With Health and Wellness Extension Professor in the Home and Community department Emma Parkhurst.
April is National Stress Awareness Month. The impacts of stress on the body, mind and our personal relationships can be detrimental.
Emma is here to recommend activities to help us relieve stress, tell us why they're effective, and show us how to pick the best ones for individual situations.
Wynter Varner
Thank you for joining us today, Emma.
Emma Parkhurst
Thank you so much for having me.
Wynter Varner
Tell us a little bit about Stress Awareness Month.
Emma Parkhurst
Yeah, Stress Awareness Month is an annual time designed to help folks recognize the difference between good and bad stress, learn how to manage it, and also raise awareness about the causes and impacts of not managing that stress.
Wynter Varner
How does stepping away from stress help relieve it?
Emma Parkhurst
Stepping away is exactly what it sounds like, right, either mentally or physically, distancing yourself from the stress.
A lot of times when we're stressed out, we tend to stew over it or constantly think about it and get stuck in what experts call rumination. Essentially, we're overthinking.
Our brains want to find a solution to the stressor. But the problem with constantly thinking about a stressor or a stressful situation is that the more we ruminate about what's upsetting us or stressing us out, the worse we tend to feel, and the deeper we're pulled into that rumination.
You're just kind of thrown into a downward cycle of stress or negativity. That can look like constantly being up at night, distracted by your thoughts (even during the work day).
You can't stop thinking about the stressor or how to not feel stressed out, and unfortunately, it can make us feel exhausted, frustrated, and more stressed out.
Experts recommend stepping back from that rumination by shifting our attention out of it, and we can do this through a lot of different activities.
Wynter Varner
Tell me about some of those activities. What did they look like?
Emma Parkhurst
The great thing about stress-management techniques is that there are many different options out there.
Mindfulness based strategies can help shift us out of this rumination, while creating a space for new solutions to emerge.
That can look like yoga, which is a combination of mental and physical health. It's going to improve your physical strength, and then it's also going to reduce stress, anxiety, and chronic pain.
It can look like taking deep breaths, where you are taking those deep breaths to signal to your brain and your body to lower your heart rate and cortisol (stress hormone) in your body.
One that I really love talking about is engaging in art. A lot of people will say, "Well, I'm not an artist. I'm not creative."
But there's a study that shows even engaging in a creative activity for 45 minutes, whether or not you consider yourself to be artistic, can significantly relieve stress in your body. They test this by measuring cortisol levels in your saliva. So that's a really fun one.
You can also engage in physical activity.
You can go outside and just spend time in nature. There's research that shows there are physical, mental, and social benefits of going outside that contribute to overall well-being and longevity.
Simply laughing is a great in-the-moment stress reliever. Since our emotions and our facial expressions are interconnected, laughing or smiling can automatically relieve that tension.
You can kind of pick and choose which one you want to try to see what works for you, because like with anything in life, it's not one-size-fits-all. You might kind of have to play around to figure out what works best for you.
Wynter Varner
Why are these activities so effective?
Emma Parkhurst
Really, what's similar with all these different techniques is that the research has shown that it reduces stress hormones, whether it's through mental activities or physical activities.
A lot of people find stress reduction or stress relief through exercise or physical activity, because they're starting to get that heart pumping, your blood moving, you're getting oxygen into your brain, and your brain will focus more on that exercise than your stressor.
We're getting the benefits both mentally and physically from exercise, and it shows that by engaging in physical activity, you can have an immediate stress relieving effect that can last for hours.
Really, it comes down to having both that mental and that physical wellness play together to reduce that stress.
Wynter Varner
Do you have any other resources that you'd like to share today?
Emma Parkhurst
Yeah, absolutely. Extension has a great website.
We have a mental health education website that has a lot of resources for anybody that might be experiencing stress or any other mental health issues.
We have resources for finding support or treatment and articles for reading. They can tell you if you're curious about maybe how sleep, socializing, or going outside in nature can help reduce your stress.
If you want to learn more about anything like that, folks can visit extension.usu.edu/mentalhealth, and learn a lot more about how to reduce stress there.
Wynter Varner
Thank you again for joining us today, Emma.
Emma Parkhurst
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Wynter Varner
This has been Wynter Varner with the USU Extension Education Highlights, thank you for tuning in.
