Sometimes the problem that we’re dealing with isn’t necessarily a matter of the stress itself, but rather the way we’re approaching it. After all, we can’t lay all the blame on outside forces – we do make our own problems just as often. Fortunately, this also means that we can correct those same problems that [...]

In addition to the way that stress becomes quite relentless and ever present in our lives, it also has a terrible habit of refusing to respect boundaries. No matter how we might assume that everything’s been taken care of, something always seems to come up to intrude into our few free moments and rob us [...]

We’ve talked about stress and the elements that bring it into our lives, or stressors. Identifying our stressors can be a powerful first step, for obvious reasons – if we know what’s giving us grief, we can take steps to put it out of our way, resolve it or come to terms with it. Even [...]

It’s very easy to take our perception as reality. We see a wall six feet away, we say it’s six feet away. We feel hot, we say it is hot. The problem is, perceptions are a matter of perspective and information. Suppose someone who’s usually cheerful at work comes in and is much more curt [...]

It’s hard to make a good choice instead of a bad one. It can be even harder to go back and undo a bad choice that we made some time ago. Instead, many times we stubbornly reinforce it again and again, letting it build up over time to continue burying us in worry, regret and [...]

So far, we’ve been focusing on using small steps and independent techniques to help deal with the stress which piles up in our lives. We know about using the STOP method to interrupt difficult thoughts, or to get our attention where we need it instead of where it’s trying to go. We know about taking [...]

Everyone knows how important breathing is to the body. In an emergency, we can go weeks without food and several days without water or sleep. We won’t be in the best of health, but it is possible to survive without these necessities in a pinch. However, anyone who goes more than a few seconds without [...]

For creatures that supposedly only exist in the present, we sure do a lot of time traveling. We worry about tomorrow, we fret over yesterday, and all the while our current status gets neglected. Some of our most distracting worries aren’t even the current ones. Frequently we’ll drag ourselves down by worrying about tomorrow and [...]

The past can be a problematic albatross to carry around. We’ll forget where we left our keys 20 minutes ago, but ask us to remember an embarrassing moment from our childhood and it will come to mind like a flash. For some reason, we seem incredibly predisposed toward reminiscing over troubling events. We replay and [...]

Our vivid imaginations often have the power to alleviate or exacerbate stressful situations. On the one hand, we can come up with a lot of different solutions for the same problems; yet on the other, we also can create all manner of roadblocks for ourselves almost out of thin air. The human mind is an [...]