Humans face stress due to various life aspects such as age, gender, lifestyle, or occupations. While in school teenagers face stress due to complex subjects, the anxiety of making new friends, peer pressure, and examinations. Adults suffer stress due to unemployment, unfulfilling jobs, unpaid bills, terrible employers or colleagues, and destructive relationships and marriages. Old people face stress associated with diseases, retirement plans, or having to live in nursing homes.
People respond to stress differently. Some eat junk every time they are stressed thereby risking obesity, heart failure, and poor health. Others indulge in alcohol and drugs, which cause addiction, dependency, poor life choices, poor health, and destroyed relationships. Other individuals resort to exercise, dance, and yoga; while others relieve stress by singing or listening to music. Some of these coping mechanisms are beneficial while others like alcohol, drugs, and eating junk are destructive. Reading and writing are also essential to stress relieving techniques.
Why choose to read and write when stressed?
Reading enables individuals to focus on a virtual world as opposed to the challenges affecting them. They forget the things stressing them for a moment when engrossed in their favorite books, blogs, journals, or magazines.
How then does reading assist in relieving stress? It enables people to focus on other things instead of thinking about stressful situations. Imagine reading articles on how your favorite researcher is on the verge of developing a workable solution that has been affecting many lives. Also, imagine reading a thriller story where the hero finally catches the villains; or a story where the main characters eventually find happiness after years of struggle and suffering. How do such scenarios make you feel? Your mind relaxes, and you manage to find peace despite the stressful situation. You also become clearheaded to handle the stress maturely. Lastly, you develop hope that the stressful situation will become better. Not only is reading fun and informative it also:
· Lowers blood pressure
· Lowers the heart rate
· Reduces muscle tension
· Drops stress levels
· Reduces stress faster than walking and drinking hot beverages
It is crucial to note that required readings do not aid in reducing stress. Required texts include newspapers, emails, bills, and traffic signs. For students, required readings are the books, journals, and articles that students read to learn. Such material can add to your stress especially if the content is complicated and if you are handling an assignment with an approaching deadline. During such instances, you can choose to visit okessay and receive assistance from esteemed and experienced professionals. Additionally, some reading materials are quite depressing and may increase one’s stress levels. Avoid reading such articles since they do not assist in stress relief. You should instead read content that uplift your spirits thereby providing an opportunity to tackle your challenges.
Writing is also a fantastic stress reliever. One example is writing about stressful events, traumatic experiences, or expressing one’s feelings through writing. The type of writing that involves these situations is expressive writing. Expressive writing is best for people coping with trauma or unexpected life developments like disease diagnosis, layoffs, or critical accidents, which throw them off balance. It helps deal with the situation thus reducing one’s stress levels. However, expressive writing does not work for everybody, especially individuals struggling with severe mental health issues like post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression.
Writing reduces stress as it helps individuals process their thoughts and emotions. It helps people think critically and review a situation in a different light. Another writing example is reflective writing. Reflective writing enables people to think of a situation and evaluate it extensively. The extensive nature of reflective writing helps people discover new things about themselves and various situations. It thus becomes easier to deal with loss and other stressful situations.
Writing is also therapeutic and helps individuals deal with the things they cannot disclose to other people. People who write about the things that trouble them look at those things in a different light. In most cases, such individuals find themselves working towards solving the situations that bothered them in the past. They delve into their feelings and try to figure out why they do certain things or behave in a particular way. In so doing, they tend to act differently in the future or deal with problematic situations in a better way.
Additionally, both reading and writing have positive impacts to those who choose to employ them as a stress reducing mechanism. They expand one’s vocabulary and are excellent for memory improvement. They aid in mental stimulation that prevents or delays dementia during the progressed age. They also assist in the better understanding of grammar and language. Additionally, they improve concentration and develop better analytical skills for thinking. Individuals who read and write are thus fast thinkers and can concentrate on complex situations for more extended periods. Besides, those who read and write gain empathy, which assists in understanding the emotions of individuals. You will enjoy these benefits regardless of what you choose to read – be it a magazine, journal, or novel.
Consider reading and writing the next time you encounter a stressful situation. Take your favorite book be either a cooking book, a book about sports, a new publication by your favorite author, or that favorite book that you do not mind reading again. Go to a quiet and peaceful place and lose yourself in the book for some time. Are you interested in expressing yourself in writing? Take your notebook and express yourself on the paper. Write about all that is troubling you; be it your life goals, or the feelings that you cannot tell people. Write the things that come naturally to you. Do not stop writing until peace and tranquility replace the stress and sadness that you previously felt. Reading or writing will make it appear as though a burden has been lifted from your mind once you finish reading or writing.
Therefore, always carry with you exciting reading material or a notebook and pen, to use when stressed.