Doctor: Prep best stress buster

and Alisa Boswell

STAFF WRITERS

The holiday season is a joyous time filled with friends, family and, of course, food. But as many know all too well, the tendency to try to create a “perfect” holiday can be stressful for people.

Dr. Guru Padmakar Medam of the Portales La Casa Family Health Center said there are two different types of stress: Physical and emotional.

“Physical stress is when you try to please everybody, because it’s the holidays,” he said. “That means you have to provide food, gifts etc. For the holidays, emotional stress is typically financial stress. That occurs when you try to provide all of these things to everybody. If you are well off, that’s fine, because everybody gets everything, and everyone’s happy and no stress. But most of the middle-class families are emotionally stressed, because it’s not that easy.”

To combat these types of stress, Medam believes that preparation is the best course of action.

“Plan ahead of time,” Medam said. “Go through the situations in your mind. If you know what’s going to happen ahead of time, you will be less stressed. If you know what can go wrong, you can avoid it. If something unexpected happens, learn from it so next time, you’ll be ready.”

Rossi Terry of Be Well Counseling Services in Clovis said people also need to be realistic about the holidays.

“Prepare your mind for the ups and the downs, expect cranky family members or burnt pie crust and embrace those times like they will become funny memories,” Terry said. “Don't take on everything all at once. Choose the most important things and pace yourself; don't be a perfectionist. Some of the best things about the holidays are the unexpected things.”

Terry said some top holiday stressors to deal with include absence of loved ones, either from distance or death, managing economic troubles from the holiday, extra cost of travel and gifts and the stress of interrupted schedules.

“The best ideas to combat these stressors are to be creative,” Terry said. “Think of new special ways to commemorate loved ones who have passed on, like rent their favorite movie and watch it in their honor with your other loved ones. To help economically, plan events instead of gifts, celebrate with a game night or pancake breakfast. Lastly, keep daily routines and bed times; physical health is mandatory for handling holiday stress.”

Of course, some stress is unavoidable, according to Medam, who said taking a few minutes for “me time” every day will help reduce a person’s current stress level, as well as prepare for future stress.

“Meditation is one good way to deal with either emotional or physical stress,” he said. “Just sit idle for five or 10 minutes, listen to some relaxing music and focus on your breathing. Deep inhales and deep exhales. That will calm your mind down. In addition, if you’re not an exercise person, doing light exercise will also help with the stress, because if you’re physically worn out, your mind can’t properly handle the stress.”

“Heart attacks can be caused by stress,” Medam added. “The only way to deal with this is to do these everyday to train yourself to deal with stress: Spiritually reduce through meditation, physically through exercise and mentally from increasing your knowledge about stress.”