Stress Help: How To Quickly Help Yourself When You Are Feeling Stressed

Let’s start out with some validation:

Your stress is real.

If you are experiencing a challenge or a threat, it is stressful. It is not helpful to compare our response to a stressor with anyone else.

It is important to note that if you are experiencing challenges, threats, situations or thoughts that are more than you can handle on your own, seek help from a qualified mental health professional. Trusted mental health agencies can be found at the bottom of this webpage.

What follows is five actions for quickly helping the stress you are feeling right now. This is a practical list so we won’t go deep into the underlying worldviews and theories of the steps, but these interventions all have evidence of helping people in the past reduce their feelings of being stressed. This does not mean that each action will definitely work for you in your circumstances.

Don’t be disheartened if an action does not resonate with you, instead it is encouraged to try a different action.

1. Remove yourself from the challenge or threat

Where possible and safe to do so, move to a different area that does not contain an immediate challenge or threat so that you can start to think through the best ways of addressing the challenge or threat.

Example: If in conflict with someone via email or text, move away from the computer or phone.

Example: If you are struggling to complete a given task, put the task down and step away.

2. Identify your automatic thoughts

What are the thoughts that are making the challenge or threat affect you? Very often our stressful thought can be catastrophising, where we are concerned a problem will lead to a bigger problem, then a bigger problem.

We can combat thoughts of catastrophising by considering whether it is realistic that a problem will have a snowball effect to a bigger problem, or whether it is just anxious thoughts of the future that are not reflective of our current situation.

Another common automatic thought is ‘personalisation’, where we believe that a situation is directly caused or related to ourselves. This can mean that we start to take responsibility for things that are outside of our control, and then experience the challenges and threats of things that we have not control over.

We can combat thoughts of personalisation by identifying that we don’t have direct cause of most situations that happen in life, and situations are rarely related to ourselves. We can consider all the external variables that contributed to a situation beyond our existence near the situation.

3. Identify the core issues

This step can be challenging, and it can be helpful to talk over the stressful situation with someone else you can trust to try and identify the core challenges or threats. This is so problem solving can be done to address the core issue.

Example: A client is not responding to communications. While one challenge is getting communication from the client, the core threat could be anxiety about losing the client, and what the implications could be for your income or career.

Example: You and another family member are in disagreement over what should be done in a situation. While one challenge is you feel the other family member is being difficult, you might be more concerned with the situational outcomes of the decision.

This clarity can also help you feel some relief that you now know what needs to be done going forward.

4. Mindfulness

When you are in a stressful situation and there is no immediate solution in sight, it might be necessary to practice mindfulness. At its core, mindfulness is simply about being able to pause thinking about things in the past or things coming up in the future. These are commonly referred to as ruminating thoughts.

The aim of mindfulness is to be present in the moment. Activities that can help be present in the moment can include going for a walk, listening to some music, just taking a breath or spending time with a friend.

When being mindful, it is important to remember that thoughts are just thoughts, not realities. If there is a thought that keeps coming up again and again, it can be helpful to write it down and set aside a future time to address the written-down thoughts. That way, you can give yourself permission to not ruminate on those thoughts in the present moment.

5. Seek help

There are many agencies who can help when you feel there is a stressor, a challenge or a threat, that you can’t handle on your own.

Don’t assume that your feelings are “not enough” to need support.

Some supports in Australia include:

Beyond Blue - Beyond Blue provides information and support to help everyone in Australia achieve their best possible mental health, whatever their age and wherever they live.

headspace - headspace is a mental health support service for young people and their families with a focus on early intervention. Young people aged between 12 and 25 experiencing mental health issues can contact them online or via the phone to access support services from 9 am to 1 am, 7 days a week.

Lifeline - Contact Lifeline for support if you are experiencing a personal crisis or have suicidal thoughts. You can call them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere in Australia for crisis support. You can also send a text message or contact their confidential online chat.

MensLine - MensLine Australia is a telephone and online counselling service for men with emotional health and relationship concerns. Men can contact them for free professional support from anywhere in Australia 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For further reading and practical stress and burnout prevention strategies, check out How Burnout Stops: A Practical Guide To Stress Management, Burnout Prevention and Burnout Recovery