Nutritional Mental Health Practitioner

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Stress Management

How to Actually Manage Your Chronic Stress

Updated on 7 min read

Raise your hand if you are one of the 10% of Americans who have tried a yoga class1. Same here. And I love it. As a avid practitioner of Vinyasa and Bikram (hot) yoga styles, taking time to practice with others and embrace the collective control of our prana (breath, or life force energy) is almost a requirement of a good week. I feel more ‘zen,’ connected to the world, and happier whenever I do.

But at the end of the day it is not a solution.

The wellness industry is filled with expensive band-aids. There are crystals in water bottles, endless supplements, and plenty of self-help books. Every band-aid seems to promise us the same thing: “Buy me and you will feel better.”

I will let you in on a little secret. The wellness industry is an industry. It is chock full with money-costing solutions, inflated results, and emotional capitalism. It preys on those of us who are feeling stuck, stressed, and scared of what will happen if we don’t do enough self-care. It uses our susceptibility to instant gratification against us through telling us that “all we need to do is have this one thing and we will be healed.”

To quote Rina Raphael in her book The Gospel of Wellness, “This is not a case against yoga. My point is that we should take a step back to analyze the root issues. Stress is rarely a matter of a broken brain or a poor ‘lifestyle choice’ but often a symptom of the structural issues facing society (pg. 35).” The crux of the matter is that self-care doesn’t erase our stressors. It can help us escape them for a time or even reduce our perception of our stressor intensity2, but at the end of the day, if we don’t deal with our stress, we will only get so far. Putting antibiotic ointment on our wound without taking the foreign object out doesn’t change the fact that the cause of the infection is still there.

But sometimes we can’t change our stressors. We still need to pay for our rent, food, childcare, and bills. We still have to handle mean customers or high-school bullies. We still have to answer the phone. Some of us have extra stressors like discrimination, an inability to leave our environment even though it isn’t safe, a disability, and general substantiated social fears. It is important to realize that, even if we try our best, the way our society is set up lends to the failure of our wellness dreams. And so, we need to learn how to become well despite. Below I have outlined steps I firmly believe everyone should take on their journey of chronic stress management.

Step 1: Write out all of your potential stressors

We can change only what we acknowledge and accept3. Take time to write down what may be causing you stress. This is a word vomit exercise, meaning that anything and everything is worthy of being written down. Consider asking those close to you for their perceptions as well. Sometimes we do not allow ourselves to think of certain stressors or consider them as a positive – therefore, ‘not stressful’ – as a safeguard against becoming more stressed (speaking from my own experience as a person who was working 50-60 hour weeks, convinced I loved my job, and was excessively positive about it). This step can be difficult because it forces us to address reality.

Step 2: Sort your stressors

After you have all your stressors written out, sort them into four piles: very difficult to change, possible to change, easy to change, and do not want to/cannot change. Categorization and sorting is a helpful mindfulness tool for making the overwhelm seem more manageable. Again, it could be helpful to have someone close to you to help as they may see your capabilities differently and bring in an outside perspective. After that, rank each stressor from 1-10 on the intensity scale.

Step 3: Make action plans

For each stressor in your “very difficult” and “possible” categories, write out answers to the following questions:

  1. Why is this a stressor?
  2. Why do I want to change this stressor?
  3. What barriers are there to relieving this stressor?
  4. Small, easy, and actionable steps you can take to slowly resolve the stressor.

You can choose to only write out #4, but I would highly recommend writing out answers to the other three questions as well. Doing this can help you understand your motivation behind wanting to release each stressor, which in turn can assist in sticking with your plan.

Step 4: Start small and easy

Choose one to three stressors in your “easy to change” category. I would recommend choosing one that is 5 or higher and one that is 5 or lower. Those are the only stressors you are going to focus on for the first week or two. By setting yourself up for success, you can train your brain to remember that you can do hard things as well as give it a boost of dopamine that it so loves.

Step 5: Continual progress and maintenance

You may choose to follow a different program, but this program is what I have found provides the best in terms of follow-through and results.

  • At the start of your week, choose: 1 easy stressor, 1 moderate stressor action, and 1 difficult stressor sub-action (i.e. if an action is “apply for jobs,” a sub-action might be “make a LinkedIn page”).
  • In your calendar, write both what day you are going to address each separate stressor item and what action you will do. Make sure to place this calendar where you will see it regularly.
  • Ask someone to be your accountability partner. When we know someone is going to keep us accountable to our goals through regular discussion with that person, we are up to 75% more likely to reach our goals4.

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Overall, doing things that bring us more joy, more peace, and more wellness are not wrong. In fact, I very much recommend us to do these actions – especially those that are evidence backed, like reducing screen time5-7. However, when we choose to focus on supplementing our stress levels without also releasing ourselves from the root cause, we set ourselves up for failure and that continual ‘stuck’ feeling.

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If you are interested in more evidence-backed ways to improve your stress management skills, become more joyful, and find your way through this messy (and sometimes irrational) world of wellness, consider booking a consultation or a coaching program with me. I bring my expertise in health psychology to the table to help empower you to bring wellness to all aspects of your life, from your mind to your body.

  1. Statista (2018). Number of yoga participants in the United States from 2010 to 2021 [Online]. Available from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191625/participants-in-yoga-in-the-us-since-2008/  
  2. Bermejo-Martins, E., Luis, E. O., Fernández-Berrocal, P., Martínez, M., & Sarrionandia, A. (2021). The role of emotional intelligence and self-care in the stress perception during COVID-19 outbreak: An intercultural moderated mediation analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110679
  3. Segal, O., Sher, H., Aderka, I. M., & Weinbach, N. (2023). Does acceptance lead to change? Training in radical acceptance improves implementation of cognitive reappraisal. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2023.104303
  4. Matthews, G. (2007). The Impact of Accountability and Written Goals on Goal Progress. https://scholar.dominican.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=psychology-faculty-conference-presentations https://doi.org/10.1037/e656862007-001
  5. Hmidan, A., Seguin, D., & Duerden, E. G. (2023). Media screen time use and mental health in school aged children during the pandemic. BMC Psychology, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01240-0
  6. Dam, V. A. T., Dao, N. G., Nguyen, D. C., Vu, T. M. T., Boyer, L., Auquier, P., Fond, G., Ho, R. C. M., Ho, C. S. H., & Zhang, M. W. B. (2023). Quality of life and mental health of adolescents: Relationships with social media addiction, Fear of Missing out, and stress associated with neglect and negative reactions by online peers. PLoS ONE, 18(6). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286766
  7. Nimrod, G. (2020). Changes in Internet use when coping with stress: Older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 28(10), 1020–1024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2020.07.010