Most people experience stress from time to time, and that’s perfectly normal. When your stress and anxiety keep you from sleeping, enjoying hobbies, and living your life in a healthy and fulfilling way, it’s time to find techniques that will help you manage the problem. If you find yourself struggling to relax even when you set aside time to decompress, here are some things to try.
Schedule Scary Time
It may sound a little silly, but scheduling a time to actually deal with your worries and biggest stressors can bring a lot of relief. Instead of focusing on the worries as they pop up, stop your train of thought, delegate that worry to a later date, and move on. Scheduling an hour out of your day or week to deal with all of the things you’ve been avoiding helps you clear out difficult tasks without letting them clutter up your mental space the rest of the time. Sometimes, tricking your brain works!
Use Your Vacations
A vacation can often be a band-aid on a larger problem instead of the solution to your stressors, but if you get vacation days, you need to use them! If there’s something at work that brings you a particular amount of stress, having time away can bring you the clarity you won’t find at the office or at home, where you obsess over the issue every night once work is supposed to be done for the day. A new location can inspire you with new ideas and fun experiences, and your brain is more likely to be quiet on a 2023 Alaska cruise than parked in front of your television or phone screen.
Ask Professionals
If you find that you truly can’t relax over a prolonged period of time, you may need to speak with a healthcare professional. Taking care of your mental health is crucial to living a healthy life, but it’s one of the easiest facets of your health to avoid. There’s a lot of stigma about taking medication and seeking therapy, but the fact is that you don’t even need to be struggling to benefit from therapy. Seeking a therapist while your life is calm can give you the tools to deal with life when things get rough. You may also be diagnosed with conditions that are making it more difficult to be proactive with your mental health, allowing you to seek treatment plans that are actually effective.
Journal
Journaling isn’t for everyone, but giving all those racing thoughts somewhere to go can be helpful from time to time. You don’t have to read it back, and you don’t have to show it to anyone. You can even burn it when you’re through. You also don’t have to write legibly. Scribbling across the page as you’re progressing through a thought spiral can still help your brain process your thoughts and information in a way that’s more concrete, allowing you to break free of the looping anxieties and move on to other tasks and activities.
Chase the Dopamine
When you can’t relax, try rewarding yourself with an activity you’ve been wanting to do, even if you have work piled up. Burning out isn’t going to help you get that work done any faster, nor is worrying about it not getting done while you try to relax. Pick one of your favorite hobbies, maybe something you haven’t allowed yourself to pick up in a while, and have at it. Even small distractions can force your brain to refocus on more productive topics.
In truth, there’s no one simple solution for trying to relax when your brain doesn’t want to. What works for one person might not work for you, but there are a variety of solutions you can try to tailor together into something unique. When you’re dedicated to being kind to yourself, a little effort dedicated to small changes can have a bigger impact than you ever imagined.
