Strategies for managing stress

Prisma Health experts psychiatrist Brittany Peters, MD, therapist Carmenlita Sayles and counselor Lanita-Sunshine Patterson Smith stepped up to offer strategies for managing stress in your daily life. Whether you’re working with your partner, on your own or with your children to build resilience, facing down stress due to long days in the office or any other situation, feeling stressed out is common and can lead to ongoing mental and physical health problems.

“As a doctor, I think about stress as the biological processes that occur in the body when you encounter something that feels threatening or might be dangerous,” said Dr. Peters. “We get a sort of neurochemical cascade that starts in the brain and goes throughout our organs and endocrine system, creating the response that we call stress.”

Dr. Peters noted that our bodies aren’t always great at knowing the difference between a real danger or threat and everyday stress and tend to respond in a similar manner to both. Everyone’s body handles stress a little differently, but many of the overall symptoms of stress will be the same.

Symptoms of stress include changes in or loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, muscle tension, headaches and stomach problems, among others.

Causes of stress, such as workplace conflict, academics or school conflicts for adolescents, young adults and children, problems with relationships with friends, partners or family and other everyday issues can be impossible to completely avoid.

There are, however, strategies for managing stress that you can include into your daily life in order to build up resilience and feel more calm, in control and able to face what comes your way.