When you’re human, you deal with some level of stress. Stress management techniques are often not taught in our everyday lives. They weren’t added to a school curriculum growing up or implemented into the work day. Stress can come from various situations in your life. 

Your job may cause you stress, you may have relationship issues, or deal with family problems such as health issues or an unhealthy relationship with your family.

Whatever the case, finding a way to give yourself stress relief fast is so important. Using skills help you feel empowered and in control. 

Stress can be tolerated and beat with these instant stress relief mind hacks, because finding stress relief doesn’t have to take years of soul searching.

What Happens Mentally and Physically During Stress?

There are many emotional, physical, and behavioral aspects to an acute state of stress. If not controlled in a timely manner, symptoms can occur such as:

• Chest palpitations
• Chronic irritability due to feeling out of control
• Difficulty breathing
• Indecisiveness
• Shakiness and sweating
• Inability to concentrate when needed
• Physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, fatigue, and sleep problems 

These are some of the typical symptoms that people face when they are experiencing acute stress. 

Mind Hacks to Fight Stress

The best way to fight ongoing symptoms of stress that affect your mind and body are to learn useful mental health hacks. We are often told to exercise to reduce stress. While exercise is vital to your overall health and wellness, paying attention to your mind, and how it is the root cause of your stress, is so often overlooked. 

Basically, you can train your mind into thinking everything is going to okay and bring its attention to something else. 

Whether it is distraction behaviors, or relaxation exercises, you can yield the power of mental jujitsu!

This is how I term gradually mastering how to control your stress through the use of strategic skills or mind hacks. 

In this fast paced world, it’s important to know how to beat stress so it doesn’t beat you. 

After all, we are the one’s in charge of our mindset, and it can be hacked easier than you realize. This is the basic principle behind the mind hacks used to counter acute stress effects. 

What Are 5 Ways To Fight Stress?

1. Intentional Journaling 

Think of the times your worry thoughts were running through your mind, causing you to spiral and feel out of control. You couldn’t find a better way to process them and they felt like they beat you, and they continue to beat you. Writing is a powerful tool for processing our inner thoughts and feelings regarding a stressful situation. When we don’t know how to process a situation that happens all of a sudden, our main goal should be finding a way that helps you name and interpret how you feel.

Instead of bottling up your emotions and thoughts, it is best to let them flow in a safe way. Journaling is, therefore, an important tool for this.

Not only can you process your emotions and let them flow as they come, but you also develop an improved sense of awareness about yourself. When you learn what your triggers are, you can begin to see certain patterns the make you tick surfacing through your writing.

Keep a journal as a safe space to air your stressful thoughts. It can be a place where you don’t have to worry about how you sound, how your thoughts may affect others, and allow yourself to simply be who you are.  

2. Guided Imagery 

Do you ever feel stressed and start to fantasize about being somewhere else? Especially, escaping somewhere peaceful such as a beach or for a hike through a rain forest?

Guided Imagery is a powerful meditation that helps your mind to declutter itself from racing thoughts caused by stress through the use of a peaceful image. You can either concur up an image of a beach, for example, or guide yourself into relaxation through guided imagery meditations people have thoughtfully put their time and effort into already. 

I love to go to YouTube and type in guided imagery. Choose a video based on how much time you have and what image looks the most inviting. It’s the most easy and efficient way to access tons of videos created for your pleasure.

You will see that as you do it, your brain shifts its focus from the acute stressful condition towards drawing that image in your brain.

This is a powerful method to move your attention away from troubling thoughts in times of stress and transport you to another place.

For best results, it is important you keep trying this meditation often. This way, it is engrained in your mind and easily accessible through memory. I watched a guided meditation before getting an MRI and it helped me escape to the beach in my mind and forget where I was so I could remain more still and calm.

3. Socialization 

When you are going through periods of acute stress, there is one thing that can aggravate your situation the most: Staying isolated. It is true because, as humans, we often bring a lot of focus on ourselves. In times of stress and isolation, we tend to magnify our problems and get into a vicious cycle of overthinking, which is difficult to break. It is best to divert our attention in these times. Socializing with other people helps to shift our focus from ourselves to others. 

There are two aspects of socialization: You get the emotional support you need by sharing and seeking help. If that is not the case, at least you take the spotlight off of yourself and bring it to other people. Instead of becoming centered on yourself, you play a positive role in thinking about other people’s problems. 

4. Taking Self Care Breaks

Your mental health matters in times of acute stress, and when you take care of yourself during these times, you are doing yourself and others a favor. Furthermore, when you implement self-care practices into your life on a routine basis, you have a better chance at maintaining a lower stress level, as opposed to using self-care practices only in times of stress.

Self-care practices are physical, emotional, and mental activities aimed at focusing on you. Some self-care practices include Exercising, eating a balanced diet, taking care of your physical appearance, saying no, journaling, being kind to yourself and others, meditation, engaging in a satisfying hobby, learning a new skill, socializing, etc. 

 Be ready to take pauses – don’t get too indulged in situations when you find yourself not having the emotional capacity to tackle them. By taking self-care breaks, you are protecting yourself from burnout and maintaining a calmer sense of self on a daily basis. 

5. Finding Humor

Whenever a stressful condition occurs, you don’t have to become stuck in a negative headspace. Overthinking and negative emotions can easily prevail in tough times, which will make you think worse of every situation.

To save yourself from this negative cycle, it is best to think of something productive or funny. Finding humor during tough times helps you to gain some resilience and insight into the situation. It also helps your mind to think differently from the perspectives that don’t go in your favor. 

For example, if you are late from a business meeting and you find yourself getting stressed, instead of thinking about the worst possible thing that could happen, allow your mind to focus on things that give you an instant giggle. You could think of something hilarious your kids or animal did. You could think about a funny show you watched, or a joke someone told you. 

The Takeaway

Dealing with acute stress doesn’t have to be difficult at all. Beat stress for good by using these mind hacks whenever stress arises for you. 

After all, you are the only person who is in control of what you do next after stress occurs. 

You can feel powerless to it time and time again, or you can recognize stress as a symptom of being human and take control with these mental health hacks. The choice is yours!

This page contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Please read my disclosure for more information. Thank you for your support.

Most of us have been cozied up in our homes. By now, you may be bored, frustrated, sad or even very stressed (See Self-Soothe kit for your own self-care because you are doing the right thing too and need some extra love).

First responders, however, have been pushed to the limit; most past their breaking point by now. And yet, they still have to carry on and do their job. Despite how impossible, heart-breaking, and stressful that may be right now “they signed up for this.”

We could never truly understand what they are going through and what they have sacrificed. Their duty to take care of others, those they don’t even know, is truly heroic and heart warming. Maybe we can’t ever truly repay them, but we show them how thankful we are in a small way.

Giving a first responder of your choice a self-care kit could remind them they are in our thoughts. Some items will be useful for them at work and some will be great for them to come home to when they can relax and shut down for the day.

What To Include In A Self-Care Kit

• a mini bottle of aromatherapy oil to soothe their senses on-the-go.
• an aromatherapy stress ball to keep in their pocket when things get intense.
• lotion to massage on their body for relaxation.
• Hand Sanitizer Gel with Alcohol & Organic Aloe Vera, this comes in many scents they can choose from and the aloe will soothe their hands.
• Lavender Hot Chocolate to soothe their senses.
• Sleep Blend scented pillow spray for those nights when sleep is extra challenging.
• a designer face mask to stay safe in style.
• soaking bath salts – with a soothing scent to soak the day away (this one is sure to lighten the mood!).
• Something decorated by a kid, such as a card or painted rock, just for them.
• Flower bulbs that can be planted in the Spring, such as dahlia and gladiolus, so they can watch beautiful flowers come to life. This can be very cathartic after so much loss.

Etsy also has already made self-care kits you can mail directly.

Be sure to include a personalized note expressing your well wishes and gratitude so they really feel the love.