Take Charge of Stress: Never underestimate how one simple stress-reducing action can brighten your day and improve your health. Click here to see a video about stress tips in American Sign Language (ASL). It offers some great tips for managing stress, including, but not limited to, meditation, exercise, and laughter.

How Stress Affects Us: Our bodies, minds, and emotions all experience the impact of stress that occurs in our daily lives. According to the American Institute of Stress, the number one health problem in our country is actually stress, not heart-related conditions, cancer, obesity, or any of the common health issues that typically headline news reports. When stress happens, whether it is caused by traffic jams, relationship problems, work deadlines, lousy interpreters, or audism, our heart rates, blood pressure, and blood sugar all increase. The more this happens, the more risk we face of developing high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and chronic pain. Stress-related headaches, insomnia, and fatigue can also affect mental health in the form of anger, anxiety, and depression. Self-medication of stress with alcohol or drugs is very common and can easily spiral out of control.

Counseling to Deal with Stress: In addition to the tips in the video, meeting regularly with a Deaf counselor or coach is an another productive way of coping with stress. Whether or not you are experiencing serious mental health issues, counseling can help you improve your work-life balance, learn stress reduction techniques, and identify and change unhealthy thought patterns that contribute to stress. If you are dealing with one or more of the stressful life events on the Holems-Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale (click here), consider counseling for support in managing stress in the best way possible.