00:00Stress is part of our everyday life. We need to learn to manage it. Sometimes we need to
00:11learn to manage it as it happens, whether we need to self-regulate during the event
00:16itself. We can use some breathing techniques, we can use combined paired muscle relaxation
00:23breathing techniques, we can even use some temperature control, we can use ice cubes
00:31to help us regulate. So this would be during the stressful event. Following the stress
00:37itself, we need to de-stress daily as it goes, so as to avoid building up stress daily. What
00:44we usually would recommend is once you're done with your daily activities that you find
00:50some time for yourself. But you can do something you like, going to the gym, going for a run,
00:57doing some hobbies, painting, coloring, some Legos, some Sudoku, any mind games. We can
01:04also de-stress by using our senses. So we have five senses, so we can watch videos,
01:13we can watch movies, we can watch old pictures on our phones that bring us good emotions.
01:20Another one is our hearing sense, we can listen to music. We can have some music and we have
01:26our own playlists that we like, that we can use to de-stress, maybe even on the drive
01:33home after work or after the caterer's heat. Another sense is our smell, so maybe using
01:43nice perfumes, fragrances around the house. All these are ways to de-stress, even a spa
01:50or a good bathing time. It's a good activity for de-stressing. One of the other things
01:59is guided imagining. It's really useful. It's where you imagine yourself in any place
02:04you want to be. And again, you use your five senses to really feel that place, whether
02:09it's what you see, what you hear, what you smell, are you at night, are you in the morning.
02:20So you use your senses to really feel the place you're in. Sometimes de-stress is too
02:26much. Maybe we need to push these thoughts away because I need to take care of myself
02:30now, I need to eat, I need to sleep, I need to drink, I need to exercise. And then maybe
02:36tomorrow will be a better time to deal with the stress. So take it easy and take care of yourself.
02:42Our stress is caused by our thinking. So sometimes we use something called CBT,
02:49which is cognitive behavioral therapy, to identify our maladaptive thinking techniques.
02:56Cognitive is basically understanding our thoughts, what evidence we have for it,
03:01is it just a judgment? Do we have all the facts we need for our situation? We do something called
03:10Socratic questioning regarding what's the worst that can happen and what if this was real? Then
03:16we do something called detecting our cognitive distortions. So do we have all or none
03:25thinking? We have black and white. We have overgeneralization. Do we minimize? So we check
03:34what kind of thoughts we usually go to, what are our cognitive distortions. And then we use CBT to
03:44restructure how we're thinking, change the way we're thinking about it, and then defining what
03:51we would like to do to improve our situation. We have mindfulness and we have meditations.
03:57They're actually kind of like the opposite of each other. So mindfulness is when we need to
04:04be more in the moment of here and now. These are some skills and techniques that we use to train
04:10our mind to focus more. So we can be mindful to our thoughts internally. We can even be mindful
04:18to our emotions and we do some body scans to our bodies and feelings. Or we can be mindful to the
04:26externals. So what's happening around us? What's the situation? What can't I see? What am I judging?
04:34What am I missing? So it helps me be more focused, more oriented to what's going around me so I can
04:42manage the situation better. For the meditation, I need to take a good resting position. So I need
04:49to choose a quiet room. I need to choose some music that would help me or the guided applications.
04:58The room temperature needs to be in the way I like it, whether it's cold, whether it's hot,
05:04no matter. It's according to each person's preference. Following that, we lay in a position
05:10whether you can lie on your back, you can lie cross-legged, you can sit cross-legged. It
05:15differs from one person to another. Meditation is clearing your head from whatever thoughts are
05:24usually going through your head and just enjoying and listening and interacting with whatever feeds
05:31you and listening to. So it could be you're in a forest, you're listening to the sound of the stream
05:38and it's a video that keeps going on or it could be sounds of the ocean, it could be sounds of
05:44birds. There are different methods of meditation. It's used to unplug from what's happening around
05:52me as opposed to mindfulness which actually gets me more into the here and now.
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