What You Can Do If Worrying Thoughts Are Created By Stress

Here continues a summary of my posts on how to recover as quickly as possible from more serious stress and exhaustion symptoms.

This post continues with how to handle stressful thoughts, such as anxiety and rumination, as it is crucial to learn to steer one’s thoughts in order to reduce the stress level and create conditions for recovery.

You can choose from several strategies. Previous posts were about exposure.

But worrying thoughts may also be due to high stress levels.

If you suspect that your worrying thoughts are due to stress, calm yourself by pointing out that the thoughts are likely the consequence of stress and that the worry is therefore mainly symptoms of stress and not real worries.

Often this is the case when the brain is spinning around topics that you usually would not get stressed about.

Instead of going into your thoughts, try to revert to more observing techniques, such as mindfulness and acceptance, ACT.

Observe your thoughts and let them just be, see separate posts, while focusing on your breathing, going for a walk, or distracting yourself with an activity that requires your full attention.

See also the stress management techniques published earlier.

More about stress next week.