Well-Being Wednesday: Curbing Anxiety & Stress

Welcome to the first #WellBeingWednesday of Mental Health Awareness Month! To help raise awareness around mental health and well-being, each week during the month of May, our team will share some well-being tips to help shift your perspective and drive positive behavior change. Today, we'll be discussing stress and anxiety. Let's get started!

Ever feel as though stress and anxiety creep up on you? For most, the answer is a strong yes, as it is part of the human condition. (If you are not human, feel free to skip this piece.)?

Stress comes from a variety of real sources - a big life event or a tense conversation with a friend or loved one. It's also important to recognize that a lot of stress and pressure is manufactured or perceived. Our brain is wired to seek out threats. It is a survival mechanism to avoid difficult scenarios in the future

(Interesting fact, humans are the only organism that can induce a stress response by thinking. While a great tool to try and avoid future threats, this ability often creates more stress and anxiety than it eliminates when left unchecked. As this anxiety?feels?just as real as the rest.)?

A helpful tool to combat this natural inclination is cognitive reframing - the process of learning to identify and dispute irrational or maladaptive thoughts known as cognitive distortions, which stress often amplifies.?

Here are three ways to help curb stress and anxiety through cognitive restructuring:?

1.Look inward - In order to change an unproductive thought or stress response, you have to be able to identify the pattern. Reflection can allow you to see when and where these thoughts come up. Knowing these patterns can help you successfully combat them in the future.?

2. Identify these thoughts and put them on an imaginary witness stand in front of a judge and jury.?Like a good lawyer, you question and interrogate these patterns, thoughts, and assumptions. Some helpful questions include:

• Is this stress and anxiety based on emotion or facts?
• What evidence is there that this thought is accurate? What evidence is there that this thought is not accurate?
• How could I test this belief?
• What's the worst that could happen? How could I respond if the worst happens?
• What other ways could this information be interpreted?
• What is the actual most likely outcome of this scenario?
• Ideate: generating alternative solutions and ways of thinking can shift us out of the fixed mindset that stress and anxiety can sometimes produce.

3. Finally, think differently! Stress is ubiquitous. Whatever situation you are experiencing, can you reframe it into an opportunity to grow? How can you use this experience to move closer to the best version of yourself?

Till next week! Be well & thrive.