May is Mental Health Awareness Month – the perfect time to discuss stress management. Kids can often cause us stress, and we learn to deal with it, we adapt and grow to be able to manage that stress in healthy ways. However, we often overlook many other factors of stress in our life and don’t necessarily manage them in the healthiest ways. We’re here to help you identify that stress and manage it while you have young ones running around you!

Identify Your Stressors

The most important step in managing stress is being able to identify what is causing stress in your life. If you find yourself worrying about everything, find it hard to be patient, having trouble sleeping, or feeling like you can’t manage routines, then you are stressed! Now, you have to determine what is causing these sources of stress. Is it friends? Work? Family? Get to know yourself, learn about yourself, and determine what your triggers are. If you rather stay home than go our with a particular friend, it may be friends. Maybe If going to work feels unpleasant and something you dread each day, it may be work. If the thought of spending a weekend with family seems unbearable, it may be family. It’s up to you from here to determine why. Why don’t you want to go to work or see a friend or spend time with family?

Learn How to Avoid Stress

Once you can identify these things, you can avoid or prepare for stressful situation. Here are ways to prepare and help manage those stressors:

Positive Thinking

Unhelpful thinking just complicates managing those stressors. Change the way you think into realistic helpful thoughts and positivity. Change unhelpful thinking to positive thinking by being realistic in your expectations, develop positive self-talk (tell yourself the things going great), know your limits and chose your battles.

Focus on Essentials

Stress usually means you’re trying to do too much. Try setting realistic goals for the day and week of what you want to accomplish. Don’t try to do everything, all day. Not only will you run yourself ragged, but you’ll stress thinking about everything you haven’t done yet. Break large tasks into smaller chunks or ask for help.

You may have kids running around, but you can still eliminate other sources of stress in your life while dealing with those kids!

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