This post is developed in partnership with BetterHelp.
Taking good care of yourself, including practicing regular self-care, is an important way to ensure your own mental health and sense of well-being. If you’re feeling stressed, the practice of self-care becomes especially important. If we’re not intentional about releasing stress and increasing our feel-good brain chemicals, it’s easy for stress to overtake our lives and leave us in constant fight-or-flight response mode.
The result? We walk through life irritable, short-tempered and anxious. But luckily, self-care doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive to be effective – there are many small ways you can show care for yourself and keep your stress level manageable.
Top 5 Ways to Destress and Practice Self-care
Let’s take a closer look at some of the simple steps you can take to make sure you’re feeling your best, both physically and mentally.
Get Moving
We all know the physical effects of exercise – and while exercise is good for our bodies, it’s also extremely important for our mental health. Getting regular exercise increases the production of endorphins and other feel-good hormones that contribute to our sense of well-being. Exercise also helps refocus your mental energy on your body’s movements, which can be especially helpful for managing stress and negative thought patterns.
Eat Well
Just like exercise, good nutrition often is tied to positive physical health benefits. But if you think of your brain as needing the highest quality fuel, it’s easy to see why good nutrition can help your brain perform better. Habits like eating whole grains and incorporating lots of fruits and vegetables into your diet can go a long way to providing your brain with the fuel it needs to regulate emotions and effectively solve problems.
Meditate
While once relegated to only a spiritual practice, meditation has gained popularity in recent years as an effective way to help destress, manage emotions and improve both mental and physical health. And meditation doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s easy to do a guided meditation, or to practice visualization or guided imagery just about anywhere for as long as it makes sense for you.
You can meditate while taking a walk, while sitting in traffic, or even during your work day. Most importantly, the practice of meditation has been shown to increase your sense of calm, quiet racing and anxious thoughts and help you feel more balanced.
Connect with Others
Humans are social beings, and spending time with people whose company we enjoy is a healthy and effective way to destress and increase feelings of well-being and joy. Spending time with others not only distracts us from our own stress and anxiety, but if you use some of that time to discuss your challenges and gain insight from those you trust, it can help you not only gain perspective, but also legitimately identify potential solutions to the obstacles in your life that are causing you stress. And research tells us that strong social connections can help us become more resilient to the negative effects of stress.
Explore Therapy
Working with a therapist is one of the most successful approaches to managing stress in your life. Talk therapy, including online therapy, offers the opportunity to work through stressful issues with a trained counselor, who will not only listen, but will offer an outside perspective and help you develop your own solutions to addressing the stressors in your life.
Conclusion
Stressful situations abound in modern life, so it’s hard to imagine a life that’s completely stress-free. But with some helpful coping mechanisms like those presented here, you can take a healthy approach to meeting the challenges associated with your life’s stressors. With practice, empathy and a strong support system, you’ll be well on your way to cultivating a sense of calm and well-being, no matter what challenges you face.
