your coping mechanisms to avoid stress?

To me, being 'stressed' is when my ability to cope with my situation is inadequate.

What do you do to avoid becoming stressed?
how do you cope with increased demands of yourself - either coming from yourself or from your situation/others?

Do you have a good awareness of your 'mental wellbeing'?

and do you have a good sense of your limits before you begin feel like you are not coping? what do you do then?

Affirmations. I will ....... rather than I should.... or I could.....

Saying I Will makes you feel powerful.

Rationalization.

Will worrying about this help me? Can I actually do anything to change the situation or is it a done deal and therefore not worth worrying about?

Throwing a ball between hands. It seems to work. Got it off youtube.

Meditation.


In order to avoid getting a panic attack or acting inappropriately in public, it is best to recognize when the anxiety is coming and stop it before it becomes too difficult to contain. By the time you start crying or your eyes get dizzy it is too late because you can no longer concentrate or think rationally.

In psychology that's called the "hot" and "cold" states. When in a cold state it is often hard to motivate oneself to prepare for the hot states, because the intensity of these emotions when in a hot state are hard to imagine and do anything about in the cold state, they feel kind of irrelevant. However, the gap between the two can definitely be reduced via practice and experience.

Like Invisible mentioned; noticing when you are approaching the hot state (through mental and physical awareness) makes it possible for you to consciously do something about it before it becomes too late/difficult to handle.

Through experience we learn which situations are hot and which are cold for us, which is great. We need that to prepare for situations. So another way is visualizing the hot states the way you would like them to go including feeling positive emotions. That practice creates mental cues; when a similar situation arises, your brain already has the experience to function a certain way and so it becomes easier to feel those emotions and have that pattern of thought, which you had when visualizing.

It all clicks together now. When I said that I think it's not a good idea to push oneself forcefully into situations when you're not ready, I was talking about the inability to handle hot situations. But that does not mean that you have to sit and wait to be ready, you can prepare.

So in summary here are the main concepts:

- AWARENESS to stop before it becomes too much; e.g. get yourself out of the situation
- EXPERIENCE to learn the patterns/cycles of own emotional states and their causes
- VISUALIZATION to rewire the brain from cold states to deal with different phases of the cycle (hot states)

Very interesting. This will work, if I do it before I am aware of situation X occurring. It would not work if I think that situation X will occur in the near future, as this will lead to obsessive thinking. If I plan before hand, it will potentially reduce or get rid of the risk of obsessive thinking because I have already, in a clear non-anxious frame of mind figured out what I would do.

Sometimes I just tell myself, in ten years, twenty years, fifty years, where will I be? Will this little situation matter to me? We will all be dead someday. Will this matter?

I just repeat over and over in my head, that I'll get through it. "Get through it, get through it, you'll get through it, just endure it and it will be over soon."

I just tell myself that, over and over in my head. I think of my past, and how much I got through and where I am today. I have been through A LOT in life. Sometimes, I felt so much pressure, depression, anxiety, etc. Oh, I'm not going to get into it but let's just say, looking back on it now, remembering what I went through about a year ago, and all at the same time, too...I don't know how I survived, but I did.

I wanted to cry, I wanted to die, I wanted to quit, but I didn't. I just repeated the words I mentioned earlier. I tried to stay strong. Also, crying is good for you. Sometimes you need a good cry. Google it. Crying is healthy.

Remember, if good things happen, great. If bad things happen, then it's experience. Remember, like in a video game, battles give you EXP!

Isolating myself, appearing offline/not logging in, switching my phone off & avoiding all contact with people as much as possible. This has always been my coping method.

I wish it wasn't though 'cos it only brings more stress after when I want to reconnect with people once i'm back to coping again.

Do you have any idea how much I WISH someone would call me? I have only four contacts on my cell phone and they are all family. I have two friends on MSN messenger, and they are people I met on this site!

How friendless am I?

Aww sorry I wasn't trying to rub it in. Have you tried putting a thread in the pen pal section or going to SA meets? I'm sure there are others that are in a similar position and would love to speak to another person with SA. It's mostly how i've met the majority of people I talk to tbh so it's worth a try if you haven't already.

Wouldn't recommend it but getting high is a nice distraction

books,weed,tumblr,masturbation,sleeping,painting,c leaning,coming on this message board lolz