Kicking Your Stress Habits: A Do-It-Yourself Guide for Coping with Stress helps you understand and change the patterns that keep you stuck in unproductive reactions. Whether you’re coping with everyday frustrations or major life changes, this stress management guide teaches you how to replace automatic stress responses with healthier, more sustainable habits.
You run out of orange juice, you forget to mail a letter, the cat has kittens on Aunt Dorothy’s handmade quilt, and you adapt with one of your familiar coping skills. Usually, the skill works so well that you don’t even label these events as stressful.
Give yourself an “A” for coping successfully 98% of the time.
Unfortunately, the remaining 2% is probably causing 98% of your distress. When your stress habits have stuck you in a rut, when your old reliable coping remedies no longer work, when stop-gap measures turn into long-term energy wasters, it is time to develop new ways to handle pressure and tension.
Tackle your “terrible 2%” with Kicking Your Stress Habits. A workshop-in-a-book, it guides you through learning new stress management techniques to add to the coping tools you already use. Real-life stories, reflection questions, and practical exercises help you create a ten-step program tailored to your life and stressors.
Chapters explore:
• Stress Ills or Stress Skills – Questions and answers about the causes of stress.
• Perception and Stress – How personal interpretation shapes your stress level.
• Beliefs and Stress – Understanding how your mindset influences well-being.
• Stress and Change – Regulating the pace of change in your life.
• Stress and Life Stages – Recognizing how stress evolves through different ages.
• Stress and Grief – Learning to let go and adapt.
• Stress and Life Rhythm – Finding and following your natural pace.
• Skills for Managing Stress – Identifying and improving your coping patterns.
• Personal Management Skills – Organizing yourself to reduce tension.
• Relationship Skills – Improving interactions and environment.
• Outlook Skills – Developing a positive mindset.
• Physical Stamina Skills – Strengthening the body to manage emotional stress.
• Assessing Your Coping Habits – Taking inventory of your personal strategies.
• Forming an Action Plan – Creating a personalized, practical program for stress relief.
“Dr. Tubesing’s simply written self-help guide helps you get to the roots of your stress reactions and modify them.”
— The New York Times
“I found it to be well-written, containing concise, helpful aids in dealing with stress.”
— Hans Selye, MD, PhD, DSc, author of Stress Without Distress and The Stress of Life
“This book offers a simple system for creative management of stress.”
— Reader’s Digest
“The stress expert who does not take spiritual factors seriously is short-changing the reader in search of help. Tubesing maturely insists on the need for such wrestling with the spiritual dimensions.”
— Granger E. Westberg, MDiv, DD, author of Good Grief: Minister and Doctor Meet
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