What’s the Best Stress Management Technique

Sometimes when I’m stressed I like to go down into my basement and play the drums.  I’ve been playing them since I was 10, and one of the things I’ve always liked about them is that you can hit them as hard as you want.  You’re supposed to hit them, in fact – that’s the whole point of drums, which is not true of most things.  I don’t always hit them as hard as I can, but sometimes I do, and sometimes that makes me feel better.

But not always.  So sometimes when I’m stressed I’ll go for a walk to see if I can clear my head.  I have never, not even once in my life, gone for a run when I’m stressed.  Some people do, but that just seems like a terrible waste of a good walk.  Every time I run I think, “Nobody is chasing me, I should slow down,” and then I do.  But some people swear by it.

I know people who bake when they get stressed.  I know others who organize things.  Sometimes I make lists of what I need to do, and occasionally that’s exactly what I need.

So with so many options, and so many strategies, which one is the best one?

That’s answer’s actually really easy – ALL OF THEM!  Or, more accurately, whichever ones work for you.  You may like yoga, or power naps, or exercise, or happy hours; you may like to be alone in the woods or surrounded by noise.  You may enjoy wrapping yourself in saran wrap and rolling down a steep grassy hill.  I have no idea, and I don’t care.  Whatever works for you in any given moment, that’s the best stress management technique there is.  (Except of course for anything that might hurt somebody else – that should go without saying, but so little can actually go without saying these days.)

Stress is a hydra.  It comes in a million forms, and what works to deal with it today may or may not work tomorrow.  What works for me may or may not work for you.  But the one thing that ALL stress management techniques have in common is that they temporarily remove us from the source of the stress, which gives our brains the time necessary to rebuild our capacity to handle stress or find a solution for whatever’s causing that stress.

So if you’re feeling stressed and not sure what to do, here’s the answer – just do something.  Anything at all, really, that takes your mind off your stress for a little while.  Even if that involves running.  You may think that removing yourself from your stress is just going to make it harder to deal with once you get back to it, but the opposite is actually true.  The better we get at occasionally putting distance between ourselves and our stress, the easier it becomes to manage it.