Stress relief self help tips help you to remain in your center, balanced and able to create your everyday magic and synchronicity.

You get to choose who you are being in each moment. As a result, you’re in the driver’s seat in terms of shifting your thoughts and feelings that comprise your personal energy balance in each moment. Anytime you begin to feel yourself getting stressed and out of your center, shift back. Doing this helps you to prevent your day from running away from you and helps you to keep your energy balance intact.

Here are three quick stress relief self help techniques you can use to create and maintain your centered balance each day:

1) Breathe Deeply from Your Belly:

Take at least five minutes in both the morning and evening to center yourself through deep belly breathing. Breathing gets you back into your center and aligns you with your Soul

Place your hand on your belly, blow out all the air from your lungs as much as you can through your slightly opened mouth, then take a deep breath in through your nostrils, filling your lower lung first. You will see and feel your hand moving outward as you do this. Continue filling your lung, moving upwards until you feel like your chest is chock full of air. Hold for a count of four then slowly release the air through your mouth.

As you inhale, feel yourself breathing in any two combinations of Peace, Love, Wisdom, Abundance, Joy by saying to yourself: ‘I Am Peace and Joy’ or ‘I Am Love and Wisdom’. As you exhale, breathe out all stress, anxiety and fear, saying ‘I release all anxiety and fear’.

2) Release Your Pent-Up Emotion:

It’s a great idea to learn how to release all pent up emotions regularly to help you to keep relaxed, centered and Soul-aligned while you create your highest vision of your passionate and fully self expressed life.

A quick easy way that I’ve used for years is to allow myself regular time to release and express all pent up emotions. You’ll need to lock your door when you set aside some private, alone time. You’ll also need a glass of drinking water, a pillow or two and either a radio, music or television.

Take a few minutes to remember what upset you over the past day or two, allowing yourself to fully feel any emotions that you experienced. Turn up the radio, music or TV and use your pillow to muffle loud sounds. Cry, vent, curse, sob, laugh.. whateverrrr. Allow, in the privacy of your safe space, the full release of all emotions that didn’t get a chance to be honoured and expressed at the time you originally felt them.

The emotions will come up in waves, so allow yourself at least 10 minutes each day for this for the first two or three weeks. You will be amazed at how empty and refreshed you will feel once you get into the rythym of this. Always give thanks for the release and always visualize your body filled up and surrounded with loving and healing purple energy. This will help to finish up any emotional cleansing as you go about the rest of your day.

3) Write Your Morning Pages:

This is another technique that I’ve used for aeons to help me cleanse my heart and mind of ‘stuff’, leaving me free to create my day freshly and passionately. I first learnt it from Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way”.

Get a notebook to use for your Morning Pages and wake up 15 minutes earlier than you usually do. It’s important that you do this first thing as you awaken, perhaps after going to the bathroom. Write everything that comes to mind or heart. Anything and everything. This is your private book that no one else will see. Fill one and a half pages or sheets (three sides) full of all your thoughts, all your feelings. If you can’t think or feel a thing… write that. The key is to completely fill three sides of notebook paper first thing in the morning, every morning.

Do this for one month BEFORE you review anything of what you have written. You’ll be amazed at the stuff that was taking up all that space within you. You will get many insights into what bothers you deep down inside, what makes you happy, and what issues you are ready to work through in your life.

OK, there you go. You’re now armed with three deceptively simple but highly powerful stress relief self help techniques. I cannot recommend these Stress Busters highly enough. I use them all the time and always get great feedback from those I teach them to.

These stress management self help tips will help you if you feel stressed, overwhelmed and anxious. They are also excellent for increasing and expressing your creativity more fully in your daily life. Increased creativity is the mother of all abundance so enjoy the process of centering each day and reaping the rewards of full self expression as a great bonus.

Can stress relief games really help ease your feelings tension and anxiety?
Definitely.

It’s true that stress is often caused by outside factors that we have no control over, like having to pay for a new water heater, or having to take up the slack for an absent co-worker. But how we deal with those outside stressors can make things worse.

Many people dealing with stressful situations try to hold things in, keep it all together, and stay in control. But what they actually need is an outlet, a way to just let themselves go for a while and get everything out.

And that’s where stress relief games can help.

Exercise

Physical exercise is often a great way to deal with stress. Once you are in the pool swimming laps, you will soon forget about the problems at work. And hitting a tennis ball for an hour or so is a great way to work out your frustrations.

People often feel better after they’ve done something fun and active for a little while.

Fun is the key. Doing a workout probably won’t relieve as much stress as playing an actual game or sport, like basketball, would. If you are trying to relieve stress, make sure you are doing something you really enjoy.

Board and Parlor Games

How many times have you been really stressed out about something? Then something happens to give you a good laugh, and whatever was bothering you doesn’t seem so bad anymore.

There is truth to the saying that laughter is the best medicine, so playing funny board or parlor games is a great way to relieve stress.

It’s hard not to laugh during a fun game of charades. And you can find games online that are guaranteed to tickle your funny bone.

Games That Occupy Your Mind

One way to relieve your stress is to get your mind off of whatever is causing it. And playing intellectually stimulating games is a great way to do that.

There are plenty of games online that will occupy your mind and keep you from thinking about your troubles. Choose games that are challenging enough to hold your interest, but not so challenging they would cause you to feel frustrated.

If you like pencil puzzles, buy several puzzle books, along with a good supply of mechanical pens, and stash them around your home or office.

Jigsaw puzzles are also good stress relievers.

Stress relief games are a great way to ease your feelings of tension and anxiety. Whether it’s engaging in physical activity, playing games online, or solving pencil puzzles, you are bound to find a game that will help you manage your stress.

Conceptualizing stress: Stress often has a negative connotation. Failure, illnesses, distress are often marked as stress. Stress can also be a result of factors like job promotion, transfers, first love and the like.

Ivancevich and Matteson (1980) defined stress as an adaptive response mediated by individual characteristics or psychological process that is a consequence of any internal action, situation or event that places special physical or psychological demands upon the person. Hans Selye’s (1974) pioneering work shed light on stress, and introduced the concept of stress into scientific circle. As seen above different psychologists have given different definitions to stress. Bourne and Ekstrand (1982) define stress as “any state during which the body tends to mobilize its resources and during which it utilizes more energy that originally would produce.” According to Shanmugham (1981) stress is any condition that strains the coping capacities of the person.

Stress can also lead to physical disorders because the internal body system changes in order to cope with stress. Some physical disorders have short term effect such as an upset of stomach and others have longer term effects such as stomach ulcer. Stress over a prolonged time also leads to degenerative disease of hear, kidneys, blood vessels and others parts of the body. Researches have revealed certain personality variables which make the individual to be more vulnerable to stress. Certain occupations were also found offering more stress. Lachman (1983) has cited examples of experiencing higher work stress by nurses in intensive care units as compared to those on general duty. Dharmangadan (1988) reported that policeman score significantly higher on stress than other occupational groups. Irrespective of the wide research attacks and theoretical contemplation, the field of stress lacks an integrative frame work which can explain the majority of research results in a logical and theoretical manner (Cooper, 1983).

Several studies have attempted to identify and explore different areas and dimensions of stress. (Pestonjee, 1992, Balagangadharan and Bhagavathy, 1997). Most widely used instruments to assess stress include schedule of Recent Experiences (Holmes and Rahe, 1967) Personal Stress Assessment Inventory (Kindler, 1981) and Life Experience Survey (Sarason et al.1979).Different methodological issues in stress assessment are discussed in Rabkin and Struening (1986). Sarason et al. (1978) has concluded that a measure of life stress should possess three characteristics, a) It should include a list of events experienced by the population being investigated. b) It should allow rating by respondent themselves. c) It should allow for individualized rating of the personal impact of the events experienced.

Based on the writing of James (1982), Sutherland and Cooper (1990) and Pohorecky (1991) the investigator identified 8 areas of stress measures the global stress of the individual subject.

1. Stress as a predisposition: The concept of viewing stress as a predisposition evolved over many years in response to experimental findings, clinical observation, theory formulation and prospective validation. Friedman and Roseman (1974) Observed a pattern of behavior particularly in young coronary patients, which later came to be known as Type A Behavior. Type A people are those who are engaged in a relatively chronic struggle to obtain more and more in shorter time.

2. Source of stress in family: House can be a potential source of stress. Both regular and unexpected situations demand adaptive and coping style of the individual. Interpersonal relationships, marriage, communication barriers, unexpected incidents like shifting of the residence, illness or bereavement of a family member add stress to persons.

3. Source stress in occupation: Occupation is another potential source of stress. Regular situations like taking up a risky job, which is against the interest. Working for low wages. Insecurity of job, lack of appraisal from the employer, receiving contradictory directions from higher authorities are stressful to any individual. Along with these, loss of employment, delayed payments and strained interpersonal relations among the colleagues also cause stress.

4. Subjective assessment of situations: Individual’s subjective assessment about a situation is important in labeling a situation as stressful. A situation which is highly stressful for a person, for example a transfer in job, may be viewed as an opportunity to meet new people and see new places by another.

5. Somatic outcomes of stress: Somatic outcomes like migraine headache, angina, loss of appetite, constipation, respiratory problems, excessive sweating are often regarded as indices of stress.

6. Psychological outcomes: Psychological outcomes like insomnia, nightmares, irritability, and hopelessness, anger towards criticism, anxiety,

tiredness, excessive smoking and substances abuse can be counted as to reflect stress.
7. Specific patterns of responding to stress: Individual’s patterns of response to stress are an indicator of his personality. Some persons show hatred and irritability in stressful situations whereas same others become desperate and confessing.

8. Engagement in tension reduction activities: In day to day life, people come across a number of situations which arouse stress. Deliberate or unconscious desire to get out of stress is obvious in the in creased rate of interest shown in sports and games, joining clubs, rearing of pets, watching movies etc.

SELECTION OF ITEMS

On the basis of related literature and detailed discussion with experts in the field, it was planned to construct an inventory to measure stress on a five point scale. 15 to 20 items were constructed on each area of stress evolved in the discussions. Maximum care was taken to see that each item corresponds to the specific area under which it was constructed and they do not overlap each other.

The listed items were constructed in the form of statements. Each statement was related to situation creating or resulting in subjective experience of stress. Altogether 140 statements were constructed and the following precautions were taken while constructing the test items.

1. Each item was constructed in simple Malayalam so that it could be easily understood.

2. Careful attention was taken to make the items free from the factor of social desirability.

3. Sufficient care was paid to see that each item was closely related to stress.

4. In order to control the acquiescence set of subjects, items were constructed in both positive and negative forms.

Tryout

The test items were randomly arranged and were applied to an unselected group of 50 school teachers. No time limit was given to the subjects and they were asked to read carefully each of the items and express their own opinion in terms of any of the five alternatives, ‘fully agree’ ‘agree’, ‘undecided’, ‘disagree’ ‘fully disagree’ as the case may be. They were also asked to mention, if the statements were either vague or different in respect of their meanings. The test items were again checked on the basis of the responses obtained in the tryout. Statement which belonged to any of the following categories was dropped.

1. Statements which were responded to either favorably or unfavorably almost invariably.

2. Statements which elicited a high proposition of ‘undecided’ responses.

3. Statements which were considered difficult or vague.

Thus, out of the 140 items, 28 items were rejected totally. The remaining 112 statements were given to teachers of Psychology to judge the clarity and face validity of each item. In the light of their judgment 11 more items were dropped and the rest 101 items were retained for final tryout and item analysis.
Item analysis.

ITEM ANALYSIS

The item analysis of 101 items on the response of a sample of 300 college students was made on a Liker type 5 point scale ranging from ‘fully agree’ through ‘undecided’ to ‘fully disagree’. Response score of each individual was summed across 101 items. (After converting negative item score to positive). 75 high scoring and 75 low scoring subjects were screened out. These two extreme groups were used to check the discriminative indices of each of the adopting the criterion of internal consistency suggested by Likert (1932). t-value was calculated to compare the mean scores of two extreme groups on each item. All the t values are given in appendices. Those items whose t values were significant at 0.01 level were retained in the inventory. Thus 66 items were selected for the final form.

RELIABILITY

In order to ascertain the reliability of the inventory, internal consistency as determined by split half method was calculated on the basis of responses given by a sample of 50 college students. The product moment co-efficient of internal consistency as corrected by Spearman- Brown formula was found to be 0.74. To test the temporal consistency, the inventory was administered to the same of 50 college students after 4 weeks. Test-retest coefficient of correlation was found to be 0.79 and temporal consistency to be 0.88.

VALIDITY

To ascertain whether HSI was a valid tool, the content validity was determined. The items were given to five teachers in Psychology (as mentioned earlier) who had sufficient orientation and experience in this area. They read every item and judged carefully the degree of stress expressed by each. For this purpose the judges were given a table in which they were required to place every item under one of the following 5 categories, fully agree/agree/undecided/disagree/fully disagree. Judges were also requested to mention such items which were either not well worded or difficult to understand. On the basis of their opinion only 101 items were subjected to item analysis and out of them 66 items which full filled the criteria were finally included in the inventory.

Dr. Hari S.Chandran, M.Phil (Psy), Ph.D, PGDPC is working as Cons. Psychologist ,Department of Deaddiction&Mental Health,St.Gregorios Mission Hospital, Parumala. Kerala, dr_hari@sancharnet

REFERENCES

Balagangadaran, A and Bhagavathy, K.A, A study of personality and perceived risk factors in CHD, Paper presented in Seminar on stress and stress management, Dept.of Psychology, University of Kerala, 1997
Bourne, E.L and Ekstrand, G. Psychology, London: CBS College Pub., 1982

Cooper, CL, Stress Research, issues for Eighties. New York: John Wiley, 1983

Dharmangadan B., Stress at work-A comparison of five occupations, Psychological studies, 1988, 162-69.

Holmes.TH and Rahe, The Social readjustment scale, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 1967 (11) 211-218

Ivancevich J.M and Matterson, Stress at work. Scot. Foresman, 1980.
James, CN, Introduction to medical Psychology New York; Free press, 1982.

Kindler, H.A, Personal Stress Assessment inventory, New York : Center for management effectiveness, 1981

Lachman.V.D, Stress Management-A Manual for Nurses, New York: Grune and Stratton Inc, 1983.

Likert.R ,Technique for measurement of attitude scales, Archieves of Psychology, New York, 1932.

Pehoreeky.L.A, Stress and alcohol interaction, An update Human Research,
Journal of Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research 1991 (3) 438-59.

Pestonjee D.M, Stress and coping: The Indian experience, New Delhi,
Sagar pub.1992

Rabkin J.G and Struening.E.L. Life events, Stress and illness, Science 1986, 1013-020

Sarason I.G, Assessing the impact of life Changes in stress and anxiety (Ed)

Sarason, IG. London: Hemisphere Pub.Co.1979

Selye H.A, The stress without Distress, Philadelphia: Lippincot, 1974.
Shanmugham, T.E, Abnormal Psychology, New Delhi: TMH Pub. Co.1981

Sutherland.V.J and Cooper.C.L, understanding stress: A Psychological perspective for Health professionals, London: Chapman and Hall 1990.

Science has proved that stress relief games play a vital role in relieving stress. Stress relief games are of many types and it varies depending upon the taste of the person. These small games, activities, and exercises are intended to reduce stress. These games are found to offer a faster stress relief than the traditional techniques.

Stress commonly occurs for every person in a workplace ranging from deskbound office workers to managers. It is estimated that around 200 to 300 million dollars are spent annually by the American industry for job stress that occur due to absenteeism, employee turnover, diminished productivity, and accidents. This is where the stress relief games play their role. These games have many plus points. It helps in easing high-pressure situations at home and at work, and they work even better than the ordinary relaxation exercises.

Make the beginning of each day by singing in the shower. Don’t worry about the words and rhymes. Think of it as a stress relief game, which is played before stress takes an opportunity to rear its ugly head. Another way to relieve stress during daily travel is by counting the dogs and any similar object that you see on the way.

There are many varieties of stress relief games available on the Internet. Many of these online computer games, multiplayer games and online tournaments have showed their effectiveness in reducing stress. One can play most of these games online. A person can choose any game according to his/her taste, and download it if necessary to play in the future.

Deadlines, competitions, confrontations, and even our frustrations and sorrows add depth to stress. Change of environment, homesickness, death, separation, anxiety about future & uncertainty in life lead to stress in life. Check out some facts on stress.

75% of the general population experiences at least “some stress” every two weeks (National Health Interview Survey). Almost 9 out of 10 adults have experienced serious stress. More than 4 out of 10 adults suffer adverse health affects from stress, and some estimates suggest that 75 percent to 90 percent of all physician clinic visits are for stress related complaints.

The effects of stress may lead to actual medical illnesses, including heart problems, stomach problems, high blood pressure and headaches. Stress also affects the immune system, which protects us from many serious diseases. Stress also contributes to the development of alcoholism, obesity, suicide, drug and, cigarette addiction, and other harmful behaviors. Stress speeds up aging process, memory loss, hair loss, increase in body weight or building more fat.

$300 billion, or $7,500 per employee, is spent annually in the U.S. on stress-related compensation claims, reduced productivity, absenteeism, health insurance costs, direct medical expenses (nearly 50% higher for workers who report stress), and employee turnover.

It’s a fact, people who experience regular stress at work are five times more likely to fall sick than those who don’t and its costing UK industries dearly. Recent figures released by the Health and Safety Executive suggest that of 67 million working days lost each year 60 percent of these are stress related.

A survey of the UK’s leading risk managers has predicted that stress is likely to become the most dangerous emerging risk to business in the early part of the twenty-first century.
Following the recent £210,000 payout to the warden of a mobile-home site, the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers reckons that employee stress is the single main emerging risk for UK organizations and the third most important facing society as a whole after genetically modified organisms and e-commerce.

In women, stress causes fatigue, hair loss, bad complexion, insomnia, disruption of menstrual cycle, low libido, lack of orgasm etc. Women, in fact, may be at higher risk than men are from stress-related chest pain, although man’s hearts may be more vulnerable to adverse effects from long-term stress, such as from their jobs.

Working mothers, regardless of whether they are married or single, face higher stress levels and possibly adverse health effects, most likely because they bear a greater and more diffuse work load than men or other women. This has been observed in women in the US and in Europe. Such stress may also have a domino and harmful effect on their children

Depressed or aggressive mothers are particularly powerful sources of stress in children, even more important than poverty or overcrowding. Children are frequent victims of stress because they are often unable to communicate their feelings accurately or their responses to events over which they have no control.

Girls tend to become stressed from interpersonal situations, and stress is more likely to lead to depression in girls than in boys. For boys, one study suggested events such as changing schools or poor grades are the most important sources of stress. Another indicated, however, that the probability of childhood behavioral difficulties in a boy is increased with the number and type of stressors encountered in the home.

As people age, the ability to achieve a relaxation response after a stressful event becomes more difficult. Aging may simply wear out the systems in the brain that respond to stress, so that they become inefficient. The elderly, too, are very often exposed to major stressors such as medical problems, the loss of a spouse and friends, a change in a living situation, and financial worries.

Studies show that caregivers of physically or mentally disabled family members are at risk for chronic stress. Spouses caring for a disabled partner are particularly vulnerable to a range of stress-related health threats including influenza, depression, heart disease, and even poorer survival rates. Caring for a spouse with even minor disabilities can induce severe stress. (Intervention programs that are aimed at helping the caregiver approach the situation positively can be very helpful at reducing stress and helping the caregiver maintain a positive attitude.) Wives experience significantly greater stress from care giving than husbands, and, according to a 2000 study, tend to feel more negative about their husbands than care giving husbands feel about their wives.

The lack of an established network of family and friends predisposes one to stress disorders and stress-related health problems, including heart disease and infections. And, a 2000 study reported that older people who maintain active relationships with their adult children are buffered against the adverse health effects of chronic stress-inducing situations, such as low income or lower social class. One study suggested this may be because people who live alone are unable to discuss negative feelings and so relieve their stress.

According to one survey, 40% of American workers describe their jobs as very stressful. Job-related stress is particularly likely to become chronic because it is such a large part of daily life. And, stress in turn reduces a worker’s effectiveness by impairing concentration, causing sleeplessness, and increasing the risk for illness, back problems, accidents, and lost time. Work stress can lead to harassment or even violence while on the job. At its most extreme, stress that places such a burden on the heart and circulation may be fatal.