Beginner's Guide to Reducing Stress

Video Transcript

DEBBIE MANDEL: Greetings everyone. I'm Debbie Mandel, a stress management specialist and author of "Addicted to Stress." In this clip, we're going to be discussing the beginner's guide to reducing stress. We all get stressed and that's a great relief because you are not unique in that. Every one of us lives with that proverbial tiger who chased us on the savannah plains when we needed to survive. We either had the reaction of freezing, fleeing or fighting. Good times ahead that we don't have to fight to survive. Bad times for us, we have no outlet for our stress which is emotionally driven, and stress inflames you physically and emotionally and does a lot of damage so the goal in stress management is to decompress and cultivate a relaxation response. At the very basic, you want to avoid chronic stress. Acute stress is not so bad for you; it wakes you up, but it's that chronic stress that does the damage, so look at your schedule and try to restore the balance to see that you have some downtime. Five things to keep in mind when you are beginning to reduce stresses that everybody experiences stress 24/7. Stress is an inflammatory process. There are two types of stress, acute and chronic. Don't overload your schedule. You have nothing to prove and schedule quiet time for you.