5 Ways to Blow Off Steam When Stressed

As much as we wish it weren’t true, there’s no way to avoid stress in your life altogether. You can do everything possible to mitigate it, but life itself is stressful, so it’s important to know how to handle that stress. Sometimes, you don’t want to try and calm yourself down; you’d rather let out that frustration and anger by putting it somewhere else. To help you out with this, we’ve got a few ways to blow off steam when stressed that should put you in a better mood.

Express Your Frustration

Bottling up any kind of emotion isn’t healthy. Stress, anger, frustration—they can all get worse if you don’t let them out. There are a lot of ways you can express your frustration, and here are just a few:

• Let your frustration out with a loud yell
• Listen to your favorite music as loud as you can
• Beat up your pillow to get out the tension
• Let yourself cry if you feel like you need to

Emotions aren’t a bad thing, even the ones we normally call negative emotions. Letting out these emotions will help you deal with them much quicker.

Move Your Body

One of the best ways to blow off steam when you’re stressed is to channel that energy into physical movement. Obviously, it’s not always easy to find the motivation to exercise when you’re already stressed. However, this doesn’t mean you have to pack up and go to the gym. Going for a run outdoors or dancing can also get your heart rate up and get some of that frustration out of your body.

Occupy Your Mind With Something Else

Sometimes you just need a distraction to pull you out of a slump. It helps to occupy your mind with something that grabs your attention. Reading a good book is a great example of this. Watching an enthralling show can help too. You could even enjoy some stress relief from playing video games. Just put the game on easy mode and blow through it, or play a slower-paced, more relaxing game instead.

Meditate

The reason experts recommend mindful meditation so much is because of how well it works. Good meditation can help you distance yourself from the problems in your life. This extra distance allows you to handle those problems more objectively, without the emotions that might get in the way. Whether you do it on your own or with guided assistance, meditation can help you out a lot.

Journal Your Feelings

Emotions, especially challenging ones like anger and sadness, can be difficult to define sometimes when they’re stuck in your head. Having a journal that you can use to elaborate on your emotions is useful because it lets you understand your own mindset better. When we understand what we’re going through, it makes it easier to deal with it and find the right solutions.