Some stress reduction techniques are best used during moments of immense stress. But others work best when you practice them, even on the days when you don’t feel stressed, says Susan Albers, PsyD, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic.
“It’s important to do these stress reduction techniques before the stress hits,” Dr. Albers says. “It’s almost like learning how to swim before you’re in choppy water.” You’re setting yourself up to better cope with stress when it inevitably happens, she says “If you learn these techniques, they become your automatic go-to when you’re feeling stressed.”
Try the following research-backed stress reduction techniques, which can be done in just a few minutes. Practice them daily and you’ll start to find yourself doing them during moments, or in the aftermath, of intense stress.
1. Focus on Neutral Aspects of Stressful Situations
The participants looked at a series of images, some of which contained distressing scenes, and rated the emotional experience triggered by those images. They then underwent focused attention training (during which they were taught to focus on non-emotional elements of the images) and looked at (and rated) the images again. For example, when looking at an image of a traffic accident with an injured person, they were taught to focus on the neutral background (the surrounding roadway, buildings, and trees in the image), explains one of the study’s coauthors Sandra Monica Dolcos, PhD, research assistant professor in the department of psychology of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The second time around, the participants found the images less distressing. “We wanted to see whether the intervention changed participants’ emotional responses,” Dr. Dolcos says. “After the training, participants rated negative pictures as less negative.”
You can practice focused attention during or ahead of stressful situations by focusing on the non-emotional aspects of the situation. For example, if you’re stressed about an upcoming meeting with your boss, you can focus on the setting of the meeting, how you’ll prepare for the meeting, and what you’ll do after the meeting.
2. Try Humming
So, when you hum for a few minutes, it helps lower the body’s stress response in the moment. By implementing a daily humming practice (even for just a few minutes), you can increase the threshold at which you experience stress, Albers says. This means it’ll take more for you to start to feel stressed out.
Try humming for a few minutes in the shower, on your lunch break, or in the car on your way home from work.
