Everyone it seems, is stressed out these days. If it’s not time, it’s money, relationships, work, or the world in general. If you’re like most people, you’re both facing high levels of stress and seeing its effect on your appearance.
From dark circles under your eyes because of a lack of sleep, to gaining or losing too much weight because your appetite is affected, and much more, stress can do a number on you.
You can think of fighting the toll that too much pressure takes on you as a war that you fight on two fronts. One of those fronts is finding ways to better cope with the pressure. The other is dealing directly with your appearance. Below are suggestions that help with both.
Medical Aesthetics
Medical aesthetics is one way to fight on that second front, focusing on how to improve your appearance. Too much anxiety and worry can wreak havoc on your skin. From dryness to breakouts to wrinkles and more, sometimes it can feel like you’re wearing the story of everything that you’re going through on your face. This can, in turn, make you feel even worse. It’s hard to manage feeling your best when you know that you definitely don’t look your best. Laser treatments or chemical peels might not solve your problems, but they can certainly improve your sense of well-being.
Of course, one big problem can be the cost of these procedures. If finances are one of the reasons you’re feeling so much strain, they can seem even more out of reach. Fortunately, a growing number of providers are offering financing for these types of services. More than 10,000 med spas now offer these payment plans, which allow patients to pay off amounts over a series of months. This leads to great outcomes for both patients and providers. Patients can get treatments without stretching budgets to the limit. Providers get paid up front and can treat more patients.
Make Connections
One of the most powerful ways to manage stress is through connecting with others. This can seem counterintuitive if people are one of the main sources of anxiety in your life. But this doesn’t mean connecting with just anyone, so you don’t need to feel like you must spend even more time than you already do with your annoying roommate, your complaining coworker, or your irritating sister. The key here is to reach out to family and friends who get you. Of course, for many, one of the big problems is that they feel isolated and alone. Trying to forge new friendships can be challenging at the best of times.
If you’re already low, it can feel a little too far outside your skillset, even if you’re normally an extrovert. Fortunately, this connection doesn’t have to be a heart-to-heart talk with a best friend, as much as that can help. Just exchanging pleasantries with another human, such as your bus driver or cashier, can make a difference. You can also find out whether any volunteer organisations in your area could use some assistance. You don’t have to forge lifelong bonds with people to feel a little bit less alone as you’re helping others, and those others don’t have to be human. Animal rescues often need people to come in and clean pens or just snuggle the animals, and this can do plenty for your well-being.
Stay in the Present
This is another approach that can help you with stress management over the long term. What are you worried about? Ask yourself this question, and you’ll probably find that the answer is one of two things. You’re either worried about something that has already happened, or you’re worried about something that might happen. In other words, you’re stressed about something in the past or the future. Most of the time, we aren’t feeling stressed about whatever is happening precisely in the present moment.
If you are in the middle of something unpleasant, such as a root canal or trying to get through an important presentation at work, you’re probably directing all your energy just toward getting through it. The rest of the time, though, anxiety is often about things you aren’t dealing with in the current moment. When you find yourself feeling stressed, ask yourself what’s going on right now. Often, the answer is usually that right now, things are fine, even if you’re pretty sure they aren’t going to be five minutes, five days, or five months from now. The idea here isn’t to suggest that you’re worried about nothing.
It’s undeniable that people often go through things that are painful and difficult. The idea is twofold. One part is to separate the very human tendency to catastrophize from genuine problems. The other part is to notice that even if things are bad, they might not be bad at this moment. Think about losing your job. This is a common worry, even for those who are doing fine at work and whose employers aren’t restructuring and laying people off. Worrying about losing your job and wondering how you will then pay your mortgage and take care of your family in this situation is a kind of catastrophizing.
By focusing on the present, it can help ground you and realize that you’re creating stories about things that could go wrong in an imaginary future. On the other hand, maybe layoffs are happening at your workplace, or maybe you’ve already received a notice of your termination. This is understandably stressful, but if you pay attention only to the present instead of projecting your worries into the future, you’ll probably find that in any given moment, nothing terrible is happening to you.
Paying attention to concrete things around you, such as what you can see and hear and touch, helps ground you. The idea behind this kind of focus is not to minimize how serious your situation is. Reducing stress in this way can put you in a better position to problem-solve and work out a strategy for the weeks ahead.
