Managing Stress

Experiencing stress is normal and an expected part of life.

Most everyday stress is not harmful. ​On the contrary, it can be healthy and it is part of how we learn to become resilent and develop skills that we need to adapt to the challenges life brings us.

When we experience the sensations we call stress, it is a signal that we have a problem or challenge that we need to solve.

• Solving the problem reduces or shuts off the stressful feelings and our solution now becomes a new skill that can help us in the future. 
• Avoiding stress or focusing only on reducing our stressful feelings can change everyday positive stress into chronic long-term negative stress – because we have not successfully addressed the challenge we have encountered, even if we have reduced our feelings of stress.
• There are many useful strategies we may be able to consider in managing the normal stresses of life. These include changing how we think about stress.