My wife and I have been involved in teaching student was reading disabilities. We wanted to know students who had reading disabilities had high levels of stress. We chose a group of nine-year-old students and measured their stress using a self-report system. Luckily, the student with reading disabilities showed no elevated stress. This meant that we didn't have to worry about introducing stress relief programs.



Many people ask me to measure their levels of stress to provide stress relief. There is no difficulty in measuring levels of stress. The simplest way is to report your level of stress, depression and anxiety to a psychologist. Self-report is the usual method for explaining your levels of stress. If you are self aware, you can be very accurate in describing your symptoms, feelings and behavior.

If you did want a relatively objective measure of your stress you could ask a medical professional to do a urine analysis. Blood analysis is also another way of measuring the cortisol in your system. There seems to be substantial evidence that cortisol levels increase with psychological stress. There is little doubt that as your stress levels rise, there are increases in physiological responses too. These include elevated heart rate, blood pressure, flushing, skin changes and so on. For many people there are also headaches and even migraines and associated aura.

If you want to find out about your stress levels you can use online testing. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that these tests are reliable. I use a structured self-report system to measure my patients' stress. I need to be able to keep track of stress changes with my patients so measure them several times over several months. To know if my stress relief therapy is effective I need frequent measures.

When some people are stressed, they report that they can't sleep, have wild mood swings, feel physically ill, upset, worried and distracted. If you looked carefully at their emotional and physical reactions you can see they fit into four different patterns. These are physiological and physical responses, cognitive or thinking changes, interpersonal variations, and emotional responses.

You need to know how stressed you are. If you have some idea of your stress levels, you can respond better to stress relief programs. I always says that stress is a silent killer and that is the enemy in terms of our feelings of security and emotional comfort. No one needs the emotional challenges of high stress, burnout, and constant feelings of being stressed out. There is very little of value to an individual who experiences high levels of stress. For a stress relief program to be effective, the patient needs to be able to know and understand their stress levels. I have 15 strategies for stress relief. For me, the stress relief challenge is to set the best strategy to the individual patient. I do not want my patients to have miserable, stressed lives.

One of the odd things about stress is that we tend to create relationship problems because we are tense, anxious and worried. The sad part of this is that the best form of stress relief is social support. Being able to share our feelings with a friend or loved one reduces stress and tension. And this costs nothing. A trouble shared is often a trouble halved. Of course sometimes the issues are much more difficult to manage. A good case in point is the current problems many people are experiencing in regard to home loans and mortgage foreclosures. These and other more serious stressors require professional help.

There is a lot written about stress but I hope that my particular view about stress relief and stress management is helpful. I really want to be able to help people manage their stress. If you can engage in effective stress relief programs, even if you run them yourself, you will have a happier and more successful life.