In today’s modern world, nearly everyone seems to be stressed out in their daily lives. Both spouses are working to make ends meet, often long days – particularly in today’s environment where employers have the upper hand. With the remaining hours of the day there are endless chores, duties, activities, and obligations that consume those precious remaining hours.
Stress is experienced often, by most people, and is mostly unavoidable in a busy life. Anxiety is a result of stress, and is usually a tenseness about an upcoming deadline or something coming up in the future.
You’ve probably heard it before, but stress can and WILL affect your health negatively. Your heart rate, blood pressure, muscles, and emotions are all subjected to stress and can lead to headache, upset stomach, insomnia, and may even lead to illness or aggravate an existing or underlying health problem.
Here are some home remedies to help reduce stress…
HOW TO CONTROL STRESS
Get enough sleep
Sleep deprivation is unfortunately all too common these days. Long days and stressful worries will result in a poor night’s sleep. One of the most effective remedies for stress is to get enough sleep. Even one extra hour will make a big difference. Just go to bed a little earlier. Some people find that reading can help ease into sleep. Avoid sugars, caffeine, alcohol, or heavy foods during the evening in order to have a better chance of a restful night’s sleep.
Do physical activity
Exercise will improve your mood, your blood flow, and help you to think more clearly. A simple walk each day will do wonders to help battle stress. During your walk, you will probably discover that you are resolving some of the issues in your mind as you exercise.
Break up big tasks
Break up responsibilities into smaller pieces. You will be surprised at the effectiveness of visualizing and doing just one task at a time, instead of constantly thinking of the overall big project. This can make a HUGE difference in your outlook (and success)!
Be practical
Don’t take on more than you should. Be realistic about your expectations. Learn to say no. Do things that you can reasonably achieve. Don’t set yourself up for failure. Delegate.
Limit caffeine
While caffeine in coffee, tea or soda may seem like a beneficial supplement to get you going, it will actually increase your stress levels. As with everything, moderation is the rule.
Make time for yourself
Get away from your normal surroundings once in a while. This is more helpful than you may think, even though you’ll convince yourself you don’t have time for it. It is far too easy to be stuck in a constant routine. A purposeful change of scenery will be refreshing. Do something fun for yourself.
Learn to calm down
There are many methods you can learn which will lead to relaxation. Closing your eyes for ten seconds while breathing deeply and slowly, while thinking of your favorite place in the world, can be just the thing you need. Getting a massage, doing Yoga, and learning meditation will all help to achieve a relaxed state.
Get yourself a mini-Dachshund
Our little ‘Sampson’ (pictured above) is the biggest stress reliever ever. For you dog owners out there, you know what I mean. They are always so happy to see you and to be around you… How can you not melt away some stress when you’re playing with them or they’re comfortable on your lap…
You only have one life to live, and as each day ticks by, it’s a day that you will never get back. Take a step back from an overly busy life of stress and anxiety, and enjoy it – smell the roses…
What are some of your remedies to reduce stress?
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Managing stress under ordinary circumstances is an interesting statement. As a matter of fact, the reason that non-preppers are stressed is the manner in which postmodern people live. For preppers that is compounded by the juxtaposition of postmodern life in addition to an increased awareness of the wrongness of postmodern life.
Be that as it may, managing stress will be even more important in a disaster or post-collapse. What things you have now, mostly shiny toys, that distract your attention to postmodern life, will not assuage your anxiety under disaster conditions.
Heated milk seems to offer some measure of comfort. While scientists dispute that the amount of tryptophan in it is sufficient for relaxation, experience and history proves otherwise. In addition, while cocoa contains levels of stimulants within it, my experience and history is that soothing conversation while consuming hot chocolate brings on relaxation and sleepiness as well.
Hard work will generally lead to more relaxation, and for men especially, we are genetically coded (it seems) to do hard work, and so much of postmodern stress is the result of a lack of physical labor.
For that reason, when camping I think you’ll notice that sitting around firelight and consuming a hot chocolate, and unwinding, and giving utterance to your hopes and dreams and fears and doubts, that this ritual is very healing. It mitigates stress, and under disaster conditions, is a vital but surreptitious way of having a quiet community meeting. That allows your tribe to speak in a calm way about their worries, talking about what didn’t work out that day, and how to improve it tomorrow.
Spouses are notorious for only talking when they need something. Most couples don’t talk very much. This is surprising because one of the most basic needs of women is to be heard and to communicate. Talking gently and whispering in bed, and reaffirming each other, I think you’ll find your intimacy grows exponentially. You don’t bring problems to bed, for that can interfere, but you do offer reassurance and hope there.
Children look to their parents as protectors and providers while simultaneously working to develop autonomy. That fine line changes through time into adolescence and their teenaged years.
First, what they think is protection and providing is malformed by the competition of postmodern media as an influence as well as reinforced by their relationships with other youth. If you’re not the influence, then it will be supplanted because your natural role is absent.
Because they desire protection but also must assert themselves to become adults, then especially under disaster conditions, you must speak to them with authority and compassion. Postmodern children are ill prepared for survival as all of their values are grossly malformed. Almost nothing that they assume is important is actually important, while the most important things that they have not considered are not within their awareness.
You need to be a gentle giant with them. A mighty oak with a stout heart and compassion. Realize that there were no teenagers on the frontier, only young versions of adults at age 14. Under sustained disaster or collapse, then American teenagers will be a forgotten phenomena.
This means a complete sea change in managing stress.
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At all times, the easiest way to sooth stress is massage. We fear touching each other, because when we touch someone, it broaches the protective barriers we have artificially created to give ourselves autonomy.
When we shake another’s hand, it is to break that barrier and create trust. When we touch someone on the shoulder, or when we hug someone, or when we affectionately pat the top of our children’s heads, then I think we actually transmit some element of strength into that act. The receiver acquires compassion in it. The transmitter acquires bravery in humbling themselves and being gentle and loving.
From medicine, we know that stress is an epidemic and that it causes disease to occur. Why? Stress is a result of the fight or flight response in humans. It means the awareness of a “threat” and in response, the human body releases adrenaline from our adrenal glands (on top of the kidneys). Your body doesn’t know one kind of stress from another, so it would be wisdom to consider that being chased by a bear creates the identical physiological response as being unable to pay your bills on time. I am totally serious.
Sustained stress leads to the release of cortisol which acts in a similar manner, but greatly damages the immune system. It also harms the heart and mind and makes us weak with worry.
Since we will have almost no postmodern medicine at our disposal during a sustained disaster or collapse, then you must use the pragmatic tools in your toolbelt. One of the best is massage.
Massage can be physical or it can be your words of assurance. Sincere praise, especially when done in front of many members of the tribe and directed to the receiver, costs nothing and fixes most everything, albeit briefly. Continual sincere and genuine praise, supports behavior modification to adhere to a tribe’s values and dramatically reduces stress.
Why? Because whatever stress-inducing behavior was demonstrated by the tribe member, tends to be supplanted by stress-reducing behavior because all humans desire praise.
Outwardly demonstrations of physical kindness like special treats when tribe members are experiencing stress can greatly mitigate their stress. If you see that they need 30 more minutes of sleep, and you can do 30 minutes of chores so they can rest, when rest is impossible luxury, then you will reduce their stress…and yours ultimately.
If all spouses would massage each other physically, in a gentle and sincere way, we probably could not only vastly decrease arguments and divorce, but also could eliminate stomach ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome. I’m not joking.
okay, here is one more…and am not being “nasty”, it is a fact of life.
if you are in a position of “close contact”, with someone who is basically a “stress drama queen” (can be either gender)
you need to “look mildly interested” (or sometimes not), nod, mmm and question “so, what do you want/plan to do about that?”
quit getting sucked in to experiencing THEIR drama / stress
some folks are genuine champions at this, and somehow, it seems to “relieve” them, if they can stir another up to the “same”..
don’t.
Not being nasty either.
Why not trade a problem child for a future round draft pick?
What Me Worry — some situations aren’t tradeable..
however, not to be dense,
but what does
“trade a problem child for a future round draft pick” mean?
All situations are tradeable. Unless you are a slave. Then *you* are the trade item.
I meant that she(?) could be replaced. You could trade in an older partner, if that, for two twenty year olds.
I went through one of these things many years ago. Had to piss off the little woman enough to get her to break it off.
Our dreams no longer coincided.
I have known plenty who love to draw you in to their drama. I agree one thousand percent, don’t get caught up in that BS.
It is better for your health to stay away from people who bring you down in that way. They feed off of others. Don’t let it be you!
Having worked with human dynamics within community while still having a modicum of OPSEC, let me explain why we all will have to adjust how we handle human relationships now, during survival situations, or even during sustained collapse conditions.
It is absolutely true that some people need to “suck it up”. The hardships that we face today in some ways are minimal compared to the pioneers or those who lived in tribal society. However, displace one of our ancestors into today’s postmodern world, and they’d be shocked and severely stressed too. They would not cope well by today’s lack of morality or disbelief in God, or tolerance to things so foreign to them as to be anathema.
Postmodern humanity lives in a perpetual state of stress. The prevailing medical answer is to medicate it, since generic Fluoxetine Hcl (Prozac) is cheaper and faster than actually dealing with the problem.
When humans suffer sustained and perceived stress, then they have cortisol coursing through their system. Their body/mind/soul, the amalgam of what makes us human, reacts to stress as DANGER. We enter into a sympathetic psychological reactions to ward off that danger. As the “danger” continues, the body/mind/soul reactions are not effective for despite those changes, the danger is still present. As such, we perceive that the stress response has no effect and this causes anxiety and depression.
Depression is caused by an inability to perceive and evaluate that our state changes… from relative calm and plenty to moments of anxiety and depression. In effect, the person with those states of mind cannot discriminate, and they feel persistent ineffectual danger to which no matter what they do or say, does not abate.
When we feel contentment, there are neurotransmitters released like serotonin. Because of a disconnect and inability to discriminate altered states in threat and peace, then those so affected by long term stress, can feel more contentment since fluoxetine makes serotonin hang around longer and so theoretically feel contented.
This is a terrible way of dealing with stress. It masks what is there, and it doesn’t deal with the stress. But it is cheaper, and postmodern people have been trained by the media and medical insurance companies and compliant physicians that this is the way to deal with stress economically.
The talking cure i.e. counseling seldom works. For it to work, and for the patient to actually get some healing, the psychologist must enter into a brief intense series of encounters in which problems are explored through the subjective viewpoint of the patients. The problem with this method is it is detached from reality because the very person who cannot discriminate their threat level, is trying to describe their mental state, while being coaxed slowly by the counselor into realizing, on their own, what is wrong. It also means that whatever limited interaction that the counselor has with the patient is both an honest and normal way the patient truly is, and that the counselor is perceptive and trained well enough to offer good advice. What’s more the counselor must then also slowly adjust in tiny course corrections all of the negative behavior coping that the patient is trying and failing to make work.
A counselor cannot tell the patient what is wrong, the patient must come to their own conclusions that their discrimination of true reality is wrong. Only then and by behavior modifications and adapting to the stress in a healthy practical way, can the patient deal with stress. Otherwise the patient will not do what the counselor says to do. We only change when we decide to change ourselves.
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In family and friendship relationships, YOU might be both the counselor and the counseled. You see the situation as it happens, and so if open to having a intimate, caring, and life-affirming relationship, then using honesty and tough love, then you can more rapidly help those who are stressed. You also can help them help themselves. You live with them and witness their stress and can help them cope immediately…not in pre-determined counseling sessions that may be a week later.
I understand that some people are drama queens and that they literally are energy vampires and will suck the life out of themselves and YOU. Obviously under a disaster or sustained collapse, many of those folks will die. They won’t have the ability to discriminate reality under relative peace and are stressed, so when under survival conditions, they won’t have the mental capacity nor likely the skills, nor the supplies to cope.
To be perfectly honest, one of the biggest problems even among preppers is that we have a deep comprehension about the true state of reality. The blinders have come off, and we know that bad things are ahead. It’s not that we only see gloom and doom. It’s that we intuit the fragility of postmodern life, and so know that in that weakness, some parts of the chain of existence that allow postmodern American life will crumble from diverse black swan events.
This means that preppers without intentional treatment and maintenance of mental health by spirituality, hard work, exercise, good nutrition, etc are more likely to become aware of the hidden stresses of American life, and fall prey to depression and anxiety.
We can’t just suck it up.
You might think that soldiers do so. In reality, soldiers instead get PTSD from trying to suck it up. They pretend to be stoic, but the see the reality and horror of war, malnutrition, poverty, violence, etc and those ideas turn over and over within their stoic demeanor.
This is why, a smart leader of a community tries to find healthy ways to manifest good morale and mental health. You have to find ways to help facilitate that. Nothing damages the fighting fitness of a soldier MORE than bad morale. Over-stress a soldier, no matter how well they can suck it up, and eventually they will break from the strain.
A healthy community is the same way. A strategic prepper is trying to find ways to mitigate the stress or routine duty for tribal members so that it nips it in the bud far before it persists.
Ever been a traveler in a foreign country for a month? Take away your cultural norms, your diet, change the water, have less access to utilities, go without church, spend far more money on common supplies, etc will lead to enormous STRESS.
These are all the same things that will happen in a disaster and multiple that time ten in a collapse.
Sure, one could be a lone wolf and never have to deal with human dynamics, but in history, such lone wolfs usually developed severe issues with loneliness. It often caused despair. Take a lone wolf who is fierce and strong, then place them in solitary confinement for a month, and they turn into jelly.
Take a lone wolf, who has all of the skills, or thinks they have, and they get sick, lack some information or skill they thought they possessed, and they fall prey to loneliness or might die from injuries or disease.
No, we have to learn stress management for ourselves as well as our tribe members. In fact, it’s one of the most important aspects of leadership. A unified community with high morale can overcome many obstacles and simultaneously deal with adversity and deprivation and low supplies.
My comment is short and simple advice. I don’t need to write a book. Just take the time to smell the roses. Life is not easy. Learn to appreciate the cards you are dealt. Find the good. Slow down. You are in control of you.
Thank-you Simple. A few years ago when I was teaching in a highly stressful situation, plus I was working on my masters degree, plus my beloved father was slowing coming to the end of his life & I was a couple provinces away, I developed high blood pressure. I didn’t want to go on BP pills but the Dr. said to go on the pills for 1 month & if I could bring the BP down by then she would take me off them. She gave me a few ideas & I chose some of my own. One month later she could not believe how I had changed the BP & wanted to know how I did it so she could help her other clients.
This is what I did: As soon as I got home from school I went for a walk trying to go faster or farther each day. Then I came home & lay on the couch listening to either classical music or sounds of nature recordings. I fixed my diet by cooking from scratch, told my prof that I needed to finish my project book quickly even if the mark was lower than I wanted.
These were mostly simple things for me to do once I decided to do them. Another simple method that has worked for me over the years has been to take a stressfull problem in the classroom & after school take it to the staffroom & find the humour in the situation & have a good laugh about it. Laughter is a great destresser. Therefore funny stories, movies etc. can also help to destress you. This has been clinically proven.
So exercise, relax, eat well, & laugh. Keep up these good topics Ken. If we think about them before we get into a problem we maybe able to come up we stategies to cope before we have to.
Marijuana? Don’t remember ever being stressed after a bong hit or two. Legal for social use in small quantities here. Bad OPSEC perhaps. Don’t go shopping after using. A gallon of Mustard and several pounds of Jerky takes a while to consume. Been there, done that.