Managing Stress
Mindfulness
It is important to understand what makes you feel a certain way, whether it be happy, sad, or even angry.
By becoming more aware of your actions, your feelings, and how you react, a person will be able to recognize their signals of stress and will be better at managing how they feel about a particular event or encounter.
Meditation
Meditating helps reduce stress, reduce anxiety, and improve cardiovascular health. By meditating, it creates a relaxation response to our bodies signalling that we are not in any kind of danger and counteracts the “fight, flight, or freeze” response.
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Sit or lie down in a place that is free from distraction. Close your eyes. Choose any word or sound you like such as “om” or “peace” and focus on it for 10 or 20 minutes. It is okay to open your eyes and look at the clock but avoid setting an alarm. Gradually open your eyes and allow your thoughts to return to the everyday reality.
Exercising
Exercise increases your overall health and your sense of well-being as well as being a natural stress reliever.
Physical activity increases the production of the brain’s neurotransmitters (endorphins), which makes a person feel good after exercising.
Often times, people are focused on their body’s movements helping the day's irritation fade away. Regular physical activity will also improve mood as well as the quality of your sleep as it helps a person relax.
Therapeutic Exercises
Any sort of activity that requires repetitive muscle memory helps to de-stress an individual. Activities such as knitting, exercising, and colouring have therapeutic effects and can help a person unwind and relax since they are more focused on their body’s movement.
Talk to Someone
Letting it all out through words and speaking your mind can help relieve stress when it is spoken to someone that you trust. Whether it be close friends or family, they can provide emotional support and motivation for you to take action.
Suggest Contacting a Therapist
If you see that a person is feeling overwhelmed or to the point where they do not feel like themselves, talk to them about it first.
Try to understand how they are feeling and if they feel that everything is out of their control, suggest contacting a therapist.
Insight's Therapeutic Board Game
Help yourself and others cope with stress better. This is a 2-4 player game where it allows individuals to open up their problems, whether big or small, and talk about it.
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Remembering and reflecting back on a situation they encountered, what actions they took, and how they felt can help not only themselves, but also help the people around them to better handle certain situations for stress management.
The game also helps remind what they have accomplished in their life and recalling the good times could help reframe their thoughts in a more positive light.
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Insight's Mobile App
It's not easy. It's hard talking about what someone is struggling through and they might end up keeping to themselves even when they are not doing well.
Insight's Mobile App allows a safe and
non-judgemental environment where individuals are able to open up about their struggles and problems with the new implemented buddy system.
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The app is customized based on the user's needs and Chum, the Slime, is here to help. Chum is an artificial intelligence personality that will respond based on how the user is feeling and will act as a buddy system to the individual when they need someone to console.
As it's intimidating to talk to a person about what they are going through, the buddy system may allow individuals to open up and receive help as it provides a safe and non-judgemental environment for them.
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