Do's and Dont's When You Are In Stress

Stress in very common in our lives.  God made us as human beings, equipped with full of challenges and varied in emotions to spice up the memories and feelings. One of the emotions that we always feel related to stress are angry and sad.  Of course the feeling of happiness is not a type of stress! The reason why I pen on this article on my blog is I guess this is important to share with everyone. Some of the contents are extracted from my experiences and I guess it make me learnt enough of it. 

 

Women and Men are Different in Coping With Stress

I as a woman, psychologically paved myself with different kind of way in coping stress unlike men. They have another different kind of ways confronting stress which they like to keep it alone and many more mysterious ways. Throughout my first year of studying degree, I noticed a lot of differences in myself especially the fluctuating emotions (commonly known for women), easily touched by stress but NEVER KNOW HOW TO HANDLE IT which make me feel worse at the end. Finally, thanks God, He cleared my way to see how stress should be handled. 

The things I will be listing here are Do’s and Don’ts. Well, when you are stress, doesn’t mean Do’s always function more, dont forget Don’ts too.

DO’S

1. Find GOD first 

I am very touched the moment when I watched a video (it is a short reminder) by Mufti Ismail Menk titled Feeling Sad. All the emotions like sad, happy, angry are all given by Allah. He’s the one who throw that feelings into our heart. When we are happy, He throw that feeling. When we are sad, he throw that feeling too. But I believe the only way that abled to knock our heart is the sad feeling. Like all the prophets and people before us had felt, the feeling of sad is the feeling that had been tested on each of them and abled to drive them to Allah. 

When we are stress, it is the moment where we feel very weak and hopeless, like all the feelings and thought of “Why me?” “Why this happened to me?” rushed into our heads. So, as a Muslim, we do have our primary source of strength, it is ALLAH, not our parents nor friends.

a. Wake up for Tahajjud

Tahajjud is like a quiet time for us to have a very exclusive date with Allah, where it is just you and Him. You tell Him how bad you feel, how worse your day, how happy your day, how grateful you were today, and many more. You can even cry while no one listen because it is exclusive. Tell Him everything in your Tahajjud. Tell Him that you want this, you want that. Tell Him that you feel clueless of this and of that. Tell Him! Tell Him!

b. Practice Congregational Prayer

Congregational Prayer make your heart alive. Honestly, it feel different when you pray alone and pray in jemaah because when you pray in jemaah, your surrounding are full with different of energy, auras and you are not alone. People beside you discharge their positive energy and vibes towards you especially when you pray in masjid. Can you tell the last time you pray alone and in masjid, do they feel the same?

c. Do memorization of Surah(s)

When we are in stress, the feelings and the pictures of stressful moments keep playing in our minds again and again like no ending. When we stress, our thought are distracted by different kind of imbalanced emotions which affected our day as a result. 

Let say, you like Surah Al-Mulk, and spend 15 minutes a day at least, memorizing the verses. Keep doing it everyday. So, when you are walking anywhere and that stressful thoughts and feeling sad raided your motivations and disturb your mood, recite the verses you have memorized. Repeat it again and again eventhough you have finish it. It is useful because you can distract your mind from being ‘colonized’ by that negative feelings. When your mind are clear, you will have a balanced mood and emotions. No more overthinking.

d. Practice Qabliyah and Ba’diyyah Sunat Prayer

2. Talk to friend 

When I say ‘talk to friend’, it cannot be all your friends. It must the most specified one, the one who you believe most. But what is very important is, find the good listener one and also good advisor. We as a human being, need to let off the steam inside our heart, of course. Even the kettle also scream to let off its steam, what more human, isn’t it?

So, when I feel stress and if I noticed something wrong with my day and affected my mood, I will find my friend(s) to talk with, to share my feelings and thoughts. And I know, for men, maybe it is quite different in respect of they expressing their stress. I don’t know how but they have a different specific way.

So, share with your friends.

3. Exercise

I like this point because it give me benefits in two ways. First, emotional satisfaction and second, health! Honestly, it feel very relieved after you have done exercise like jogging, badminton-ing and many more. Scientifically, when you are exercising, your hormonal system will function to relax your body internally. The hormone called endorphin will be released in your body to boost mood balancing, increase happiness and stress resistance.

4. Read or pursuing your hobby

Why read? First, I like it. Reading make me like, traveling into another kind of world full with words, knowledge, story-telling, jokes, and .... more. In other words, by reading, it abled to distract my mind from thinking the stressful moments or overburden by the feeling of sad.

If you don’t like reading, pursuing your hobbies is one of a good way to cope with stress. Hobby can be anything as long as it make you happy. Playing games, playing with cats, cooking, travelling, hiking and more, no problem.

5. Self-reward

I like eating and I like this point this somehow. Yes, somehow. Eating is my self-reward but I need to be careful somehow to ensure I do not gained my weight. (It is the scariest nightmare for every women). 

Same goes to you. Self-reward after you have finished your exam weeks, interviews, and more will make you feel rewarded and blessed in your ways. After some quite while of time, you have been restraining yourselves from something you like to do, now it is the time.

DONT'S

I like to emphasize on these coming points because if we do not careful put our eyes on this points, it maybe make your stress worse. Literally, I say, these coming points maybe useful for those who are in my level of age because the obstacles that run into my live is different from those who are more older than me. The people who are older than me, maybe had passed through more challenged black and white memories in their lives thus they developed more useful and practical ways in coping in stress.

1. Don't be Alone 

I realized when I am alone, thinking about my stressful mind and inserting my thought with negatives thinking, I will be more stress and drag myself into a phase of overthinking. Overthinking can happen in a way that you create the upcoming problem. 

For example, (the simplest example) I have no pen. Then, without pen, I cannot study. Without study, I cannot perform in my academic. When I do not perform in my academic, I will fail and get no job.

That is the consequence of overthinking. Why don’t when I do not have pen, just find a solution of buying a new pen.

 The scenario above happened in myself (I mean overthinking). Never be alone when you are in stress because the one that bring yourself into a worse state of mind is you. Just remember that when you are stress, you are internally weak. The moment when you are alone, Satan is whispering at your ears. To get you out of your stable state and drag you to the most worst feeling. 

If you cannot find someone to accompany you or to socialize with, get out from your room and have a walk to see the greenery scene nearby. See and look at the trees, the sky, the clouds, birds flying around, river flowing and many more. Those creations will touch and calm your heart in a manner you never realized.

2. Don’t make a major decision 

This is a very important point that I would to emphasize. Making a decision when you are stress is not a good idea because your mood and also your mind is not in a balanced state. Meaning that, the process of making decision will affected by irrelevant ideas and irrational emotions. As a result, you might come out with wrong decision which you will never forget or else, someone will be listening to We Don’t Talk Anymore song by Charlie Puth for the whole night with wet pillow.

I still remember when I was stress, I have accidentally say a wrong sentence (mixed with emotional bias and stress mind) to someone, and until today I cannot forget what had happened on that day. Yes, I regret. The incident changed my live, of course. That’s the effect if you make a decision within your emotional state.

So, if you are in stress, try to delay the decision-making (if you can).  If you need to make the decision, try to consult with someone or expert to get the best answer. Or, release your stress with the Do’s.

3. Don’t argue.

   

  Stress and argue is not a good combination. It even make a worse equation.

Stress + Argue = Angry

When you are in stress, you are out of balanced emotional state or irrelevant ideas. If you argue with someone, the person that you are arguing with is actually arguing with your emotion, not with your brain. When they argue with your emotions, the stress get worse as a result.  

Basically when we are arguing, the main idea is that we want to obtain at least a solution to set off from the argument. However, when the argument is not critically brought, the idea of reaching the solution is far far away from reality even the moon is nearer.  

So, how to deal with argument when we are in stress?

Delay the argument or just keep your words first. Just listen to the argument and when you are stable enough to think critically, then start talking. The listening period maybe a ‘long’ period (based on the situation). When you didn’t say any words, doesn’t mean that you are the losing team but you are planning for strategy for yourself and for the argument which will benefit two sides. 

So that’s all.  Basically, it is from my experience and every persons go through a different phase of situations which need to come out with another ideas of coping with stress. 

When I ponder back, stress is like one of the colours that painted my live.  Live would not be merrier if our lives paved with happiness only, but should be spiced up with sadness too! Allah has mentioned in Quran: Don’t be sad, Allah is with us. Allah is with us :)