The human body often reacts to various situations, thoughts and emotions with a physiological or psychological response. This may result in positive ‘stress’ – a feeling of happiness and satisfaction and well-being in the body or negative stress such as overwhelm, anger, sadness, or any other negative emotion, which can result in a brief illness or serious disease.

Today we have more stress in our lives than ever before – both good stress and bad stress. Bad stress is incredibly harmful to our body, mind and soul; whether it is a real crisis or an imagined one.

Here are some self-care ways to deal with stress:

1. Observe or Notice
Take a look at all the things that don’t feel right in your life or that you know are causing you stress. For example, when you approach certain people, places or situations do you feel more stress and tension? Jot them down in a notebook. Once you have your list in place, look at what you can do to change, and do it. This may involve removing/avoiding the stressor, correcting the situation, applying EFT to neutralise the stressful thought/emotion cycle or consulting a professional to help. You can also use this list to predict stressful situations before they occur.

2. Ask for help
For what you can’t change yourself, you need a team of experts to help handle your list. A coach, at the top of the list, will help with the big picture and will keep you honest about your efforts. Other team members might be an EFT practitioner, counsellor, a family doctor who listens to you, a financial planner, a massage therapist and/or an exercise partner.

3. Back up Plan
Think of Plan A as your basic self-care plan while stress is under control. Now imagine something happens and you are under stress. Instead of abandoning all self-care because you can’t do it all, have a Plan B ready beforehand.