What to do about all this stress?

Our lives are inter-weaned with cheerful experiences and stressful experiences but maintaining the balance between the two is a constant struggle and sometimes out of our control.

This fast-moving world keeps us on our tiptoes. We are juggling to survive and succeed in all areas of our lives. There will be times when we feel that we are falling behind and unable to reach our goals. And other times the external environment can place us in turmoil. These difficult experiences can produce a lot of tension for the us individuals who are always wanting to move ahead and we would try our best to move out of any stressful situation. It may sometimes be easy and increase our motivation and or be difficult to deal with these situations and further discourage us.

Our difficulty in dealing with these circumstances can become evident in various forms:

We may see various signs presented by your body in the form of aches and pain, headaches, skin problems, digestive problems, heart ailments, and many more.

Our emotional health may start presenting itself as being unhappy, anxious, feeling overwhelmed, having mood swings, feeling irritability, angry, and lonely.

Our cognitive health can take the form of us having racing thoughts, worry-some thoughts, having concentration difficulties, or thinking negative.

Our outward expressed behaviors can also present us with signs such as eating too much or too little, sleeping too much or not sleeping at all, using alcohol drugs to cope, loss/increase of sex drive, avoiding responsibilities and other people around.

Surviving these high stress-causing situations is demanding and commendable.

Every one of us have developed our own ways to manage stressful situations and we have been effectively using them too.

Our previously developed resources may get exhausted due to the impending situation and the need of growing new resources arises. Developing new ways of surpassing the situation may require support and help from professionals. It is similar to how we need to buy new clothes after our old clothes have worn out and we take along someone to help us choose our new clothes.

There may be sometimes when we don’t really wish to throw away our old clothes as they have become very dear to us. So we may just keep them but it doesn’t serve us any purpose as we would be unable to use them. This is similar to how we may keep on holding to our old ways of managing stress but they may have stopped being fruitful for us. This transition can be difficult but it is important for us to seek help when our previous ways of managing stress are not serving us anymore to regain our ability to manage stress effectively.

Like an ample variety of new clothes, there are a number of ways for us to smoothen out our rocky paths!

-Ms. Puja Dedhia

Co-founder, ListenWorks

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Student Corner- नाती हरवत चाललेला समाज

नाती हरवत चाललेला समाज "नात्यास नाव अपुल्या देऊ नकोस काही साऱ्याच चांदण्यांची जगतास जाण नाही." सुंदर असं अनामिक नातं कुसुमाग्रज यांनी आपल्या या ओळींमध्ये गुंफलेलं दिसून येतं. पण खरोखर नात्याचं काय स्थान आहे सद्यस्थितीतील समाजामध्ये? जर आपण आपल्या भारतीय संस्कृतीत डोकावले तर आजच्या समाजाचे वास्तव नक्कीच भयावह वाटेल. प्राचीन संस्कृतीत, अगदी अश्मयुगापासून टोळी करून राहणारा आदिमानव असो किंवा शेकडो राणी असणारे राजे, आपल्याला एकत्र कुटूंब पद्धती दिसून येतात. अगदी आपल्या आजी-आजोबांच्या पिढीपर्यंत आपल्याला एकत्र कुटुंब पद्धतीचा प्रभाव बघता येतो. परंतु आता कुटुंबाचा मूळ चेहरा बदलतोय. एकत्र कुटुंब ते विभक्त कुटुंब आणि नुकतीच उदयास आलेली एकल पालकाची संकल्पना. किती मोठे बदल आहेत हे !! एकेकाळी ४ काका, ४ मावशी-मामा, ४आत्या असायचे. भावंडांसोबत जुळवून घेतानाच आम्हाला नाकीनऊ यायचे. पण त्यानंतर आली ती कुटुंबनियोजनाची शिकवण आणि आत्ताच हे बदलतं कुटुंब. फायद्यासाठी जरी इकडे मेजवानी असली तरी नात्यांमधील विश्वास कमी होऊन हेव्यादाव्यांना यामुळे खतपाणी मिळत आहे. संस्कारांचे महत्त्व कमी झाले आहे. त

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