How I Reduce Stress

As a full-time employee, graduate student, wife, and mother to a toddler, my life comes with a lot of stress (as you can imagine). I've got a lot of responsibility at work that I am trying to excel at, I have lots of reading to keep up with at school, assignments to complete before deadlines, Time I need to spend with my family, I need to try to prepare my son with the best start in life, make sure the bills are paid, taxes are done.... There's just so much going on! Sometimes I feel like I'm just constantly scrolling through a to-do list in my head. Luckily, with all that I have going on I've learned to manage my stress pretty effectively (for the most part). While stress isn't exactly fun, I like to view it as an opportunity to demonstrate my stress reducing skills for my son so that he can be properly prepared when he faces stress in his life. (Like when he gets frustrated because he wants to do something but also absolutely does not want to do it at the same time.)

Anyway, I've listed a few of my methods to reducing stress below. These are things that work for me and just because they work for me, it does not necessarily mean they work for everyone.

Focus on my Breathing

My main go-to when I am feeling stressed is to take a moment to take a deep breath in, hold it, and then let out an even longer exhale. Then, I just focus on my natural breathing for a moment afterwards. I find this especially useful when I am trying to write papers for school. For example, today. I was sitting on the couch, trying to write an analysis about ethics in counseling practice, which is very important but also very boring. It can also take a lot of brain power to try to comprehend ethical codes and legal talk, so this assignment was requiring the majority of my attention. Of course my son (we'll call him "A") being a toddler wanted to play and wanted me to participate with him. I can usually multitask the homework and parenting thing pretty well, but today was a bit more of a struggle. A kept bringing me Play-Doh food and I would pretend to taste it and react as if it were yucky. Then, he would laugh and laugh and laugh and bring me another Play-Doh food creation to eat. After being brought several Play-Doh foods, I realized I was still trying to read the same sentence that I started five minutes before and was not getting any closer to being done with my assignment. I tried telling A that my tummy was full and I was all done eating, but he continued to bring me Play-Doh meals. At times like this, I remind myself to take a deep breath and focus on my breathing for a moment. Then I remember that A is very young and his priority is playing with his mom, which provides me with the patience to be calm.

Eat and Drink Healthier

Another way that I like to reduce stress is to prevent it where I can. I find that I feel better and therefore am in a better mood when I eat healthier. I'm not going to pretend like I eat salads everyday and refrain from eating junk food because that is not at all true. In fact, I rarely eat salads and I eat plenty of junk. What I am saying is that when I do eat, I try to eat healthier options when I can. And even if it's not healthy, I add things that are healthy to it. My favorite way of doing this is adding seeds to pretty much everything we eat. I especially do this with the smaller and less noticeable seeds like the chia seeds and hemp hearts. Seeds are packed with so much nutrition and energy and can be easily added to pretty much anything. Pancakes? Top them with all the seeds. Ice cream? Replace sprinkles with seeds. Baking something? Throw some seeds in. Boxed mac and cheese? Throw some of the smaller seeds in there. I've been making A's food with seeds his whole life so I don't have to hide them in his food. In fact, I tell him I am putting seeds in his food, and if I forget he asks me for seeds. I also try to eat brown rice and quinoa instead of white rice, wheat pasta instead of white pasta, make lots of meals with beans, make things with tofu... stuff like that.

When it comes to drinking healthier, I pretty much just drink nothing but water all day. I carry around a water bottle and I drink from it any time I feel thirsty. Soda is something I don't really drink unless my husband, "C," orders one with his food when we eat out. I don't necessarily avoid it, I just don't buy it. Occasionally I will drink some juice if we buy some, but other than that it's just water.

Go to my Happy Place

When my stress levels are really high and I feel like I can't handle it, I picture myself in my happy place. For me, that is a combination of a few different beaches in California. Together, the beach is a secluded place where you have to climb down the edge of a steep hill/cliff to get to it. The beach is closed in by the curved rock walls, though there are ledges to climb on to go around the curve near where the beach meets the ocean. The sand is warm and gritty and there is a slight breeze, but I can feel the warm of the sun on my skin. Seagulls can be heard flying above somewhere and the calm waves of the ocean is soothing. It is a place where time does not exist, nor do any stressors. The only people there with me are C and A. I usually spend about a minute here before I feel more relaxed and am able to take on whatever overwhelmed me. Something about going to my happy place makes me feel like my stressors are minimal in the long run.

How do you reduce stress?

• Focus on your breathing
• Eat and drink healthier
• Go to your happy place
• Other

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