Virtual-Therapist.com UK - Online Stress Self Help Therapy

A mental, emotional or physical strain or tension caused by difficult relationships, either personal or in the work place

The psychological structure of stress

The most common form of stress is achieved by assigning a meaning to a specific event or chain of events or projecting the consequences of an event into the future. So, if you have ever envied other people who "never get stressed' you probably find the only difference is that they do not assign that meaning to what is, or might happen.

Calibrate the changes

Start by thinking of the object or situation that would have caused you to feel stressed and score it on a scale of one (low, no stress) to ten (high emotion, lots of stress). This will provide you a benchmark so that you know how much it has changed having used one or more of the techniques below.

After using the techniques notice what you feel differently when you think about the previously stressful situation and rescore it on a scale of one to ten. If necessary repeat or interchange these techniques to further reduce your score to a point where the emotions related to the stressful situation are no longer an issue.

Change what you focus on

When someone is stressed about a particular event it indicates that they are focused on the thing that they fear most happening and its consequences. In order to "do stress" you have to ask the type of questions or visualise the scenario that will produce the thing that you fear.

An important feature of your unconscious mind is that it reacts to all of your thoughts as if they were real. It takes your thoughts as a command and attempts to actualise them. So perversely, the more you think about the cause of the stress, the more likely it is to become a reality! All of the techniques below are designed to help you focus on what you want and build 'mental muscle memory' so that your unconscious has a different scenario to actualise. This is a similar technique used by top athletes to improve their performance. In the Resource Centre you'll find a number of therapies that have been specially recorded to guide you through this process.

Change the meaning of the stress

There is an obvious connection between stress and muscular tension. This technique is good for releasing the tension in your body. This is proven to reduce stress. With the event or situation that causes the stress in mind, use this breathing technique to become more relaxed and balanced.

1. Breathe in for 4 seconds
2. Hold the breath in for 2 seconds
3. Breathe out for 8 seconds
4. Hold the breath out for two seconds

5. Repeat at least 4 times and ideally for 2-4 minutes

6. Notice the difference

Change the future consequences of the stress

One cause of stress is when people project the consequences of events into a worrying future. It is the worry of this future event that causes the stress. We have all worried about a future event and when it actually happens find that the event was not really a problem at all. By projecting forward into a worrying future, we cause ourselves stress for no reason. To prevent this type of stress use this simple technique;

1. Imagine the successful conclusion of the event.
2. Notice how the event would be different. Notice it in detail:
How you would feel.
What you see.
What you would say.
How people would react.
3. Project back to what you might need to do differently now to make that new successful event a reality.

Connect with positive energy

This technique reconnects you with positive earth energy and so helps to put stressful situations into a broader context. Find a natural place; by the sea, a river, in a wood, up a hillside, in a beautiful garden.
1. Stand comfortably.
2. Imagine that your feet are connected directly to the centre of the earth.
3. Visualise, feel or imagine the warm earth energy flowing up from the centre of the earth, flowing up through you and returning back to its source, taking with it any stressful feeling or emotions.