1. Establish good sleep habits. Sleep is how the body recovers from stress.
2. Exercise daily. Movement is how the body puts the stress hormones to work.
3. Eat well. The gut-brain connection drives how we feel as we digest.
2. Exercise daily. Movement is how the body puts the stress hormones to work.
3. Eat well. The gut-brain connection drives how we feel as we digest.
Does anyone have any help or tips here?
>become better at managing your stress […] train your mind to flip off the stress switch
Well yes, I suppose…
It requires some practice, but the gist of it is to train awareness around your thoughts, and then to dispassionately label your thoughts when you find yourself stuck in a loop about something. Don't engage with them or try to fight them, just say "that's worrying" or or maybe if your source of stress is you're constantly try to solve all the world's problems, you say "I'm problem-solving".
It's important not to make it a struggle. Just label them over and over again. Two hundred times in an hour if that's what it takes.
If you do that over and over again, not only will it become easier each time to the point where it's almost like flipping a switch and your mind flushes all that crap like an airplane toilet and in the absence impressions of the world come rushing in, it becomes very clear how stuck in a bubble you were. Not only that, which is arguably a benefit in itself, you'll also find yourself stuck in those thought patterns less over time.
It really is an amazingly powerful technique.
Hoo boy that's easeir said than done.
Tried all of the regular remedies: diet, exercise, reading, prayer, habit changes. My doctor prescribed a medicine to help me calm down at night. That was the first thing that actually helped.
That kept going until I left a very stressful job and landed in a healthy environment with a different employer. I was able to stop the medicine after a couple of months.
All that to say, there are many methods that work for different people and situations. Don't discount speaking with a doctor or therapist, and don't continue through life with bad sleep. It's a really rough way to go.
If you can identify the thing(s) keeping you up at night, and if they're things in your control, consider making changes. Living without good sleep sucks. Do whatever it takes to get good sleep, even if it means big changes.
I also agree with the sentiment. Anytime my stress levels rise - my sleep goes back to shit. Is there a solution? Nope!
If you cannot fix the source of stress then you need to learn to embrace the madness. Learn to just accept you’re not getting more than 5 hours of sleep a night and you’ll be better off for it - instead of sitting in bed for 8-10 hours everyday and majority of it wishing you were asleep. Embrace the 2am fall asleep crash and the 6am wake up hustle.
Truly is a nightmare to live through but that’s life.
Exercise helps with the relaxed part.
But I'm almost sure Benadryl isn't good for stress management on the simple basis that functioning cholinergic signaling is the inhibitory agent of the sympathetic nervous system. On any degree of anticholinergic effect you're more of in a flight-or-flight humor. This is apparent on acute effect (overdose,) the anticholinergic toxidrome symptomatology mnemonic goes like this: red as a beet, blind as a bat, mad as hatter, hot as a hare, dry as a bone - all something you could get with amphetamine (a dominant sympathetic nervous system). Do you reckon amphetamine relaxing?
When Covid hit, 4 kids home/remote job/divorce all hit at once. I have to do something hard enough that my brain can shut off worrying about the thing. Lizard brain has to be active enough to think threat is gone and shut off.
The hardest days for me are intentional rest days/weeks where I have to be mindful of not having that same release.
I just wanted to say kudos for finding healthy outlets to manage.
Even during the most stressful of times, that evening workout helped reset my mood.
Reading in bed helps immensely as well.
Yes. when you go to sleep don't put any pressure on yourself that you need to sleep X number of hrs or whatever. Just go to bed on regular schedule and be thankful for the amount of sleep you get, actual amount is irrelevant.
What helps me is reading a book. Sometimes have to switch to a more boring book.
In recent years started using Kindle with a very low light setting, going lower every few minutes, even having to enlarge font at the end, to make it readable with such low light.