Top 2 articles ideas for self care and coping

Coping with Financial Stress

Financial stress is one of the biggest causes of stress that millions of people deal with. It can cause you to have knots in your stomach as well as make it difficult to sleep at night.

You might worry about retirement or it may be a bigger financial stress such as how you’re going to be able to pay the bills this month. Your current situation may be such that you can’t alleviate your financial stress quickly.

While you may not be able to do that, you can still use self care tactics to make sure you don’t allow the stress to wreak havoc on you physically or emotionally. Start by releasing yourself from the guilt you might be feeling.

Where you are financially might be because you made some mistakes. If so, don’t berate yourself about it. Applying negative feelings toward anything to do with finances can make you reluctant to face what’s going on, so you’ll limit your ability to fix the problem when that happens.

Part of self care with financial stress involves knowing where you stand. Sometimes your money situation isn’t as bad you think and sometimes it can be worse. The uncertainty can add to your stress. It’s the fear of the unknown.

Once you know what’s going on, it can make it easier for you to handle the stress. Another part of self care is knowing where your money is really going. You need to create a budge.

When there is financial stress, most people avoid thinking about where their money is going. But you need to control the monetary flow. You may have never used a budget or you may have once or twice but you’ve stopped.

You can be top heavy in your budget if you have more of your income going to a mortgage payment than you can actually afford. Or you might have two big car payments when all you can really swing is one.

Taking action is practicing self care and one of these actions is using a budget. This is one of your best resources for self care because it allows you to be honest with yourself about what you can and can’t do financially.

It’ll help you plug any leaks and limit spending where it needs to be limited. Set yourself up with an emergency fund – even if all you can do is put a few dollars in there at a time. Eventually, it will add up.

When you don’t have an emergency fund and something goes wrong, then you’re forced to shortchange another area. Seek advice from someone who’s good with finances or schedule an appointment with a financial counselor to help you get rid of the root cause of the financial stress.

Finally, when it comes to coping with financial chaos, watch your mindset. Staying positive about it and the ways that you need to address the financial issues will help your mood and alleviate stress.

Coping with Job Stress

The workplace is a common site for stress. You might be experiencing it on your job because the amount of effort and time you’re putting in isn’t reflected in the amount that you’re paid.

It could be that promised raises are slow to happen or aren’t given at all. The stress could come from reaching a position within the company that leaves you stuck. There’s just no room to move up.

Or maybe your job doesn’t interest you. Sometimes job stress happens because someone else isn’t doing his or her work and you’re left to pick up the slack. Perhaps you have a demanding or unsupportive boss.

Whatever it is that’s causing your job stress, there are multiple ways to deal with it and it begins through the use of self care. You must first name whatever it is that’s behind the stress.

Write it all down and you’ll learn how it affected you. For example, if your coworker blew off doing his share and you had to do it, what was the physical response you gave in return?

Did you drink multiple cups of coffee? Did you get a headache? Was anger, anxiety or situational depression your response? You want to understand how you reacted because that’s the first step toward developing a good self care plan.

Knowing will help you understand how to react positively rather than allowing the stress to cause problems for you physically or emotionally. You’ll learn to turn to things like taking a break for a brief walk rather than heading to the break room and having a donut.

Stress can be all around you at the job but that doesn’t mean you can’t stop it from affecting you. Put up boundaries with your coworkers, with your boss, with the workload, and with the treatment you receive.

Whatever the stress is, deal with it. Boundaries help you know what your space is and it teaches other people to respect those boundaries. For example, part of your stress might be that your job isn’t actually over at the end of your shift.

You’re getting emails, phone calls, or text messages from coworkers or supervisors wanting you to handle something. Your boundary can be that once you clock out, you’re not back on duty until the next business day.

If it’s not an emergency, you’ll deal with it later. You must keep a line drawn between your work and your time off. Keep your phone off if you have to and don’t respond to emails or messages.

Another great self care rule to establish to deal with job stress is to make time for yourself. Don’t allow work to eat up so much of your emotions or time that you’re too exhausted to relax.

You need to de-stress from work by taking the time to relax and do whatever it is that you enjoy doing. If the stress is caused by a conflict at work, talk to whoever heads up your department or your immediate supervisor if he or she isn’t part of the problem. This will allow you to identify the action steps you need to take to resolve the situation.