Coping With Stress

Stress and Burnout, How Can You Cope With It?

Many individuals who feel completely burdened out with stress, burnout and anxiety naturally want an escape from the symptoms that they are going through and by human nature under such circumstances, some turn to drink or worse drug abuse in the false hope that for a few moments at least, they can once again feel more normal in themselves. Turning to alcohol or drugs though can lead to further negative impact addictions which only compound the problem.  Alcohol and drugs only cover over the problem for an exceedingly short period of time and can through misuse make the problem of stress or burnout, the root causes of stress, a lot more difficult to face up to and resolve.  Sometimes for the most effective stress management techniques to take place in a true reflexive manner, one needs to go straight to the root causes of what is causing the problem in the first place.  There is no positive point to be gained from taking short term measures which in time come back to haunt you and make the problem of stress management much worse.

Other individuals seek stress management relief through other measures such as going on shopping spree’s, buying consumer goods, clothes and accessories that they don’t really want or need, in an effort to make themselves feel better about themselves as individuals.  This too can create a compounded negative impact on dealing with the actual causes of stress and can if it is allowed to go unchecked, add up to even more stress in the future.

Still other people go down the route of promiscuity, all of these measures an effort to escape from life’s hard realities and avoid the pain of what is causing the stress or burn out right from the outset.  Such escapist measures are a two edged sword and whilst temporary relief may feel ever so good, usually the root cause of the stress rears it’s ugly head again very shortly afterwards sending the stress victim into a never ending vicious circle avoiding the real reality of life and what is going wrong.  If allowed to go completely unchecked, these escapist measures just lead to further frustration and often depression or worse.

When individuals try to dilute their problems through escapism, rather than rekindling themselves positively they simply speed up the process of further burnout. When the fire inside you is burning out, stressed out to the maximum, what real steps can you take to alleviate the stress felt that is causing you so much trouble in your life?

Dr Yutaka Ono, a director at Keio University School of Medicine recommends the three C’s for coping with stress and burnout. He explains that, “The three C’s stand for control, communication and cognition.”

In order to overcome the feels of stress or burnout, feelings of helplessness etc, you must be able to feel that you are the one who is in Control of the situation, of your feels and your behaviour.  When frustration and feels of high stress overwhelm you, leading to frustration or worse, dominating your emotions and normal good thinking capacity, crushing your otherwise good ability to solve problems effectively, it is sadly so all too easy to believe that things are out of your hands.  You can either stay in Control or get out of Control, the choice is entirely up to you. However, one point to keep in ever present front of your mind is that you must not simply sit back and allow these feeling to override your more normal behavioural reactions, leading to frustration and helplessness - dwelling on troublesome thoughts and feelings is simply a precursor, a foreboding sign and/or signal of perhaps worse feelings to come, in the near future.  You need not attempt to solve all of your stressed out problems in one go.  Often a step by step approach in byte sized pieces is the most effective method known to alleviating the feelings of burnout and stress.

Do not procrastinate, that is put off the thought of considering the personal implementation of an action plan, one small step at a time, which when added together over time will significantly reduce your feelings of stress putting you in greater Control over your personal life.  If you initiate these steps, you will begin to feel not only more in Control of yourself but too, you will start feeling a lot more so, positively better and more able to face up to your own root causes of your stress distress.

First we want to suggest that you look at what is actually causing you irritation in the first place. If we can identify what are these exact irritations, locate them, label them, then we can put together some measures to start handling these irritations more positively so that we do not feel so stressed out the next time these irritating stress factors come into play, near you. Irritations, stress, can lead to, if unchecked feelings of defeatism, what we want to do is defeat the stress irritations and not the person experiencing the irritating stress factors, which as discussed can prompt irrational feelings of helplessness, getting annoyed with every trifling difficulty in life.