Stress comes in many forms, and too much stress, of any type, can feel overwhelming and all-consuming at times. It can even have us losing faith in ourselves and the world around us, because we all know that stress has a way of building to the point that even the simplest moments can become challenging and unmanageable, our health can be impacted, and it can even affect our relationships and our day-to-day happiness factor.

01:36 Kendra from Los Angeles, CA, wrote in and said, “Danielle, I’ve been dealing with unusually high stress since the middle of last year. I have trouble relaxing my mind, and sometimes I feel like the pressure is so overwhelming that it’s hard to sleep, causes headaches, and I’ve found myself avoiding things I need to do or even things I love because it’s hard to get everything in. Could you provide a handful of things that I can do to help deal with chronic stress? It’s negatively impacting my life, and I must handle it now!”

So many are with you, Kendra, from feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities, relationship stressors, parenting, financial worries, health concerns, you name it, and yes, to answer your question, there are a few essential practices you can implement in your life today to help you manage stress both in the short term and over the long term.

So, let’s jump right into three quick and easy-to-use tools to stop the overwhelm and deescalate the stress quickly.

Like anything you do, these exercises and tools must be practiced consistently for them to work. Please know that each of these tools is simple to apply and can be done anywhere, at any time.

Exercise 1: Visualizing Stress Reduction

03:08 The first is to break the stress cycle by using visualization. Before you reject this idea, you use visualization all day long. For example, you visualize yourself taking a particular route when you leave the house. You think about and run through steps in your head when you are engaging with something that needs mental focus. You visualize daily, and you can use this to your benefit, especially to break stress.

The goal is to restore peace to your mind, so we break the cycle of overwhelming thoughts. There is no single correct way to use visual imagery for stress relief, but there are some general steps to take. And those are:

•    First, find a calm space and make yourself comfortable. This can even be your car during a lunch break. Moms, head to the bathroom and shut the door if that’s your only escape. Just get calm and comfortable.

•    Then, take a few slow and deep breaths to center your attention and calm yourself.

•    You can close your eyes if you feel comfortable.

•   Imagine yourself in a place you love or in a beautiful location that brings a feeling of peace or excitement—whether that’s a beach, a mountain, wrapped in a favorite blanket reading a book somewhere. It doesn’t matter. You decide.

• Then, imagine yourself calm, relaxed, smiling, happy, or having a good time.

• Continue to breathe as the focus on different elements in the vision. Perhaps it’s the sun, the snow, the book—create a picture of peace.

•    If you can invoke your senses, smell, sight, touch, and hearing, you will have a better time releasing the stress.

•    Try to stay with the image for roughly five to ten minutes or until you feel relaxed.

•    When you are, allow yourself to tune back into the space around you.

This is an excellent practice because it trains the brain to find comfort instead of stress. Your brain works on patterns. It seeks what it knows will calm itself, but the most potent understanding is your brain does not know the difference between negative and positive—that’s the job of your emotions. So again, this is an excellent tool for highly visional people. However, this may not be for you if you are not one.   

Exercise 2: Reframing the Situation

06:52 When we are stressed, we tend to engage in pessimism and self-sabotaging behaviors, which drive our stress levels even higher because we involve our emotions and negativity. However, we can look at the situation and break it down to just the fact to stop the stress and the overwhelm.

We reframe a situation through a writing exercise. So, grab a piece of paper. Now, you can do it mentally or aloud, but it does serve you to see what you’ve written.

First, look at the situation that is causing you stress.

Please do your best to narrow it down to one element and name it. So, naming it would be: I’m stressed because there’s never enough time to handle everything on my plate.

Ask yourself: What about this situation is causing me stress?

Write down everything that comes to mind. You will likely find that you will write sentences involving some element of feelings. Words like “I Feel” may pop up.

Once you have written down everything that has come to mind, I want you to eliminate the feelings and get down to just the facts.

Facts are neutral–not positive or negative.

A fact would be: My schedule is too full.

I am overcommitted.

Whatever the facts are, put them down.

The facts of any situation will always be: this happened, then this happened, and then this occurred.

Once you have the facts down, I want you to look at how many of your facts are actual “needs” that need to address to change your situation. Meaning, is there something in the experience that can be released, but you haven’t given yourself a chance to do so because you’ve never given yourself permission or a chance to look at the situation in a more focused way.

Sometimes, our overwhelm and stress come down to nothing more than being unfocused and being led by our emotions.

The next step in reframing your situation is to offer tangible solutions to yourself now that you have everything before you. What can be shifted? What can be released? What can be reassigned.? What’s worth your energy?

Reframing helps us shift and create workable experiences that are not as overwhelming and help us handle the load that we are carrying, whether mentally, emotionally, or physically! This exercise can be applied to anything we experience.

Just move through the steps and apply the technique.

Exercise 3: S-T-O-P technique.  

09:58 The S-T-O-P technique is a bit of a combination of the first two, and it’s a beautiful mindfulness practice that does take effort but is highly effective. Stop is an acronym: Stop, Take a breath, Observe, and Proceed.

We use this technique to stop the overwhelm in its tracks. I will often ask the women I work with to say aloud, “STOP.” To help break the cycle of thoughts or stress. Here’s the more expended practice:

First, You will stop and allow yourself to take a moment to recognize that there are strong emotions involved are this situation. Regardless of what it is, we can take command of the moment by stopping, interrupting the thought, and pausing. Hitting the STOP button gives us a moment to disconnect and slow everything down. This is of mass importance when we are feeling overwhelmed.  

From there, we move to the T, which is to take a breath. Your breath is your body’s way of regulating its nervous system. When we are overwhelmed and stressed, our nervous system is on high alert. As a result, we can feel panicked, have headaches, and our hands shake, to name a few. To calm the system, we must bring our attention to our breath and draw our attention back to our body.

The best practice here is to breathe in slowly through the nose, expanding the belly, and expanding slowly and deeply through an open mouth. Continue to breathe until you feel yourself slowing down.

Once you do, move to the O of Observe. To observe means to lean into what you are feeling at the moment. You can do this a few different ways, and depending on the situation one may work better than the other.

But, you can stop and observe your thoughts. Then, go back to technique two and look at what you are thinking. You can also examine your thoughts—is this true? Do I believe my thoughts?

You can observe your emotions – what am I feeling at the moment? What emotions am I feeling?

Or you can check-in physically. To check in physically, you can place your hand over your heart. Is your heart rate elevated? Are your palms sweaty? Do you feel tightness in your chest? If you do, you should return to the breathwork and continue to engage until the physical symptoms subside.

Next is the P, and that’s to proceed. Mindfully consider what is important to you right now and how you’d like to show up at the moment. What can you focus on that impacts today? Not tomorrow, but today? Narrow your focus until you have a pathway forward. This is also where loads of personal insight are realized.

Use these factors as the determination you need to shift your mindset and proceed effectively.

These three techniques are simple once you practice them. But what is so important to realize right now is that we often shift into patterns that do not serve us when we are stressed because we get in our own way. Taking a step back, engaging in new tools, and allowing ourselves to stop the moment, breaks the cycle of stress and overwhelm that can take us down on every level.

Thank you to Kendra from LA for the question! Don’t forget to submit yours!

I challenge you to STOP, use your imagination, and reframe anything that isn’t working for you! Doing so is an essential life tool that helps elevate and reset your mindset.   

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