How do I deal with stress (Monday Men's Meme post)

In this post, I'm going to try and give my own answer to the 'Monday Mens Meme' question on the families again blog. The question asked this week is: How you do deal with stress? It further asks if there's a really good way, a biblical or medical way to deal with stress. I'm going to try and deal with each one of those separately. I must preface this with the statement that I am defining stress as those situations that cause significant amounts of stress. There are lots of little stresses in life, and if I recall correctly, we need those things to be there for us to be healthy. So I'm not including those.

Personally, there are two primary methods I deal with stress. It depends on the situation. The first is what I would use for non-emergency types of stress. I tend to focus inward and try to work my way through the situation (essentially 'internalize' what's going on). I know, it's not good for me, but I just haven't been good at anything else, and it has helped me get through some situations. For those emergency situations, I just generally tend to flip out/freak out and pace or speak harshly to anyone who dares to enter my overly extended version of my 'personal space'. Again, I know it's not good but that's what I've developed to cope with those particular situations.

I wish I could point to a really good way to deal with stress, but I must confess that thinking about it offhand I can't. There are the biblical and medical methods mentioned below, but I think you have to be willing to commit to those and do them. If not, they can add to the stress instead of relieving it.

I have sat here and tried to think about what would be a biblical way to deal with stress. Many people I'm sure would say that the biblical method would be to 'lay your burdens down before Christ'. This may be good advice, but it is something that is very difficult to use in practice, as I wouldn't believe that I was laying the burdens before Christ, and I would feel that they weren't going away. Also, I think I would be tempted to say I'm laying the burdens before Christ, but really just using it as an excuse to not deal with the stressful situation.

Medically speaking (not that I'm a doctor, nor do I play one on TV), if I recall, there are relaxation techniques available to help people deal with stress in their lives. Also, for those situations where the stress is particularly great, use of a counselor may be a good method for dealing with stress. Again, you have to be willing to commit and believe in those things for them to work.

Well, those are just my off the cuff and unresearched thoughts on the topic. Feel free to let me know what you think.