by Musa Bala | Apr 4, 2022 | Personal Growth
Being kind and helpful is no doubt a good thing, however, people-pleasers are known for doing whatever it takes to make other people happy. They tend to prioritize other people’s needs over theirs. They are sensitive to others and are frequently regarded as agreeable, helpful, and kind. People-pleasers may, however, have difficulty advocating for themselves, which can lead to a harmful pattern of self-sacrifice or self-neglect. This article seeks to tell you the reasons why you need to stop being a people pleaser.
Furthermore, people-pleasing has been linked to a personality trait known as ‘sociotropy’, or being overly concerned with pleasing others and earning their approval in order to maintain relationships.
Why People Develop People-Pleasing Behaviour
People-pleasing behaviour is rarely developed as a result of a single factor, however, a combination of two or more psychological variables has been known to be a trigger.
1. You Are Insecure
People may try to please others because they are concerned that if they do not go out of their way to make others happy, they will not be liked. Prior rejection by other people can lead to feelings of insecurity, which might prompt people-pleasing to gain acceptance from people.
2. You Probably Have Poor Self-Esteem
In other cases, due to a lack of self-confidence, people have a need for external validation. In addition, they may believe that doing things for others will result in approval and acceptance.
3. Past Experiences Forces People to Be People Pleasers
People who have experienced traumatic events in the past as a result of their opinions and choices may try to avoid triggering abusive behaviour in others by pleasing others and being as agreeable as possible.
4. Perfectionism
Sometimes, people just want to have a perfect relationship with everyone around them. They want to be appreciated and loved. In other to achieve that, they tend to do everything to make people around them happy.
People might genuinely want to help others in need, as in the case of altruism. In other cases, people-pleasing is a means of feeling affirmed or appreciated. By making sure that people are happy, they feel as if they are useful and valued—By making people happy, they feel valued.
Why You Need to Stop Being a People-Pleaser
Whereas being a caring person is important in maintaining healthy social relationships. However, it becomes a problem when a person is more concerned about the needs of others at the expense of their emotional well-being.
People-pleasers tend to experience the following emotional conditions:
1. You Will Lack Authenticity When You Become a People-Pleaser
By placing the needs of others over theirs, people-pleasers hide their feelings and opinions. This can lead to a feeling of ingenuity, to an extent, one might not feel alive.
2. You will Always be Angry and Frustrated
Doing things for people out of the mere reason that you want to make them happy often leads to frustration. Anger develops when you understand people are taking advantage of your will to help, this might result to regret, in some cases.
3. You Will Probably Have Anxiety
The constant effort people-pleasers give to make others happy stretches out their strength and resources thin. This leads to mental exhaustion as they are always focused on making people around them happy.
4. Your Willpower Will Be Depleted
Another negative effect of people-pleasing is the reduction in the willpower of people-pleasers to achieve their own goals. Willpower can be a limited resource and utilizing it to make other happy simply means that you don’t get to utilize it towards achieving your goals.
5. You Might Feel Resentful
By putting people’s needs before yours; thereby making them happy, they will appreciate your pleasing nature but might begin to take your kindness for granted. When people start exhibiting such behaviors towards you, you might feel used and to some extent resentful.
Tips on How to Stop Being a People-Pleaser
1. Be Genuine
Always make your own decisions, never let others make them for you. By staying true to yourself, do things because it is right by you and not because it’ll make you look good in people’s eyes. Do not change yourself for others and people will respect you for it.
2. Accept Yourself
When you accept and love who you are, you care more about what you think of yourself than what others think of you. Acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses and using them to your advantage is a means to accepting yourself. When you are confident about who you are, others will accept you as you are.
3. Establish Boundaries
Establish clear and specific boundaries on what you are willing to take on. When it seems like someone is asking too much of you, let them know it is over the bounds of what you are willing to do, no hard feelings. This helps in making sure you don’t place people’s needs over yours.
4. Spend Some Time by Yourself
Whereas isolation could easily lead to some mental issues, spending some time alone helps you to understand yourself and often leads to self-confidence. People are afraid of being alone as they dread being lonely, bored, or anxious.
When you are alone there’s no one to please but yourself. Understanding your thoughts and feelings can also help you find out what makes us happy or unhappy. Being able to know ourselves better can be very helpful in many ways.
5. Know That You Can’t Please Everyone
Another reason why you need to stop being a people pleaser is that you should know you can’t please everyone. This is difficult to take in, but you have to accept that you can’t make everybody happy all the time because people’s needs are different from each other. Acting or doing things a certain way to please one person may offend someone else.
Instead of trying to please everyone, act authentically and do things your way, people who like the real you will appreciate and accept you for who you are.
Conclusion
People-pleasing is not a healthy way of living. It’s important to control your life and know that you are important too. People-pleasing can start to feel like a habit and difficult to break out of. But with time, patience, and perseverance, anything is possible.
If being nice is taking its toll on your mental well-being, please talk to a mental health professional to help prioritize your needs and manage your behaviour.
Mental health professionals you can reach out to include Mentally Aware Nigeria and The Sunshine Series Mind Wellness.
Check: People Will Only Respect You If You Do These 13 Things.
by Musa Bala | Mar 27, 2022 | Family & Parenting
Sexual abuse victims often experience a range of reactions and emotions from pain, anger, hate, helplessness, and other challenges that negatively affect their mental health. As different victims feel differently about their experiences, it can be difficult to know what to do or say to help sexual abuse victims.
When your loved one or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, the best thing you can do is to make yourself available. It’s also important to actively listen if they decide to share their experiences with you. Listen non-judgementally and remind them that they are not to be blamed for what happened and that they didn’t deserve what they experienced. This is important because most victims of sexual assault tend to blame themselves for what they experienced.
It is also important for you to sympathise with their situation, try to acknowledge how the abuse has affected their lives, and reassure them that they are not alone and you’ll be there for them if they need your support.
Sexual abuse victims often develop certain behavioural changes in response to the extremely life-threatening experience they had. To help sexual abuse victims, knowing these changes are important. Some of these changes could be some or all of the following:
- Paranoia
- Self-blaming and feelings of worthlessness
- Loss of interest in activities once enjoyed
- Changes in sleep patterns (either too much or not enough)
- Difficulty concentrating
- Withdrawal from family and friends
- Nightmares and flashbacks
- Changes in appetite and weight
- Depression
- General mistrust in people
- Suicidal thoughts
- Anxiety
These changes in behavior are not specific to sexual abuse, anyone going through a major mental challenge could exhibit these symptoms. However, they could serve as indicators that your loved ones and friends are struggling to cope with trauma which could be sexual abuse.
As a close person to a family member or friend, you could be a judge of their behavior and can easily tell when they are acting in a typical manner for no apparent reason. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions directly about your observations, your actions could be the starting point to their recovery as it often leads to getting help for sexual abuse victims.
How to Assist Sexual Abuse Victims
As explained earlier, sexual abuse develops emotions and reactions that negatively affect the mental and sometimes physical wellbeing of the victim. If you are not a victim yourself you may not be able to fully understand what they are going through, leaving you confused about how to best support them. Here is what you need to do to help sexual abuse victims.
1. Pay Attention to Them (if they wish to speak)
One of the most important things you could do for a sexual abuse victim is to be available for them, listen to them if they decide to talk about what happened. Don’t try to force or pressure them into sharing their experience, allow them to do that on their own will. They may want to express frustration, anger, or sadness about what happened, listen to them non-judgementally, and support them.
Having someone to talk to and count on is a good means for a sexual abuse victim to express their emotions about their experience and possibly seek further help.
2. Maintain Your Composure
Once you’ve learned that your friend or loved one was sexually abused, it is common for you to feel anger or shock by what they’ve been through. However, expressing anger or shock might make the victim even more confused or more pain.
Also, avoid making threats against the perpetrator. You might think doing that is being supportive, but that could make the experience even more stressful for the victim.
3. Maintain Confidentiality
It is important for you to understand this experience isn’t yours or about you, and as such not your story to tell. Let the victim decide who to share their story of sexual abuse with.
Don’t share your loved one or friend’s experience without their permission. Most sexual abuse victims develop feelings of embarrassment and shame. Sharing their experience with others without their permission would only deepen the wound.
4. Establish Boundaries
Being a good listener and supportive goes a long way in providing help to sexual abuse victims. However, make sure not to do that at the expense of your own health and responsibilities. Set a time and condition that works for both of you. Don’t let your loved one or friend’s experience consume you as it will not be helpful to either of you.
Know that for you to be supportive, you have to be healthy first.
5. Educate Yourself
The most important way to be of help to sexual abuse victims is to educate yourself about their experience. While you can’t fully understand what they’re going through, except if you were a victim yourself, try to research available resources on how sexual abuse victims feel and how you can support them.
Getting yourself educated, would dispel any misconceptions you might have about sexual abuse and give you a foresight about what the victim’s recovery looks like.
6. Pay Attention to the Victims
As earlier stated, sexual abuse victims feel a range of emotions and this can be different in victims, including the way they react. It helps a lot if you watch out for odd behaviors that may suggest they are going through crises, this could be excessive crying, nightmares or flashbacks, or talking about dying.
If you should observe any of these, encourage them to reach out to a mental health professional.
7. Extend Invitation
Sexual abuse victims tend to withdraw and isolate themselves. Don’t be surprised when they refuse to join you in an activity, but that doesn’t mean that you should give up on them. Continue to invite them to things even if they decline, they’ll still appreciate the invite.
This reassures them that they are loved and valued especially at times such as this which they feel alone.
8. Encourage Therapy
The journey to recovery from sexual abuse is a difficult one and this is different for different victims. However, with therapy, this difficulty can be effectively addressed.
Encourage the victim to consider therapy but do not insist. Therapy can only help a sexual abuse victim when the victim is willing to work towards healing.
Conclusion
It is not easy or a one-time process to help sexual abuse victims. The healing process is a long one and you have to remind them that you are still available if they need you, this is so you allow them to make the decision themselves. This gives them a sense of control in their lives after experiencing a situation they have no control over.
Remember you can only provide support to the victim through the healing process but you can’t heal them yourself.
by Musa Bala | Mar 23, 2022 | Health & Wellness
Thanks to psychology, we understand that our experiences and actions have an impact on the way we think, comprehend, and behave in our daily lives. While some of our experiences influence our behaviours positively, others could negatively affect the way we perceive and interact with ourselves and our environment, thus impacting our behaviours. An example of such negative conditions our experiences could lead to is depression. There are many ways we can cope with depression both medically and naturally, however, we’ll be looking out for ways to avoid depression naturally.
What Is Depression?
Depression is a negative affective state characterised by feelings of extreme sadness, pessimism, and despondency that interferes with daily life. Now, this is different from the mood changes that people regularly experience as a part of life.
Depression can be caused by major life events, such as grief or the loss of a job. However, feelings of grief are only considered to be part of depression if they persist and affect the daily life of an individual.
You might have heard people or even you easily say “I’m depressed”. It is important to know that depression is an ongoing mental state and not a passing one. Feelings of depression must consist of episodes in which its symptoms last for at least two weeks before it is considered as such.
What Are the Symptoms of Depression?
Depression is characterised but not limited to:
- A depressed or irritable mood
- Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
- Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed
- Change in interests
- Sleep problems
- Changes in appetite
- Unintentional weight loss or gain
- Agitation, restlessness, severe anxiety/panic attack
- Slowed movement and speech
- Significant loss of energy
- Recurrent suicidal thoughts/behaviour
10 Ways to Avoid Depression Naturally
Other than medication and therapy, there are a lot of activities and behaviours you can engage in to combat depression. These behaviours influence your behaviour, physical activity, lifestyle, and even your way of thinking. Such behaviours are all means to avoid depression naturally.
Examples of behaviours you can engage in to avoid depression include:
1. Determine Your Objectives
Depression often settles in with feelings of worthlessness and helplessness. This feeling makes you think you can’t accomplish anything in life, thereby making your condition even worse.
To fight these feelings, set daily goals for yourself. You could start with little things you know you could easily do such as tidying up your room and doing the dishes. As you feel much better about yourself, you can set more challenging daily goals.
2. Exercise on a Regular Basis
It is no news that regular exercise helps keep our physical body healthy. What you might not know is that it is a way to avoid depression naturally. When you exercise, you boost the production of endorphins (known as feel-good chemicals) in your body. Endorphins stimulate your brain to rewire itself in positive ways.
3. Establish a Routine
Depression affects the daily life of an individual. The overwhelming feeling of helplessness makes it difficult for people to organise and function properly. Having a routine will help you function and organise your day, thereby managing your feeling of helplessness and developing in you, a feeling of accomplishment.
4. Maintain a Blanced Diet
While there is no food that magically fixes depression, you might want to be careful with what you eat if depression tends to make you overeat. Eating healthy foods accompanied by proper eating behaviours could help reduce the impact of depression in your daily life.
Some food items containing omega-3 fatty acids (such as salmon and tuna) and folic acid (such as spinach and avocado) have been associated with the ability to help ease depression and lots more.
5. Get Enough Sleep
Psychologists have identified a strong connection between depression and insomnia. Having difficulty in sleeping is a common symptom of depression which worsens the condition.
Below are some tips you can use to improve your sleep naturally:
- Have a Sleep routine – go to bed and get up at a specific time every day.
- Make sure the room is quiet, dark, and comfortable.
- Avoid large meals, caffeine, and alcohol before sleeping.
- Exercise during the day.
- Remove electronic equipment from the sleeping area.
- Get up again if you do not fall asleep within 20 minutes. Read or find some other distraction for a while, then try again.
6. Pay Attention to the Right Relationships
Many people who feel depressed seek to wash away the feeling with alcohol or drugs, sometimes both. In reality, alcohol and drug use drown them in their feeling of depression by making them focus on the symptoms they exhibit, thereby making the condition even worse.
7. Focus on the Right Relationships
As explained earlier, depression is accompanied by feelings of worthlessness and helplessness. A little word or act demeaning a depressed person further worsen symptoms of depression, just as a word or act of encouragement towards a depressed person helps with symptoms of depression.
Focusing on the right relationships that encourages you to feel comfortable, goes a long way in maintaining a healthy mind free of depression.
8. Stay Away from Triggers
Symptoms of stress and depression can be triggered by numerous factors; this might be different in individuals. To reduce these symptoms, you could avoid being exposed to triggers you’ve commonly identified. For some people, these triggers could include exposure to certain news, movies, things, places, or even people.
9. Make an Effort to Have a Good Time
Another major symptom of depression is the loss of interest in activities previously enjoyed. In depressed moments, what you use to do to have fun might feel like a chore, nonetheless keep trying to enjoy them. This would help keep your mind engaged positively.
10. Attend a Talk Therapy Session
Also known as Psychotherapy, talking to a mental health professional helps a lot in cases of depression. Here, psychologists help you identify the cause(s) of your depression and proffer practical solutions to help you cope and manage the symptoms.
Such therapy could be one-on-one, with your partner, family members, or a group of people with similar symptoms who meet just for therapy.
Conclusion
Depression cannot always be prevented or avoided as most causes are stressors that are part of life. However, effective treatment is available and an adjusted lifestyle can help you cope and manage symptoms.
It is advised to reach out to a mental health professional if symptoms of depression are overwhelming, such as thoughts of inflicting pain on oneself or others, death, or suicide.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Isn’t being depressed just being sad?
Depression is often mistaken for just being sad. They are sometimes caused because of one another. However, they are not always identical.
Being sad is a symptom of depression but we also have times where being sad is normal such as when we lose someone. Depression on the other hand differs from sadness in its intensity and duration. Depression is experienced daily turning into weeks and months affecting our work, family, and personal life. That is not normal.
How can you reduce your risk of depression?
Depressions mostly occur as a result of an extremely stressful experience. There’s no certain way to avoid depression but you can reduce your risk for it by getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, eating well, improving your self-esteem, reaching out to friends and family if things get hard, and getting help if you think you are depressed.
What is the natural cause of depression?
While depression is mostly caused by experience and social interactions, the special interactions of multiple genes in our body have been identified to contribute to various types of depression in families. No particular gene is responsibly known as the “depression gene”, however, many genes are known to contribute small effects towards depression when they interact with the environment.
What are the top 5 causes of depression?
As explained above, depression can be caused by any event or experience that you find extremely stressful and overwhelming. However, some happenings are known to trigger the feeling of depression the most, these major causes are:
- Genetics
- Physical, sexual or emotional abuse
- Physical Illness
- Death or a loss
- Conflict
What do i do if i think i’m depressed?
From the moment you think you are depressed, you could strategies by doing some research on lifestyle changes attributed to depression from reliable sources such as a therapist’s website or material before proceeding to see a therapist.
You could also directly reach out to a therapist. It is always better to seek professional help rather than wait for the symptoms of depression to grow on your mental health.
You could also check: 15 Foods That Will Boost Your Immune System
by Musa Bala | Mar 23, 2022 | Health & Wellness
Mental health professionals have always emphasized that our mental health is as important as our physical health, sometimes even more. Some people tend to easily get back to their feet after an emotional challenge while others find it difficult, this depends on their mental strength and capabilities. In this article, we’ll discuss how to be mentally strong.
When you encounter an emotional challenge, do you quickly and easily make a resolve, thereby going on with your daily life or do you tend to linger in that distressing emotional state longer than it affects your daily life? If you fall in the latter, this means you have low emotional/mental strength, however, there’s no cause for alarm. There are several practicable strategies and techniques that can develop your emotional resilience and help you become mentally strong.
Our life experiences are the mediums by which our emotional resilience is tested. The loss of a job, the death of a loved one, or the end of an important relationship; these experiences test our mental strength and the way we handle them determines how mentally strong we are.
What is Mental Strength?
Mental strength is the ability of an individual to effectively manage stressors and challenges they encounter, regardless of the situation they find themselves in.
It is important that you note that just as you go to do gym and exercise to build your muscles and keep your body fit, you must also develop your mental health through the use of mental and psychological strategies and techniques.
A highly developed mental strength helps you to develop positive self-esteem, have meaningful social connections, and ultimately, it enables you to live the life you want. It helps you to try new things, and effectively manage whatever life challenges you might experience.
How to Be Mentally Strong
Mental strength can only be developed when you commit to personal mental development, these are how to be mentally strong:
1. Master Your Emotions
Psychologists and other mental health experts often say the result is determined by your dominant thought. This means that if you think you are going to fail, you’ve already convinced yourself you’ll and there’s a good chance you will fail. It is advised that you maintain a positive mindset always, replace such negative thoughts with “I will do this” thereby convincing yourself you can, and you will eventually do.
Our emotions and dominant thoughts play a big role in how we act in our everyday experiences. So it is important that you acknowledge your feelings and how they affect your behaviours.
2. Focus on One Thing at a Time
While the ability to multitask is seen as an honorary capability, it could also heavily weigh on our minds and affect our mental strength. Always focus on your present, this will help you take in your experiences one after the other and effectively deal with each and every one of them.
When you are spending time with friends, listen to what they are saying, pay less attention to your phone, just take the moment into your mind without worrying about other things you have to do. This will help you develop a good social connection which is important to be mentally strong.
3. Embrace Challenges
As earlier explained, the challenges we experience in our daily life test our mental strength. It is advised you see challenges in your daily life as stepping stones.
When you encounter a challenge, it pushes you to act, and when your action effectively manages the challenge, it gives you clear knowledge and understanding of yourself. This knowledge is reflected in your self-esteem and confidence which is important to building a mentally strong mind.
4. Give Yourself a “Me-Time”
Giving yourself a break after a stressful day or week is important for your mental health. Take this time to do things you genuinely love to do, it could be gaming, reading, baking, exercising, or watching your favourite TV show, anything that helps you relax your mind and by extension, your body.
These me-times help keep your mind refreshed and in a better state of wellbeing to cope with everyday challenges.
5. Take Full Responsibility for Yourself
Understand that your past choices, decisions, and actions are responsible for who you are now. Don’t blame others for actions you’ve taken.
You are more powerful than you’ve realized, erase self-doubt from your mind, and believe in yourself. Once you are able to acknowledge and accept your past actions, decisions and who you are, you can be able to look forward to a more positive future. Having a positive mindset will help you face the challenges life throws at you and this, in turn, makes you mentally strong.
6. Focus on Making Yourself Happy First
It is no doubt that people feel physically stronger when they are happy, the same goes for mental strength. This is expressed when happy people say “I feel like I’m on top of the world, nobody can stop me” and many other self-confident statements.
Avoid making compromises to please others at the detriment of your own happiness. Focus on your personal goals and develop the courage to make decisions that work for you without the fear of disappointing others.
7. Understand That Everyone Makes Mistakes
It is important that you understand that everyone makes mistakes and never let the mistakes you make linger in your mind such that they affect your self-esteem and confidence.
When you make a mistake, consider it a moment to learn and understand the challenge and yourself better such that whenever you experience that challenge again, you can cope better.
8. Feel Free to Ask For Help
Being mentally strong doesn’t mean you have to take care of everything yourself. Sharing your thoughts and feelings with someone could help provide insights that will likely be beneficial to your mental health.
When you feel stressed, sad, angry, irritable, or frustrated, talking to someone close to you could help as a simple word of encouragement could provide you with the comfort and motivation you need to carry on with your daily activities.
Conclusion
The bases on which mental strength is developed are self-awareness and acceptance. For you to be mentally strong, you must be aware of where and who you are, and also accept them. Only then can you begin to take steps towards developing your mental strength.
Being mentally strong is the outcome of good habits practiced daily, setting boundaries, having self-esteem, and not expecting others to control your life.
FAQs
I want to be mentally strong, how do I get started?
The first important thing you need to do is avoid or remove things that aren’t working for you. Get rid of the negative behaviours which you’ve identified to emotionally derail you and employ good habits that will strengthen your mental well-being.
If I struggle with a mental health issue, does that mean I’m weak?
Not at all, mental health issues can develop in anyone. Mental strength only helps you to manage and cope with symptoms of a mental health issue. It helps you stay mentally healthier but won’t guarantee that you’ll not be mentally ill.
Do I need a therapist to help me get mentally strong?
Some people are able to develop mental strength on their own without the help of mental health professionals. Others do best with the help and guidance of mental health experts or someone who keeps them motivated. Whenever you feel you need the help of someone to overcome an obstacle related to your mental health, reach out to a licensed therapist to help you move forward.
by Musa Bala | Mar 9, 2022 | Health & Wellness
Between work, family, school, and/or other commitments, it is hard not to get overwhelmed once in a while. Carrying out the daily activities of our life can become stressful and affect our mental and physical health, which in turn, affect our daily lives. It’s important to find time and relieve ourselves of those stresses, but before we discuss 10 ways to relieve stress naturally, what is stress?
What is Stress?
Stress is the response of our body to a challenge or demand. Stress can be caused by a range of experiences, from small daily hassles like taking care of a child to major ones such as divorce or job loss.
Our body responds to such stressful experiences in many ways, physically; as elevated heart rate and blood pressure, mentally; as thoughts and beliefs about the stressor. Emotions like fear and anger are other ways our body responds to stress. Stress can be positive (eustress), when it is from a positive experience like a responsibility as a result of promotion at work, and negative when it is from a negative experience such as traffic on your way to work.
How Do We Relieve Stress Naturally?
Stress is something we can hardly avoid, and sometimes helps us in our daily life – it helps us avoid danger and respond to threats quickly. However, exposure to stress for some time may lead to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression or difficulty in maintaining physical healthcare.
Since stress is unavoidable, there are means by which you can relieve yourself of stress naturally. They are:
1. Breathe – Meditate
While the phrase “take a deep breath” may sound like a cliché, It is the first step in taking control of your thoughts from the stress-thought train. Breathing slowly with ease helps you gather your thoughts and organise your possible actions.
Take three to five minutes to breathe in and out slowly and deeply. Whereas shallow-breathing causes stress, deep breathing oxygenates your blood and clears your mind.
2. Feed Well
Some people deal with stress by eating profusely and just about anything they can find. This might help at the moment but might add to the stress in the long run. Instead of stress-eating, take your time in selecting healthy foods and drinks. Healthy diets provide you with not just physical strength but also the mental energy your body requires in managing stressors.
3. Exercise Regularly
A regular workout is one of the best ways to relax your body and mind. Exercise improves your mood. However, it has to be often for you to feel its impact.
Moderate intense workout of up to 2 hours and 30 minutes of exercises such as brisk walks or fewer minutes of more intense exercises like jogging, swimming, or other related sports are helpful.
4. Stop Using Tobacco and Nicotine Products
People who use tobacco and nicotine products often say they use them to relieve themselves of stress. However, what all tobacco and nicotine products actually do is increase the stress level on the body.
Tobacco and nicotine have been associated with increased physical arousal and reduced blood flow and breathing which makes it difficult for our body to manage the stress we experience.
5. Set Realistic Goals
It is healthy to acknowledge that you cannot be 100% successful at all times. Your inability to achieve a task or expectations you have increases your risk of self-induced stress. Setting realistic and achievable expectations prevents us from the stress that comes with not achieving them.
6. Assert Yourself
Know that it’s okay to say “No”. Protect yourself from any demands on your time and energy that might cause too much stress to you. Instead of trying to please others by going the extra mile, only help when it doesn’t take a toll on your body and mind.
Related: After reading this, you will stop saying ‘yes’ to everything
7. Relax
When we experience stress, our muscles become tensed and exhausted. Loosening them by relaxing helps refresh your body and mind, thereby providing you with the energy you need to carry out activities of your daily life.
You could relax your muscles by sleeping well, stretching, enjoying a good massage, and taking a hot bath or shower.
8. Make Time for Hobbies
A good way to relieve stress is by engaging in activities that make us feel good. Taking just about 20-30 minutes every day to do what you love will help take your mind away from the stressors and help you relax. Hobbies that can help you relax include watching a movie, swimming, reading, writing, drawing, singing, cooking, playing games, and many others; basically any activity that makes you smile.
If you are unemployed in Nigeria, you stand a better chance to execute this well.
9. Avoid Stressors
Understand what are the biggest reasons why you get stressed, from your work, school, or family responsibilities. If you can figure out what your stressors are, try to avoid them or at least reduce them.
You can identify your major stressors by keeping a stress journal. Keep notes when you are most anxious or tensed, then attempt to lessen them.
10. Talk about Your Problems
Maintaining a good relationship with friends and loved ones are vital for a healthy lifestyle. Talking to a good friend about your stressors when you experience them is a good way to relieve stress. A reassuring voice, comment, or acknowledgement that you are not the only one experiencing such stress might be all you need to put things in perspective.
Conclusion
It is healthy to understand that stress is an unavoidable part of life that you should not ignore. Leaving stress unattended can cause serious physical and mental problems.
Also, it’s important to know that stress is manageable with the proper strategies and patience. Whether the stress you experience comes from your job, family, school, or even self-induced, it can be managed.
I hope this write-up was helpful to you. If it is, kindly leave a positive comment in the comments section.
