you have made-up and things are now fixed in the relationship.You can’t necessarily expect your family to turn the positive emotions back on like you have.

To sum up; we better take temporarily removing ourselves from the situation and allows our body and mind to return to normal; while, allowing our normally good reasoning to return.