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being proactive is when doing something about the situation before it happens instead of after something happened 

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being proactive is when doing something about the situation before it happens instead of after something happened 

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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More and more US adults are dealing with stress, which can lead to mental health problems. In August 2022, more than 32% of US adults reported having symptoms of anxiety or depression in the last 2 weeks. ¹

Taking breaks throughout the day may help relieve stress, ease tensions, or lessen worry. But we often don't take breaks. Even 10 minutes is enough to improve your mental health. Let's commit to taking 10 minutes today to do something for ourselves.

Be active-Take a dance break! Lift weights. Do push-ups or sit-ups. Or kick around a soccer ball for a few minutes.

Close your eyes, take deep breaths, stretch, or meditate.

Write three things you are grateful for.

Check in with yourself-take time to ask yourself how you are feeling.

Laugh! Think of someone who makes you laugh or the last time you laughed so hard you cried.

Find an inspiring song or quote and write it down (or screenshot it) so you have it nearby.

Connect with Others to Reduce Stress

Having meaningful relationships can create a sense of belonging. A feeling of being cared for, valued, and supported can help us become more resilient.  This is called social connectedness. Connecting with others can help us cope with stress and become more resilient. Here are some ways to reduce stress by connecting with others:

Reach out to your community, family members, or friends. Talk with someone you trust about your feelings or any concerns.

Make time for cultural, spiritual, or religious activities.

Volunteer with organizations that interest you. Giving back to others can help you too.

Get outside with others, connect with nature, and explore green spaces.

Take Care of Your Body

Staying physically healthy can improve you emotional well-being. Here are some suggestions to better improve your health:

Get vaccinated for the flu each year. Stay up to date on your COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. Find a COVID-19 vaccine location near you on Vaccines.gov

Keep up with regular health appointments.

Eat healthy. Have fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and low- or no-fat dairy. Limit foods with unhealthy fats, salt, and added sugars. See Healthy Eating Tips.

Get enough sleep. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day to help you sleep better. Adults need 7 or more hours per night.

Move more and sit less. Every little bit of physical activity helps. Start small and build up to 2 1/2 hours a week. You can break it into smaller amounts of time, such as 20 to 30 minutes a day.

Limit alcohol intake. Choose not to drink, or drink in moderation on days you drink alcohol. Moderation means having 2 drinks or less a day for men or 1 drink or less for women a day. Find out more at Drink Less, Be Your Best.

Avoid using illegal drugs or prescription drugs in ways other than prescribed. Don't take someone else's prescription. Substance use treatment is available and recovery starts with asking for help.

Avoid smoking, vaping, and the use of other tobacco products. People can and do quit smoking for good.

How Right Now  is a campaign designed to promote and strengthen the emotional well-being and resilience of adults. It offers resources and support for people who feel:

Contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline if you are experiencing mental health-related distress or are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support.

Connect with a trained crisis counselor. 988 is confidential, free, and available 24/7/365.

Visit the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for more information at 988lifeline.org.

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Let's commit to taking 10 minutes today to do something for ourselves.

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You can reduce stress by taking breaks. Connecting with others can also reduce stress. Reaching out, making time, volunteering, and getting outside are all ways to connect with others. Taking care of you body also reduces stress. Taking care of your body includes getting vaccinated, keeping up with health appointments, eating heathy getting enough sleep, moving more, limiting alcohol intake, avoid using drugs illegal or prescription, and avoid smoking.

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Musculoskeletal System

- If your muscles always tense, you can develop problems such as migraines, tension headaches, and other chronic pains.

Respiratory System

- If you have any respiratory issues, such as asthma and emphysema, breathing hard will and can make it difficult to get enough oxygen.

Cardiovascular System

- Always having an elevated rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones, it can increase the possibility of a heart attack, stroke or even hypertension. It can also affect your cholesterol levels and cause inflammation in your circulatory system.

Endocrine System

- You will be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Overexposure to cortisol can lead to thyroid problems and affect your ability to focus or think clearly. And it can also cause excess abdominal fat.

Gastrointestinal System

- It can lead to severe chronic pain and changes in your eating behavior and habits, and you can also develop acid reflux.

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What is stress; what causes stress and what are the signs of stress; who is affected by stress; how can you help yourself and what professional help is available.

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Someone cut you off on the highway and you had to swerve and narrowly avoided a collision.

While out for a morning run, an angry dog jumps out onto your path and starts growling and barking at you.

In the second before you turned on the lights in your empty house, your coat rack looked like it was a person standing right next to you.

All three of these scenarios can trigger your body's natural fight-or-flight response, which is driven by your sympathetic nervous system. This response is your body's reaction to danger and was designed to help you survive stressful and life-threatening situations.

"The fight-or-flight response, or stress response, is triggered by a release of hormones either prompting us to stay and fight or run away and flee," explains psychologist Carolyn Fisher, PhD. "During the response, all bodily systems are working to keep us alive in what we've perceived as a dangerous situation."

Without you even telling it what to do, your body is assessing what's going on around you and determining your options on how you most likely could survive the event.

Here's what can happen during the stress response:

Your heart rate and blood pressure increase. This means you're probably breathing more quickly and heavily, which is helping move nutrients and oxygen out to your major muscle groups.

You're pale or have flushed skin. Your blood flow is being redirected so you might experience feeling cool or like your hands and feet are cold and clammy. Your face might also appear flushed as blood and hormones circulate throughout your body. You may also get goosebumps.

Blunt pain response is compromised. If your sympathetic nervous system is triggered by combat or a collision, it's not uncommon to only feel your injuries once you've returned to safety and have had time to calm down. This is one reason that people in car accidents don't typically feel pain from their injuries until afterward.

Dilated pupils. Your pupils will dilate to take in more light so you can see better.

You're on edge. You're more aware and observant, and in response, you're looking and listening for things that could be dangerous. Your senses are heightened and you're keenly aware of what's going on around you.

Memories can be affected. Sometimes during stressful experiences, your memories of the event can be altered. Your memories can be very clear or vivid or they can be blacked out.

You're tense or trembling. Stress hormones are circulating throughout your body, so you might feel tense or twitchy, like your muscles are about to move at any given moment.

Your bladder might be affected. It's not uncommon to lose voluntary control of your bladder or bowels in a truly stressful or dangerous situation.

During the fight-or-flight response, your body is trying to prioritize, so anything it doesn't need for immediate survival is placed on the back burner. This means that digestion, reproductive and growth hormone production, and tissue repair are all temporarily halted. Instead, your body is using all of its energy on the most crucial priorities and functions.

The stress response can be triggered in a single instant, but how quickly you calm down and return to your natural state is going to vary from person to person (and it will depend on what caused it). Typically, it takes 20 to 30 minutes for your body to return to normal and calm down.

Fight or flight is supposed to work for us, not against us, right?

"Our fight-or-flight response was designed to help us through catastrophic circumstances," says Dr. Fisher. "If you think about it from an evolution standpoint, it makes sense because we used to have a lot more life-threatening emergencies."

Back in prehistoric days, danger was all around us and threats were constant. We didn't know where our next meal was coming from, we had to brave the weather and we had to fight predators waiting to pounce. A rustling bush could be a lion or something else trying to kill you (for its own survival!).

And so our ancestors developed the stress response to help us survive.

Fortunately, in today's world, imminent danger isn't lurking around every bend, but that doesn't mean we've lost our ability to trigger the fight-or-flight response. It might happen while you're on an airplane that's experiencing turbulence or when someone jumps out at you from a dark room. And it'll more than likely be triggered if you're in a car accident, being robbed or experiencing something else traumatic.

Where it gets tricky? It's when your body starts triggering the fight-or-flight response during non-threatening situations - like giving a big presentation, trying to make a deadline at work or merely thinking about a phobia, such as spiders or heights. These situations aren't truly dangerous, but they've triggered our stress response and our body is reacting to them as if they were.

"In evolution, the stress response was designed to help us survive, but that's not always how it plays out in today's world," notes Dr. Fisher. "Our fight or flight response can now be activated from psychological or mental stress. For example, some individuals can activate it just thinking about work tomorrow."

Living in a prolonged state of high alert and stress (when there isn't any real reason for it) can be detrimental to your physical and mental health.

Imbalance: Sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system

Your autonomic nervous system is a delicate balancing act between your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. Both networks involuntarily react to the environment around you.

Your sympathetic nervous system is responsible for how your body reacts to danger and is responsible for the fight-or-flight response. While your parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for maintaining homeostasis, which is your body's built-in stability monitor. Think of it like a generator - making sure everything from your body temperature to your water intake is functioning smoothly. Your parasympathetic nervous system makes sure things are balanced. It works to relax you and helps conserve and restore energy.

You need both systems to run properly.

"Think of your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system like your car's gas and brakes," explains Dr. Fisher. "You need to use both effectively for your car to run properly."

You need your sympathetic nervous system to keep you alive when true danger is detected and you need your parasympathetic nervous system to restore and relax you so your body can run business as usual.

So, if you find that your body is constantly reacting to everyday stress with the fight-or-flight response, it should be a warning sign that your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems aren't working together in harmony.

How to control the fight-or-flight response

"Oftentimes, stressors that aren't life-threatening don't have a clear on or off switch," says Dr. Fisher. "That's where we see some of the detrimental effects of prolonged stress because it's not going away. It's a chronic stress to our immune system."

Work, bills, kids, marriage, finances and health are some of the biggest non-life-threatening stressors. How you interpret these things can affect your body's reaction and can contribute to anxiety disorders.

"Some people are having the fight-or-flight response when they go to work or see that their kid didn't clean up their room," says Dr. Fisher. "It can vary from person to person in terms of the situations that can trigger the stress response, but we're finding that certain conditions or health states can be associated with this imbalance."

Some people who get in a car accident are too afraid to drive again or can't drive past the spot where the accident was because of fear and anxiety. It becomes a generalized fear response to a situation that isn't particularly dangerous anymore. This can also happen with work or strained relationships. The next thing you know, your fight-or-flight response is falsely activated, putting you in a state of chronic stress.

Dr. Fisher says stress management is critical to overall health. It's important to think big picture when you feel yourself starting to get worked up over something that you know isn't a true threat or danger.

The fight-or-flight response is an important reaction that we all have and need, but it's meant for authentic stress and danger. Everyone is going to have it in varying degrees for different reasons, but learning to slow down, be aware and conceptualize what's actually happening can help you regain control.

"You need to get in touch with your individual physical, emotional and behavioral signs of stress," urges Dr. Fisher. "Maybe a migraine means you've had prolonged stress going on, so you need to tune into your body and what's going on before it gets to a crisis point."

If you're at the point where stress is impacting your quality of life, talk to a doctor. Therapy, medication and stress management techniques can help you return to a more balanced state. It's not a quick fix and you'll have to work on it daily, but you should be proactive about stress.

The fight-or-flight response has a clear purpose and function, but it shouldn't be activated over everyday, non-threatening stressors like traffic, emails or bills. And if it is, the goal is to feel skilled at having an awareness when the response is activated, and to be able to bring yourself back to baseline.

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What Happens During Fight-or-Flight Response

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The fight-or-flight response is triggered by a release of hormones either prompting us to stay and fight or run away and flee from a stressful situation. But what happens if this response is prompted over anxiety from non-life-threatening events?

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Short term stress can affect many parts of the body, even if you don't realize it, both mentally and physically.

Musculoskeletal System

- Your muscles will tense up but then release when the stressor is gone

Respiratory System

- You start to breathe harder and faster (or even hyperventilate), which can sometimes cause panic attacks

Cardiovascular System

- Your heart will start to pump blood faster through your blood vessels, which dilate, it will push more blood into your large muscles and raise your blood pressure

Endocrine System

- Your body will release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, to give your body energy for your fight or flight response. Your liver also starts to produce more blood sugar to have more energy.

Gastrointestinal System

- You may start to feel butterflies in your stomach, pain, nausea, and even might vomit. Your appetite will change and you can have diarrhea, constipation and or heartburn.

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Stress is our bodies reaction to pressure. While many different situation can cause stress it is mostly triggered when we experience new or unexpected things that we feel threaten our sense of self or when we feel we have little or no control over a situation. The way we cope with stress is dependent on our genetics, early life events, personality, and social and economical status.

When we encounter something that causes us stress our body produces hormones that trigger the flight or fight response and activates our immune system making it easier for us to respond quickly in dangerous situations.

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Stress isn't unlikely to be fatal, but being exposed to it a lot can lead to mental and physical health problems and issues, and it can include death in the most severs cases. It will usually be the result of a heart attack, or related to a cardiovascular issue.

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the fight or flight response. is a release of hormones to make us either fight back or flee and run away instead of fighting .And our body works to keep us alive because the fight or flight response happens when you are in a danger situation .what could happen during this your heart rate could increase and blood pressure you could also be more aware of what's happening .the fight and flight response can really just help you survive a stressful or life threating situation 

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the fight or flight response. is a release of hormones to make us either fight back or flee and run away instead of fighting .And our body works to keep us alive because the fight or flight response happens when you are in a danger situation .what could happen during this your heart rate could increase and blood pressure you could also be more aware of what's happening .the fight and flight response can really just help you survive a stressful or life threating situation 

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Bad stress, also known as distress, is the type of stress that wear you out, and is harmful to your health. It can lead to anxiety, confusion, poor concentration, and a decrease in performance. Bad stress can be both short-term or long-term. When you face repetitive stressors, you can harm your body and cause negative effects on it.

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Good stress, also known as eustress, is they type of stress that you feel when you are excited. Your pulse quickens and hormones are released, but you feel no threat or fear, or any negative effects. You can feel this kind of stress when you ride a roller coaster, when you go on your first data, and when you compete in a game. Although eustress is short-term, it can inspire you and motivate you, as well as focus you, it also enhances your performance.