How to Help Yourself Learn and Trust Stress Relief Techniques
Stress is a huge issue for the average caregiver. How you deal with your stress matters a lot. There are tons of different techniques out there that can help to relieve stress, but not all of them work in the same ways for all people. You’re going to have to try a few different techniques to find the right ones for you. But how can you trust that they’ll work every time?
Make a List of Techniques You Like
There are a lot of different ways to relieve stress. The more of those techniques you have under your belt, the more likely you’ll be to have a tool for every situation. But that doesn’t mean that you like every single technique you run across. Start keeping tabs on the techniques that you like or that you think you’ll like. That gives you a starting point from which you can grow and cull your list as you need to do so.
Stop Trying to Make a Technique Work for You
One mistake you might make more often than you’d like is to focus on a technique that is “supposed” to work wonders but that you don’t enjoy. For instance, if you really just can’t get a handle on meditation it likely isn’t going to have the results for you that it has for other people no matter how much you want it to. If you keep trying to force it, you’re giving yourself more stress than you’re relieving. You don’t have to make every technique work for you the way it works for other people.
Give Yourself Early Successes
When you’re trying something new, it never hurts to give yourself easy success right out of the gate. With stress relief techniques, that can mean starting out with a situation in which you only experience mild stress. Or try the technique when you’re mostly feeling okay, but you know you’re a little on edge. If you do have some success with a smaller stress situation, that gives you a positive step in the right direction. Next, you can test that technique with a more trying situation.
Learn Who You Can Talk to When You Need Someone
Everyone needs someone to talk to or to vent to when things are getting difficult. For a family caregiver, that might mean talking to a friend or to another caregiver. But you might also consider finding a therapist who has experience with helping caregivers. It’s important that you feel you can trust the person you’re talking to, regardless of who you choose.
Learning to trust that the stress-relieving activities you’re trying will work is not an easy task. It’s especially difficult when you’re a busy family caregiver who doesn’t have a lot of extra time or energy to devote to new activities. Give yourself the time and the grace to do what you can when you can do it.
If you or an aging loved-one are considering hiring a Caregiver in Lake Bluff, IL, call the caring staff at LifeCare Home Health & In-Home Services. Call (888) 606-4199 LifeCare serves all of the Chicago Metro Area.
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