Yesterday evening, I provided training in stress management for the Jonge Kamer in Deinze, more commonly known as JCI Deinze, witht he title: Solving stress in 15 minutes per day. The questions which the group had considered both dealing with work pressure and work stress as well as how to deal with your children being loud and demanding attention after a long day of work, before you have had the chance to relax.
How to get rid of stress when my children are being noisy?
What stood out in the story of the mothers who complained about this, was that they, first of all, all were very good mothers who were aware of their tasks and wanted to do their best to be a good mother. Because you, as a mother, want to do that which is best for your child, you rush from work back home and go to pick up your children as quickly as you can because you enjoy seeing them and spending time with them.
A mini time-out every 90 minutes
After a short group discussion regarding the effects of that rushing, and a short medical explanation about how the human body needs a short mini break every 90 minutes to recover, the solution was brought up to simply take a few minutes before you pick up your children, to take a break while you are still alone. This way, you can charge your batteries so that you can be there for a full 100% when you do finally see them. Several participants agreed and said that they wanted to try this sometime.
My relaxation relaxes my children
A mother noted that she, indeed, had noticed repeatedly that her children were calmer when she herself was relaxed, and the other way around of course, too... the calmness of her children, in turn, made the mother feel calm. The others confirmed this observation. So the group itself came to the insight that stress and business in children can sometimes be taken care of by taking a short break before you see your children.
Anti worrying exercise to reduce stress
Then the question came:
"What can we do if we cannot calm down?"
Then, I taught them the anti worrying exercise from our online self-help program. One participant had already started with this because, during the preparation of the training, he had bought the book "Solving stress in 10 steps", and the technique was explained in it. This exercise was successful. I believe that about half of the participants found the anti worrying exercise to be the most important part of the training which they took home after they finished the training. It was also clear that the participants, after we had practiced the anti worrying exercise with the group, all were much calmer and spoke about their themes in a more relative way. This is something which everybody noticed.
Work stress caused by too much work pressure and too many disturbances
Similar solutions came up when we spoke of the theme work pressure. Many people experience that they see too many questions coming toward them: through clients, through colleagues, phone calls, text messages, chat, e-mail, Facebook, and then of course there is one's own boss who regularly disturbs you. There, too, solutions came from the group. Taking a regular miniature break helps you to distance yourself more and to differentiate between important and less important tasks. It helps you to see your priorities more clearly or to discuss these with your surroundings or your boss. The anti worrying exercise was proposed by participants as a solution in order to practice this time-out more easily. And, of course, to then learn to handle a good planning. Several participants noted, at the end, that you should practice the solutions which you find to deal with stress in a better way to such an extent that they become habits.
Solution focused training stress management
What I describe here in this article is the typical course which a solution focused stress management training runs: during the training, participants themselves start to, together, look for which solutions are suitable for them. The trainer will only here and there put in some tips or techniques, and mainly facilitates that the participants start to learn solutions from each other and exchange them.
Next training stress management
Considering that, at the end, there was a participant question wondering when there will be a sequel, a longe training where we go deeper into these things, we decided to organize an open training solution focused stress management within a few months: "Solving stress in 15 minutes per day". If ou want to know more about this, then sign up for our newsletter 'training, seminars, and workshops'. We are likely to organize this twice per year, and then you will be kept up to date regarding next dates. In case you want to share more ideas linked to this training, you can do so in the box which is provided for that.
Self-test for stress
Would you like to know to what extent stress, tension, anxiety, or even depressed feelings might affect you? Then you can simply test this by filling out the simple test consisting of 21 short questions.
Paul Koeck, MD
