Sometimes, despite your best efforts to stay on top of everything, it can feel like life is starting to get on top of you instead. Modern life can be difficult at the best of times, when we’re juggling responsibilities, expectations, and pressures from multiple sources. It’s no surprise that a lot of people find it difficult to operate under that weight. It can lead to stress, burnout, and even the development of some potentially dangerous coping mechanisms. If you feel like life is starting to get overwhelming (or has perhaps been there for a while), then here are a few tips to hopefully help you find yourself gaining some balance again.
Use Grounding Techniques
If you’re feeling stressed or anxious in your present moment, then you should make use of some proven anxiety management techniques to help ground yourself. This can include simple breathing exercises, such as the 4-4-6 method of inhaling for four counts, holding for four, and then exhaling for six. This can help you calm your nervous system, slow your heart rate, and reduce panic. Learning a few of these grounding techniques might not help you solve your problems immediately, but they might be able to give you the mental space to be able to think more clearly, which can be important, too.
Write Your Thoughts Down
If you’re able to deal with the immediate anxiety of a problem, then the next step should be writing it down. When we keep our stressful thoughts in our heads, they can feel a lot larger and more tangled than they are in reality. Putting them on paper isn’t going to solve them or make them feel trivial, but it can remove some of the emotional height from the scenario, and when you treat it like a math problem, you can feel like you’re looking at it a little more objectively. Journaling allows you to separate facts from fears, identify patterns, and break big problems into smaller pieces. Getting into the habit of journaling more frequently can help you check in with yourself and keep those problems from dominating your thoughts.
Prioritize Your Physical Health In Small Ways
When you have a busy, responsibility-filled life, you might not be able to take care of yourself as much as you would like. However, you should make sure that your physical self-care doesn’t fall to the bottom of the priority list. If you’re having trouble sleeping, it might be worth addressing with the help of your doctor, or simply changing your nighttime routine to get into bed earlier, where possible. Sleep plays a huge part in emotional regulation, so when you’re low on it, it should be expected that you might have bigger emotions that feel more difficult to cope with as a result. Similarly, small, realistic goals like 30 minutes of light exercise, like walking or stretching every day, can help you manage your mood and release some tension.
Reduce Stressors Where You Can
It’s not productive to pretend that your stress is all in your head. When you have real external sources of pressure to deal with, sometimes you have to find ways to mitigate those when possible. It’s not always easy, or doable, but you might be able to find the sources of stress that are a little easier ot turn off. For instance, taking a digital detox, putting away your phone, and deleting social media apps could help you relieve some of that pressure. Avoiding spending time with people who drain you or additional responsibilities that you’ve volunteered for are other examples of ways you can lighten your load to a degree.
Exploring Therapy
It’s important to recognize that therapy is not a silver bullet for stress and anxiety, but also that it’s not something you should wait to explore at a moment of crisis. It can teach you a whole range of healthy coping skills, techniques to process your emotions, and ways of gaining a little internal perspective. A therapist can help you identify unhelpful thought patterns, manage stress, and develop healthier responses to life’s challenges. It’s also simply helpful to have a neutral place to talk that’s free of judgment. Seeking help is not something you have to wait to do only when things have reached a crisis point; it can be helpful at any time.
Be Mindful Of Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
When life starts to feel unbearable, it’s not uncommon for people to latch onto coping mechanisms that can provide temporary relief. However, many of these can create long-term harm, with substance abuse being of particular note, due to its risk of addiction. Recognizing these patterns is important, and you should seek help when you spot them, whether that means a detox or seeking residential treatment. Although these substances can feel like they’re helping mitigate emotional pain, the truth is that they often only mask it and increase stress over time by adding a new, potent source of anxiety on top of life, which already feels overwhelming enough as is.
Turn To Support When In Crisis
It’s always important to recognize that you’re not alone. Finding support groups, whether in-person or online, can help you benefit from the understanding and shared experiences of others who have been through similar things as you. When you’re feeling like your stress is at its peak, then turning to emergency mental health hotlines can help you get a human connection in your hour of greatest need, providing immediate support and sometimes simply serving to ground you in the moment, and help you bring emotions back down to a more sustainable level so that you can plan long-term treatment, such as therapy or attending a substance abuse clinic. These services are confidential, designed to help you navigate those worst moments safely, so knowing that they’re there can be genuinely life-saving.
It’s not always easy to get from under the pressures of life, many of which may have very real sources that have to be addressed in the long term. However, hopefully, the tips above can help you get back to yourself.
Want to unlock greater wellness?
Listen to our friends over at the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast to unlock your best self with Dr. John Lieurance; Founder of MitoZen; creators of the ZEN Spray and Lumetol Blue™ Bars with Methylene Blue.
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