Stress Management Reflection

After learning about stress in this class my understanding is that, stress symptoms may be affecting your health, even though you might not realize it. You may think illness is to blame for that nagging headache, your frequent forgetfulness or your decreased productivity at work. But sometimes stress is to blame. Indeed, stress symptoms can affect your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior.

There is a long list of serious health problems that may develop due to stress.Some include depression, diabetes, hair loss, heart disease, high blood pressure, stomach upset, sleep problems, chest pain, back pain, obesity, obsessive-compulsive or anxiety disorder, sexual dysfunction, tooth and gum disease, ulcers, cancer. Some examples on how stress can affect your behavior are overeating, under eating, angry outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse, increased smoking, social withdrawal, crying spells, relationship conflicts. When you recognize common stress symptoms, you can take steps to manage them.Like we learned in this class stress management could include physical activity, relaxation techniques, mediation, yoga, tai chi, get a massage, and even things like keeping a journal recognizing your stressors and working on them. Everyone is different so finding your own relaxation techniques will help tremendously. Throughout this course I have learned about myself that I am not the only one in the world that has stress, it is more common than I thought.

I have learned that if I take the time to do breathing exercises or right a journal about my thoughts I feel a huge relief and a lot less stressed.When I have a lot do I found that if I make a list and plan ahead it helps minimize my stress. I learned that when I am in a very stressful situation or the week has added up to breaking point for me, doing breathing exercises helps me feel way more relaxed and calm. Another thing I learned about myself regarding my relationship with my boyfriend is I have become a negative thinker, due to some issues we had in the past. This causes so much stress in my life that I cannot even begin to explain. However, after taking this class I have learned many ways to cope with this and it has been a tremendous help to me and my relationship.I believe my strengths are keeping organized and motivated.

If I am not organized it is a huge stressor for me. When I stay motivated I accomplish a lot more things in one day, which in return is a huge stress relief. Some areas that I show room for improvement are I need to set more weekly or monthly goals for myself instead of just long term goals, by doing this I believe I would feel more accomplished. Another area of improvement for me is I need to have more trust for my boyfriend. Forgive, forget and move on. One last improvement would be to improve my level of self discipline.The topics I related to the most or the ones that I was most interested in were body awareness, breathing exercises, the worry and anxiety chapter, goal setting, and time management.

I really enjoyed the body awareness exercises because it recognizes that when stressed the body automatically tenses. Our muscles become hard, tight and tense. Holding this tension is very tiring, and hence, a feeling of fatigue can occur. If the muscular tension has no release, because of the constant stress levels and not knowing how to relax your muscles can cause strain on your body.After doing this exercise in the book I was able to recognize what tense muscles felt and looked like and what relaxed muscles felt and looked like. So now when I have tension I feel that I am better at being able to let it go through body awareness and muscle relaxation. The breathing exercises we did in class I really enjoyed doing, I was able to take this from class and apply to my daily life when I was feeling stressed.

I was really able to relate to the worry and anxiety chapter because I used to have huge anxiety problems which I have had counseling to work through.Another chapter that interested me was the goal setting chapter because it is something that I have wanted to work on improving myself, so I loved the fact that I had the opportunity to learn more about goal setting and that it had activities in the book. Time management was another big one for me. I feel like learning more about time management helped improve my organization skills. If I was to take this class again I would like to learn more about the different stress relieving techniques. I guess not so much learn about them because we did learn about different ones, but I would have liked to practice more of them.For example, I would have liked a yoga day.

I would have liked to learn about more ways to prevent stress, I felt like we learned a lot about what to do when we are stressed but not enough about what to do prevent it. Our true sources of stress aren’t always obvious, and it is way too easy to overlook our own stress-inducing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I don’t believe there is anything that is unclear about what we learned in class, our book did a very good job at covering stress management.I felt the books activities were very helpful and for once I bought I book for school that I will go back and refer to for future help. Now that the course has ended and I am more aware of my stressors, my plan is to continue my stress journal where I write about what causes my stress, how it made me feel both physically and mentally, how I acted in response, and what I do to make myself feel better. Also, continue to learn new healthier ways to manage my stress. Change the situation, or change your reaction.

Remember the four A’s, avoid, alter, adapt, or accept.Remember my healthy ways to relax and recharge when I am overwhelmed and feeling stressed. Some of the things that work for me are, going and getting a massage, doing something with my mom or sister, playing with my daughter, taking a long bath with lots of lavender scent and candles, driving around and listening to my favorite music, and doing one of my many hobbies. If I am noticing that I continue to have a lot of stress I will either find a way to enjoy the situation (except the things I cannot change) or find a way to leave/change the situation.The concepts discussed in this class apply to my future career goals by being constantly stressed out and not knowing how to deal with it can cause lack of motivation. I think that my future career goals call for a lot of motivation, so it would help if the stress in my life was minimal so I could stay focused. Another topic discussed in class that could be applied to future career goals is goal setting and time management.

My future career goal is to become an OB nurse, with this job there could be extra stress due to the weird hours worked and just the job it’s self.So I believe the concepts discussed in class I will be able to apply to my future career and my personal everyday life. In conclusion, after taking this stress management class I have learned that stress has many negative impacts on the body. I learned more about myself in regards to my stressors and I learned about some things that I didn’t even realize were stressing me out. There were topics I could relate to and some I really was interested in. I will continue to write in my stress journal and find ways to help and avoid stress.