Each April, mental health professionals commemorate Stress Awareness Month. During this time, people everywhere can learn more about how stress impacts mental health, what proper stress handling looks like, and how to get help if they don’t cope well. Our TruHealing Centers team wants people to be more aware of the connection between Stress Awareness Month and mental health.
Why Is Stress Awareness Important to Mental Health?
Knowing how stress impacts an individual is important for that person to learn to achieve mental health. For example, coping methods that can be dangerous, such as drug addiction or alcohol abuse, may feel like they temporarily ease stress. However, over time, these means of handling the problem will create issues of their own. Therefore, at TruHealing Centers, clients focus on their stress triggers and how to handle them.
People don’t need to have an alcohol or drug problem, though, to benefit from learning what tips their stress into excessive levels. Anyone can examine their lives and discover how to handle the situations that bring them the most grief. By becoming stress aware, the individual can learn to watch for these situations and prepare themselves with healthy coping methods.
What Are Good Mental Health Management Techniques?
Good mental health management techniques are a component of Stress Awareness Month. These techniques are ways to handle tough emotions without resorting to hurting oneself or others. Even behaviors such as reckless driving, compulsive gambling, and excessive drinking fall under the heading of being harmful to the individual.
In addiction recovery, clients learn healthy methods for stress coping. For example, they may engage in some of the following types of substance use recovery therapies:
- Recreational therapy that may include hiking or outdoors activities
- Expressive arts such as writing or drawing
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)
- Trauma therapy
Other ways to healthfully ease the burden of stress include exercise, engaging in a hobby, talking to a friend, or writing in a journal.
What Are Signs Someone Needs Help for Coping with Stress?
Not everyone has access to information about healthy coping methods. Plus, some people do not know how to use stress reduction techniques to their advantage. Therefore, some people develop problems such as addictions because they use these as ways to cope with stress or a preexisting mental health condition.
Someone who needs help learning healthy coping methods may show signs of addiction to drugs or alcohol. These behavior changes may include some of the following:
- Withdrawal from family, friends, and significant others
- A drop in work or school performance
- Changes in sleep, eating, or mood
- Making excuses to be alone for drug or alcohol use
- Spending excessive money on their addiction
Addictions rarely go away on their own. Plus, for many people, recovering without supervision and support is almost impossible due to physical and psychological reliance on the substance they have built up over time. Therefore, if a loved one shows any of the above, consider talking to them about getting checked into a recovery center. In rehab, they can learn ways to deal with stress.
Becoming aware of other’s stress handling methods is important. However, everyone should also learn to recognize positive and negative ways that they deal with stress too. If someone sees signs of addiction in themselves, becoming mentally healthy starts with getting treatment to stop the addiction in its tracks.
Reach Out to TruHealing Centers for More Information on Mental Health
Stress should not lead to drug or alcohol abuse. However, some people fall into the cycle of using an addiction to handle life stress. If you feel concerned about a loved one or yourself, find out how to get on the right path to mental health and recovery with TruHealing Centers.
Learn about the many programs we offer for mental health and addiction recovery by submitting our information request form online or phoning us at [Direct] or contact us online. Stress awareness starts with recognizing a need in yourself or a loved one for help with mental health management. Our programs may help.