Journal Exercise: The Course on Stress Management - Essay Example

The on stress management gave me a lot of insight on how to effectively reduce and control various types of stress and emotions in a healthy way. It helped me identify specific stressful behaviors that were affecting my health and mental well-being such as not going to the gym regularly and lack of sufficient sleep owing to the use of cell phone while in bed. I realized that these behavioral patterns were actually preventing me from leading a healthy lifestyle. In order to manage and control my stress factors I practiced different journal exercises during this course which are linked to a particular stress factor. These exercises helped me create a behavior modification plan according to my lifestyle. In addition I also partook in group’s discussions, meditation and yoga sessions. The journal exercises were very useful in understanding the underlying causative factors of stress and help me to fight it out. The first chapters of the journal provide information about several types of stressors and help the student understand the various risk factors and the general type of stressors which affect each of us personally. The journal exercises also included surveys and questions that were both clear and fun to work. These were extremely beneficial as it helped us understand about different types unhealthy behavioral patterns, identify them and then try to find ways to reduce it and deal with them in healthier way. In addition, the journal exercises also dealt with various other topics such as the effect of technology on health and how people have become increasingly dependent on technology in their everyday life. The other exercises in the journal helped me understand the importance of having a healthy sleep pattern, the influence of culture and our surrounding community and environment on our health and lifestyle. In addition, some exercises also introduced us to new concepts such as the chakra energy system and how each chakra is connected to a specific part of the body and how they are linked to a specific disease. The journal also included exercises to help understand our personality and about the physical and emotional response to stress, fear or anger. The journal also included some exercises that contained specific questions which was difficult to answer as hard to answer as it required admitting a specific behavior which we would mostly deny in other circumstances. This exercise however, gave us the confidence to deal with personal unhealthy behaviors and find solutions to overcome the habit. The other exercise in the journal focused on increasing our self-esteem and become more confident individuals. We also learnt different types of meditations such as dolphin breath meditation, circle breath, yoga and music therapy that helped with stress relief. Through the journal exercises I was able to identify several behavioral patterns which I tend to exhibit when I am stressed or angered. Also I was able to identify the specific stressors which I was unaware of till date. Chapter one included exercises that were mostly about technology and how often they are used by people and its influence on their behavior. The exercises and the subsequent group discussions made me realize that technology indeed has had a huge impact on my life. While it cannot be denied that technology and more specifically the use of cell phones and the internet has facilitated better communication and has simplified our living, it has also brought along several negative factors such as reduced personal interaction and the various negative effects on body and mind. On my part being a student in the U.S and speaking English as my second language stresses me most of the time and thus I prefer to text or email people rather than communicating with them on a personal level. The use of emails and texting has helped me to organize my words more clearly and also reduced my anxiety. However, on the contrary I have also realized that this habit has a negative effect on my personality and made me shy away from active participation in class discussions and has affected my interpersonal communication skills. Some exercises in the journal helped identify the factors related to an individual’s sleep hygiene and I personally concluded by spending more time texting and surfing from my mobile phone I was disrupting my sleep pattern. The exercises also made me realize that during times of stress of when I am not confident of communicating personally with others I turn to technology for help and over the years this has become a serious addiction and has also affected my lifestyle. Chapter three deals with the way every person deals with stressful emotions such as anger and fear. From the journal exercise, the anger recognition checklist and the mismanagement of anger styles I was surprised to know that people who deal with anger the way I do are classified as self-punishers. According to the journal, a self punisher is one who feels guilty of being angry and as a result he/she tends to eat, drink, shop and exercise (55). For this journal exercise we were assigned as groups to discuss our feeling and behaviors when angry. From this group discussion I got to know that other students also share the same feeling and behavior when they are angry. Though I got to know that I was not the only person with such as behavioral pattern, I was also keen on correcting the same as I understood how such behavior can influence the state of mind and also affect other people surrounding us. In addition, I also realized that during many stressful events I tend to laugh and get a sense of humor and make my friends laugh in order to feel better, which however, works most of the time. Even when I feel low and sad I have the habit of watching funny movies or reading funny jokes as it helps me to relax and enjoy my time rather than brooding on unhappy issues. In the movie that we watched in our exercise class people practiced yoga laughter exercise which we were also required to practice. This made me truly realize how humor helps dealing with stressful situations. In fact, I also learned that humor reduces physical stress and increases the production of happy hormones such as endorphins (123). I also got to learn the effect of music on stress and I had the habit of listening to sad music when I am stressed or happy music when I am in my true spirits. Yet I did not know that music could actually help with reducing stress. However, after downloading the Music app “DigitalMads” I listen to it when I feel stressed I and have realized that it really helps me feel more relaxed and chilled out. Another app which I tend to use more often especially before going to bed is the “Relaxation app” which includes different natural sounds such as the chirping of birds and sounds of running water. Personal plan In February I ended my relationship with my boyfriend of four years after I discovered his infidelity, and I just could not move on with my life as the incident left me in deep shock and I felt stressed most of the time. The incident had a profound negative effect on me both psychologically and emotionally and I spent most of my time blaming myself for trusting him. Even though the relationship ended I still continued to receive calls and texts from him and he would also sometimes stop over at my place and ask for forgiveness, which all made it really hard for me to move on with my life. However, I finally reached the point where I realized that it was time to move on and start afresh and that the affair was a thing of the past. I have thus decided that for my personal plan the stressor which I will be dealing would be my love relationship. I will work out a personal plan for the next six months in which each month will have its own goal. I will concentrate on following specific techniques which I believe would help me in achieving the goals set for each month. Before I begin to write my personal plan I decided to create a list of the main negative and positive points that have affected my life following my break-up after with my boyfriend. From the list I have noticed that I have more negative points than positive points. Thus, my main goal for this personal plan will be to convince myself that the relationship is over and that I have to move on with my life. I also want to change my negatives to positive, for example, I suffer from low self-confidence and I want to work on it during these six months and by at the end of which I hope to regain my self-confidence. For the first month my goal will be to distract myself from thinking about what happened in this relationship and stop blaming myself for whatever went wrong. I will stick to my behavior modification plan and will regularize my visits to the gym at least three days a week. I believe that this will help me express my emotions and transfer my anger and sadness to something which is more valuable instead of feeling exhausted by thinking about the past. I have also decided to ignore my ex-boyfriends calls and texts and I wish spend more time with my friends. From the video that we watched in our last class with Dr. Elizabeth Cotter most happy people overcome their problems and are less stressed even after experiencing personal setbacks in their life because of the support of their family and friends. For this month I have also decided to depend on music therapy to help me be more relaxed. Through the stress management course I learnt that different music sounds affect our nervous system especially instrumental music, the vibration of which helps with relaxation. I will also use the Relaxation app before going to bed as it contains sounds that could help with relaxation and regularize my sleep patterns. 253 In the second month my goal will be to convince myself that the relationship is over and that I am now on my own. I hope to continue following the same techniques I used in the first month. In addition, for this month I will also begin to work on having a healthy food diet by eating three meals a day. After my break-up with my boyfriend I ate a lot of junk food and sometimes starved myself by eating only one meal a day. I will also work on ridding all the negative memories by deleting old pictures, texts and getting rid of all the things that would remind me of him. Another new method which I intend to use this month besides the music therapy is meditating through body massage and yoga. Indeed, I will follow the exercises given in the course book as it gives a clear explanation about the muscle self-massage. Muscle self-massage can help decrease body pain and increase relaxation. In addition, in chapter 20 there is an explanation of how to practice “Surya Namaskar” yoga, which will be easy to do especially since we have practiced it in class. For the third month my goal will be to focus on my life and think of the future instead of the past. The reason why I choose this goal is because during the stress management course professor Nassif mentioned that sometimes things or situation can happen in our life that force us to completely shift to a new direction. In other words, thinking of what happened will not help me to move on with my life; instead I need to step back and focus on another path which would suit me better. In this month I will continue to practice music therapy, yoga and meditation sessions. In this month I also want to watch inspiring videos and read inspiring stories. My interest in videos began after I watched a video of Shaun White which was really inspiring as he explained about how he fought stress which affected his performance and how he learnt to transform his failures and weaknesses into success and power. In addition, I was also inspired by the last video we watched in Dr. Elizabeth Cotter class which was about the story of a women who was hit by a truck. The accident left her face deformed, following which she and her husband parted ways. However, despite the various setbacks in life she remained strong and fought with hope and faith and finally ended up getting married again and lived a happier life. Such stories have inspired me to be stronger especially when my odds are nothing compared to the tougher situations faced by other people. For the fourth month my goal will be to express my feeling and emotions. In this month the new method I will apply is art therapy as will learn to express my feeling and emotions through drawing instead of keeping them inside me and build up fear and anger because of what happened in my life. In fact, in class we practiced art therapy with two groups which gave a presentation about therapy. During one of the presentations the group provided students with a specific emotion and asked them to draw whatever they thought. Even though this activity was very simple yet it helped me express my emotions which made me feel more relaxed and less stressed. For the fifth month, my goal will be to enjoy life and value every moment that I would get to spend with my friends and family and would try to create new memories from my present experiences. In addition to all the methods that I will be practicing I intend to begin laughter yoga and humor therapy during this month. Indeed, humor is an insight that brings happy emotions and help people release stress. After watching the video in class on humor therapy I felt happy to know that it is used as a treatment to reduce stress. And after practicing a couple of humor techniques in class I realized that I was more relaxed and happy after the session was over. For the sixth month my goal will be to move on and start new beginning with an improved self-steam. With all the various stress reducing methods I would have used in the previous months I hope to see a marked difference in my personality and would also continue to use the techniques in future. For this month I intend to work on a new method that we did from the course book to increase our self-steam. At the beginning of the month I will also write down the things which I like and dislike about myself. For each day I will also note down the good things that I did in order to feel better about myself and gain more self -confidence. I will also write down the negative things in order to prevent repeating them in future. And by the end of six months I hope to become a more independent, stronger and confident individual and start a new beginning on my own. Read More