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Exploring the "Should's": Is it Necessity, Desire, or Guilt?
How many times a day do you find yourself using the word "should"? ADDers are full of "should's": I should do the dishes, I should clean out the fridge, I should see that movie, I should call my friend, etc. The word "should" can be very dangerous...
How Healthy Is Your Lifestyle
Copyright 2004 by http://www.organicgreens.us and Loring Windblad. This article may be freely copied and used on other web sites only if it is copied complete with all links and text intact and unchanged except for minor improvements such as...
Media Underload! The Stress Reducing Psych-Diet
The war, taxes, the economy, increased health problems, crime on the rise, overwhelming divorce rate, corruption in corporate America, and, oh yes, Janet at the Super Bowl! Where does it end? With so much going wrong, whats going right in the...
Stress In The Workplace
According to the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ (A.C.T.U.) 1997 survey, fifty per cent of workers had suffered some form of stress at work in a 12-month period. The statistics in care professions were even higher, with the Department of...
What You Need to Know to lose weight without dieting
If your commitment to eat right, exercise, and lose weight always seems to lose its steam, you are not alone! Weight problems are not just about what you are eating, but why you are eating in the first place. To see what I mean, ask yourself...
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Stress & Self Esteem: Raising One by Lowering the Other
Copyright 2005 Tanja Gardner
In our article about Exercise & Stress, we looked at the way these two factors form a self-reinforcing cycle that can work for us. With stress and self-esteem, however, the relationship is negative – both in the technical sense of the words (i.e. as one increases, the other decreases, and vice versa), and in its ultimate result upon the person concerned.
Study after study has found that increasing someone’s self-esteem will reduce the amount of stress they experience. The jury is still out, however, about whether increasing someone’s chronic stress (without giving them time to relax and recharge) will reduce their self-esteem levels. There’s anecdotal evidence that, if you start with high self esteem, stress doesn’t seem to affect it. If your self-esteem levels start out low, however, stress will often reduce them even further.
So what’s going on here? Why does the relationship between stress and self-esteem work the way it does? Part of it is probably just logic and semantics. Self-esteem is the level of regard or value we have for ourselves – and it’s a complex thing. It encompasses how we feel about ourselves, the image we have of ourselves, and what we believe we are and aren’t capable of. If we define stress as ‘our reaction to encountering a situation that requires us to adapt further than we believe we can currently cope with’, it makes sense that anything that increases the level of ‘what we believe we are capable of’ will therefore reduce our stress.
Part of it is also about what we will and won’t accept in our lives. If my self-esteem is high, I’m less likely to just tolerate things I find stressful. Instead, chances are I’ll do something about them – either find out how to fix them or avoid them – simply because I believe I deserve better than to have to suffer them. So from this point of view, the relationship isn’t just a matter of semantics. In a very real way, higher self-esteem *causes* behaviours that reduce stress.
The question then becomes, if we know that raising our self-esteem is going to help us manage our stress, what do we do to boost it? How do we go about building our self-esteem to the level that we’re in the optimum state possible to manage all those daily
stressors *before* they start to ‘stress us out’?
As with every self-help topic, there are many theories – some more complex than others. One of the simplest and most ‘user friendly’ models we’ve found was suggested by the Counselling & Mental Health Centre at the University of Texas. This proposes three basic steps for improving self-esteem:
1. Rebutting your Inner Critic – dealing with that inner voice that constantly tells you that you ‘can’t do it’
2. Practicing nurturing yourself – keeping up your own mental and physical resources
3. Getting help from other people – knowing who you can turn to for help when working alone isn’t enough
Although this model suggests sequential steps (i.e. you’d need to deal with your Inner Critic before you began to nurture yourself), there’s no reason why you can’t work on some – or all – of them at the same time. So, for example, you could use the help of a coach while you experimented with different ways of nurturing yourself, without having paid any conscious attention whatsoever to your Inner Critic yet. Because everyone is different, the right combinations and sequence for one person aren’t necessarily going to be the right ones for another.
Irrespective of order, however, we need to understand each step individually if the model is going to be any use in helping us raise self-esteem levels. The remaining articles in this series will explore each step in detail, starting with next issue’s article, which will examine exactly what our Inner Critic is, and some of the most useful ways of dealing with it. Until then, may every day bring you closer to living your optimum life!
About the author:
Optimum Life's Tanja Gardner is a Stress Management Coach and Personal Trainer whose articles on holistic health, relaxation and spirituality have appeared in various media since 1999. Optimum Life is dedicated to providing fitness and stress management services to help clients all over the world achieve their optimum lives. For more information please visit check out http://optimumlife.co.nz,or contact Tanja on tanja@optimumlife.co.nz.
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| Stress Management Tips and Techniques from Mind Tools |
| More than 100 stress management tips and techniques, helping you manage the job-related stress in your life. |
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| Stress Management Techniques, Stress Relief & Stress Reduction ... |
| Mind Tools helps you manage the causes of stress and teaches useful stress management techniques. |
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| Stress Management |
| Stress Management. What is Stress? Stress is the "wear and tear" our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment; it has physical ... |
| www.ivf.com |
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| Stress Management: Information and Resources on Stress From About.com |
| Find a wide variety of stress management strategies you can use in your daily life. Learn about the causes and effects of stress, healthy and effective ... |
| stress.about.com |
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| Stress Management |
| Links to stress management information on the web. |
| www.pp.okstate.edu |
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| Links to Stress Related Resources |
| Return to the Stress Management and Emotional Wellness Page ... Cognitive Restructuring Approaches to Stress Management ... |
| www.imt.net |
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| International Stress Management Association(UK) |
| The leading professional body for stress management. The ISMA website has articles from their journal Stress News, links and general advice on lifestyle and ... |
| www.isma.org.uk |
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| Stress Management for Patient and Physician |
| Stress management for patient and physician. Stress is the most common cause of ill health, probably underlying as many as 70% of all visits to family ... |
| www.mentalhealth.com |
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| Stress Management: Counseling Services, University at Buffalo |
| The description on stress management. ... Stress Management. Introduction Stress is a part of day to day living. As college students you may experience ... |
| ub-counseling.buffalo.edu |
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| Stress Management and Anxiety Relief |
| Welcome to stressmanagement.co.uk - We specialise in managing your stress. |
| www.stressmanagement.co.uk |
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| Stress Management for effective ways to manage stress |
| Our stress management services allows you to find the solutions to all types of stress. We also have professional stress management counsellors available 7 ... |
| www.stressmanagement.com.au |
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| Stress Management--UIUC Counseling Center |
| Self-help Brochures. What is Stress? Stress is the "wear and tear" our bodies experience as we adjust to our continually changing environment; ... |
| www.couns.uiuc.edu |
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| The Stress Management Society |
| Congratulations to taking the first step to freedom from the stress trap. This is the place to learn more about stress and its management. |
| www.stress.org.uk |
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| Stress management - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Stress management encompasses techniques intended to equip a person with effective ... Definition of stress: Stress management defines stress precisely as a ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| Stress |
| Stress Management. Everyone experiences stress from time to time, so it is perfectly normal ... Fortunately, stress management is largely a learnable skill. ... |
| www.cyberpsych.com |
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| SBC Academic Resource Center | Stress Management |
| With stress management training, you can learn to avoid procrastination and other stress-producing situations. Stress Quiz: How Stressed Are You? ... |
| www.arc.sbc.edu |
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| Mind Tools - How to Master Stress |
| 3. Stress Management Techniques. Raising Stress Levels - Psyching Up · Stress Reduction Techniques · Reducing Short-Term Stress - Mental Techniques ... |
| www.psywww.com |
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| Stress, stress management, occupational stress, stress prevention ... |
| A recent survey showed that 70-90% of us feel stressed at work and outside. Unless we learn to manage stress, we will get sick. |
| www.holisticonline.com |
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| HSE - Stress Management Standards Homepage |
| The International Stress Management Association has produced a leaflet showing how employees can work with their employers to tackle work-related stress ... |
| www.hse.gov.uk |
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| Stress Management Tips for Stressed and Overworked People. |
| Free weekly stress management tips and relaxation CD plus practical resources for stressed people. |
| www.stresstips.com |
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