Ways To Manage Stress

Sometimes, the usual strategies in dealing with the ways to manage stress just seem ineffective.

Even for myself, depending what is going on in my life, I tend to listen with deaf ears to the usual strategies for managing stress:

Eat healthy
Exercise regularly
Maintain a healthy weight
Drink 6-8 glasses of water each day
Get 7-8 hours of sleep each night

In my experience, to only advocate for these strategies as ways to manage stress is ineffective when you are truly struggling with chronic stress , anxiety, or depression.

Missing stress information

I do, however, advocate for integrating the above healthy lifestyle choices into your life. They are a necessary support system to the body.

When you are stressed, the body needs all the support it can get to endure the impact of stress.

But, here’s my problem with them as well. To just integrate these stress management strategies not enough.

Why?

Because ALL of who you are is impacted by stress.

The missing stress information that has made the biggest difference to my clients was been to teach them the importance of their integrated BEST self:

Body
Emotions
Spiritual
Thoughts

And, how each facet of self is impacted by stress. Each part of who you are continually communicates with you when it has become out-of-balance, or is becoming stressed.


Your BEST self and balance

B ody
To help keep your body in balance, or not stressed, it is important to support your body:
  • Eat a balanced diet and drink more water
  • Get 6-8 hours of sleep per night
  • Take B-Complex, magnesium and the antioxidant vitamins of A,C,E are important
  • Stretch your tight muscles out throughout the day
  • Allow yourself to get 30 minutes (doesn’t have to be consecutive min.) of activity 5 x’s/week
  • Do more slow deep breathing



E motions
When the emotional part of you is in balance you will typically feel peaceful and calm. That can be your benchmark.

Self-care of this emotional balance includes:
  • Allow yourself to become more aware of what you ARE feeling
  • Do more slow deep breathing
  • Talk with supportive friends
  • Journal what you are feeling
  • Nurture yourself by:

wear your favorite clothes
drink out of your favorite cup
listen to your favorite relaxing music
snuggle up with an animal




S piritual
In relationship to stress, I refer to spirituality as the congruency between your actions/behaviors and the value statement you have of who you are as a person.

When you are in balance, your actions and behaviors are very congruent with your personal belief system of who you are. Ways to manage stress of your spiritual self involves:
  • Letting yourself “notice” (without blame/shame) what you are saying and doing (including the tone and body language)
  • Do more slow deep breathing
  • Offer gratitude for something someone has done
  • Become aware of your own truths



T houghts
Thoughts that convey that you “won’t survive”, or that are always negative or judgmental will trigger the stress response. Developing self-care of your thoughts involves:
  • Become more self-aware of what you are thinking
  • Spend less time thinking negative thoughts
  • Practice living without judgment or shaming yourself or others
  • Spend more time thinking of things that you are grateful for

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The power of the BEST in you

It has been my experience that it is important for clients to learn how the stress response really works and how it impacts ALL of who they are.

It is important to teach them how simple it is become aware of the balance points within each facet of themselves.




Once they have an understanding of who they are from an integrated perspective their sense of power returns to them.

And, at that point determining the most effective ways to mange stress to them comes naturally.







Share Your Tips, and Ask Questions Too

There are lots of ways of reducing stress. If you have discovered a way that works for you, please share it here. Or, if you have a question about ways to reduce stress, I am glad to answer them here.

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Stress Tip Of The Day!

Throughout each day, the primary cause of stress is because of threats of uncertainty.

It is thoughts of fear and worry that are triggering the stress response.

Staying focused on maintaining a positive attitude is an important stress technique.



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Testimonials

“Ms. Churchill is the unique health care worker everyone hopes to encounter, but rarely does. She has an extraordinary gift that allows her to do much more than diagnose and treat.”
Abbie K. – Minneapolis




K., age 45, is a long term chronically PTSD disabled patient. She has had daily headaches for 20 years. Two weeks ago she reported that she had had 4 days of pain free time, and was having the exceedingly odd sensation of "smiling all the time". She and Cathi have made extraordinary fast progress together.
Dr. Cole




I referred C.L., age mid-forties, to see Cathi after a life of suffering the post traumatic stress disorder of parental sexual abuse over many years of her childhood, with major dysfunctions of alcohol and drug abuse, and with the disabling symptoms of migraine that have for more than twenty years become chronic.

She has lived with daily headaches that have not responded to any of the several drugs which have benefited many such suffering patients. She has needed chronic opiate treatment of her chronic pain syndrome.

In the few weeks that Cathi has worked with her, C.L. has begun to experience days without pain, periods of happiness, and a reduction in her opiate dosage requirements that represent a breakthrough in her stalled-out life as a single mom raising a teen-age daughter with only social security income resources.
Dr. Racer








“I first met Cathi Churchill eight years ago when she effectively helped my work unit through the stress of a hospital-wide layoff. I was impressed with her clear-minded approach and willingness to listen.”
Andy R.




N., age 60, is a hard driving attorney twenty year patient of mine who hit the wall with chronic fatigue four years ago, and began to realize she had to learn to rest. She recovered enough to return to her workaholic lifestyle when she was stopped by a herniated cervical disc and resumption of her chronic colitis.

Working with Cathi, she is discovering "the way she does life" and learning to make choices about it. She came in last week, having "danced until dawn". She is learning to dialogue with her body in effective ways.
Dr. Cole




“I stumbled upon Cathi after my recent heart attack that was brought on by stress. I was scared of having another one, and didn’t know what to do. I had lost hope. Working with her has changed my life. I’m so grateful."
Debbie – Canada




M.S., a woman in her late forties with progressively more and more disabling rheumatoid arthritis since childhood, whose most recent problems have arisen over the last two to three years as complications of immunosuppressive therapy for her disease. The complications have been associated with the severely disabling chronic pain of recurrent herpes neuralgia for more than three years, and for the past 15 months, recurrent osteomyelitis in her right lower mandible.

The second, more alarming (even life-threatening) problem has caused months of diagnostic and therapy confusion among her many consultants, three successive resections of the bone over the last six to eight months, and the still ongoing threat of more relapses of the smoldering bone infection and chronic pain only made bearable by chronic, massive doses of opiates.

In the few months since M. began to work with Cathi with several modalities: stress management, therapeutic touch, guided imaging, and others, her life has become more livable, as she has become able to bear the pain and the discouragement of unresolved disease.

She has relied on many of the methods for maintaining hope and getting through overwhelming discouragement by using the inner resources she has learned with Cathi.

My hope as her primary physician, is that Cathi and M. will be able to continue to work together to maintain that inner strength and hope as she faces yet more months of pain, and further repeated surgery.

Thank you for the healing guidance you've been able to give her thus far.
Dr. Racer




“I sought out the help of Cathi during my divorce, and found her to be an insightful and compassionate coach. Her ability to see deep into the heart of an emotionally stressful problem is, I believe, unique and I would highly recommend her service to anyone.”
P.R. – Brooklyn Center




S., age 48, is a Laotian patient of mine with 15 years of chronic abdominal pain. She has had an extensive medical worked up, and nothing ever worked. Cathi saw her over several months.

S. has improved! Cathi established a trusting relationship with her, and helped her to effectively break through her wall of silence and grief about her son's mental illness, and taught her how to "change her thinking".

S. now comes in smiling, notes some unusual continued symptoms, but no longer has chronic abdominal disabling pain.
Dr. Cole




“Control My Stress is so amazing. I want to thank you, again, for such a valuable resource.”
Tony.


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