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Circumstances are not within ones control, but how you respond to them definitely is. Prolonged stress can take a toll on your well-being. It is therefore important to have effective stress relievers to calm your mind and your body. Given below are some short-term and long-term strategies.

Short-Term Strategies

These are some stress reduction tools that can lower your stress immediately.

1. Guided Imagery

It is like taking a short vacation in your mind. It involves imaging yourself in your “happy place”- of which you have real good memories. Simply close your eyes for a minute and walk yourself through that scene as though you are really there. 

2. Meditate 

Meditation brings immediate relief. There are different forms of meditation. You can develop a mantra and repeat it in your mind as you take slow deep breaths. 

3. Progressive muscle relaxation 

It involves relaxing all the muscles in your body, group by group. To practice, you can start with a few deep breaths. Then, practice tightening and relaxing each muscle group, starting with your forehead and moving down to your toes. 

4. Focus on Breathing

Just focusing on your breath or changing the way you breathe can make a big difference to your stress level. Breathing techniques can calm your body and your brain in a few minutes.  

5. Take a Walk

Walking allows you to enjoy a change of scenery, which gets you into a different frame of mind, and brings the benefits of exercise as well. 

Long-Term Strategies

It is important to create a lifestyle that will help you deal with challenges in a healthy way. 

1. Eat a Balanced Diet

Consuming a healthy diet can help you combat stress over the long period. Foods like eggs, avocado, and walnuts support mood regulation and energy balance. 

2. Make Time for Leisure Activities

Leisure activities are a wonderful way to relieve stress. Whether you find joy in caring for a garden or like making quilts, hobbies and leisure are key to living your best life.

3. Develop a Positive Self-Talk Habit

Positive self-talk can help you develop a healthier outlook. An optimistic conversation can help you manage your emotions and take positive action. 

4. Express Gratitude

Gratitude helps you recognize all the things you have to be thankful for. It is seen that grateful people enjoy better mental health, lower stress, and a better quality of life. 

5. Cut out Things That Add to Your Stress

The best way to reduce stress is to cut things that are adding to your stress. Making small changes to your daily habits could be instrumental in helping you feel better.

When you are experiencing a whirlwind of stress and anxiety, in a slew of ‘what’s’ and ‘ifs’ can further add to your depression. You start contemplating how to deal with it, which makes you more anxious and you get filled with all kinds of negative notions.

However, there are a plethora of techniques to deal with this negativity. Some of them are given below to help in reducing your anxiety and cure your depression.

1. Deep breathing

Deep breathing is a very effective anxiety-reducing technique. Just changing your breathing pattern can make a huge difference to your mental state. Deep breathing can calm your mind within a few minutes.

2. Acceptance of being anxious

Anxiety is simply an emotional reaction. Trying to evade the feeling only worsens it as you do not work towards getting rid of it. Feeling anxious is not ideal but it is not intolerable or incurable.

3.  Understand that it is your brain’s trick

Your brain can think of the impossible. It might make you interpret your panic attack as a heart attack, which will leave you totally disheartened and broken. The psychiatrists often share their experience of chronic patients who had no medical diagnosis but turned out to be psychosomatic. 

4.  Calming visualization is impactful

Visualize yourself of being in a ‘happy place’ of which you have some really good memories. It could be a beautiful garden or a beach. Be with nature and enjoy the sound of the water flowing or the chirping of birds. This will help your mind to relax. 

5. Just observe without being judgmental

Pen down your thoughts, emotions, judgments, and feelings with compassion without being judgmental about it. Being judgmental only worsens the situation. 

6. Counsel yourself with a pep talk

Encourage yourself to be positive in every situation. Tell yourself, ‘I know that I am feeling very anxious it but it will pass.’ The way you talk to yourself matters. An optimistic conversation can help you manage your emotions and take positive action. 

7. Re-adjust your focus

Do not get engulfed in the present situation and think of a bleak future. Instead, find ways to manage the current crisis and overcome the difficulties.

8. Focus on meaningful activities

Think of the activities that you would have taken up if you were not anxious. Instead of brooding over the difficult situation, divert your mind by taking up some interesting and meaningful activities. Remember that remaining in a bad situation and just thinking about it will only worsen it.

There is no clear progression of grief from one stage to another. In reality, these stages can hit anytime or occur in any order. 

For example, loneliness happens late in the grief process, months after the tragedy has struck. It is normal and expected for you to be very depressed and sad eight months after the tragedy has struck. 

Here are the 7 Stages of Grief.

1. Shock & Denial

You are likely to react to the loss of a loved one with numbed disbelief. Initially, you may even deny the reality, in order to avoid the pain. Shock gives initial protection from being overwhelmed. This could last for weeks.

1. Pain & Guilt

Once the shock wears off, suffering of unbelievable pain replaces it. Though this pain is unbearable, it is important that you experience it fully, and do not avoid it or escape from it with alcohol or drugs. Life feels chaotic and scary during this phase.

1. Anger & Bargaining

Frustration gives way to anger, and you may lash out and blame someone else for the death. Do try to control this feeling. This is a time for the release of bottled up emotion. 

1. Reflection, Loneliness

Just when your friends may think you should be getting on with life, a long period of sad reflection is likely to overtake you. This is normal.
This is the time, when you actually realize the true magnitude of your loss. 

1. The Upward Turn

Your life becomes a little more organized as you start adjusting to life without your dear one, and your “depression” begins to lift slowly.

1. Reconstruction & Working Through

As you start leading a normal life, your mind starts working again, and you will find yourself seeking realistic solutions to problems posed by life. You will start working on your problems and reconstructing yourself and your life without your partner.

1. Acceptance & Hope

During this last and final stage of grief, you learn to accept and deal with reality. Acceptance does not mean instant happiness. After the tragedy, you can never be the same carefree, untroubled ‘you’ that existed before. But you will find a way forward.

You will once again start planning your future and looking forward to it. Finally, you will be able to think about your lost loved one without pain. You will start anticipating good times, and also find joy in the experience of living once again.