Archives March 2023

Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally – Managing stress naturally often begins with your eating habits. There are certain foods you should be avoiding, such as caffeine and high amounts of sugar, because they tend to make stress worse over time. However, there are also a lot of diet recommendations for stress relief, including the following foods.

Eat More Complex Carbs

Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally – The good thing about this diet tip is that not only will it help with stress, but it is a good healthy dieting guideline to keep for overall health and even weight loss. Complex carbs take longer to digest, which can help you maintain your energy and stabilize blood sugar levels. They include whole grain and whole wheat bread, pasta, cereal, and rice. Having some oatmeal or overnight oats can also be great if you are trying to eat more complex carbs. You want to try and avoid refined carbs, like white bread, white rice, and regular pasta.

Load Up on Veggies | Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally

Yes, you are going to hear it again: you need to eat your veggies! Vegetables are so important for all the nutrients they provide, which can also help to reduce your stress levels. For example, asparagus has a lot of folate, also known as folic acid, which can be wonderful for helping to relieve stress. Avocadoes are also recommended due to the vitamin E, folate, beta-carotene, and lutein, all of which are food for blocking fats that can increase your stress. Both of these healthy foods are easy to add to meals, from having sliced avocado on your salad, to eating asparagus on the side of your fish or chicken for a nutritious dinner.

Have Some Dark Chocolate | Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally

Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally – Believe it or not, there are some sweet treats you can have if you want to reduce your stress, but you should go for the dark chocolate varieties. While you often want to indulge in a lot of sweet candies and baked goods, the temporary stress relief can lead to a lot more issues. However, dark chocolate is good for you, tends to be lower in fat and calories, and also has tons of antioxidants. These antioxidants will help to balance out the stress hormones in our body, thus reducing your stress levels.

Choose Fatty Fish | Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally

Diet Tips to Help Manage Your Stress Naturally – For lunch or dinner, try to add some fatty fish at least 2-3 days a week. It is low in fat and high in protein, plus it is loaded with omega-3 fatty acids. These are also high up on the list of nutrients that help with excessive amounts of stress. Try fatty fish like tuna, salmon, and mackerel.

Therapy in Brandon  

If you find that you’re feeling stuck more than often, or you’re noticing that your anxiety or trauma is especially high during the winter season, know that you’re not alone, we encourage you to reach out. Our counsellor here at Bliss Counselling & Wellness Centre have experience working with anxiety, stress, grief, trauma, depression, and so much more. We offer both in-person and online services. To learn more, reach out to us at 431-302-8803, or go here and fill out an online form!

About the Author
Emem Iniobong, is a Brandon MB, Canadian Certified Counsellor who is an EMDR trained and helps children, teens, young adults, parents, and families in dealing with anxiety, depression, grief, parenting support to live a more fulfilled and bliss-full life.

Journaling Tips – Your teens and pre-teens are dealing with a lot of different emotions, and could use a way to release those emotions and thoughts in a safe way. Journaling can do that for them, and it is so flexible and easy to do, that it really is great for all adolescents. Here are some tips to help your teens start journaling.

Start Small | Journaling Tips

Journaling doesn’t have to be an all-encompassing activity; you can start small by taking just five or ten minutes each day to write down your thoughts. You might want to start by writing about what happened during the day or how you were feeling, then you can move on from there. Don’t worry if you don’t know where to start; just let your words flow freely and see where they take you.

Find a Journal You Love | Journaling Tips

Journaling Tips – If you want your teen to love writing, they need to love what they are writing with. This includes a journal or notebook that is just their style, along with some fun pens they choose themselves. Everyone tends to be picky about the type of pen they use, so definitely let them pick out some favorites.

Use Different Writing Tools, Stickers, and Embellishments

Journaling Tips – In addition to the journal and writing tools, you can get them some other tools as well. Teens who are on the creative side might want to add more color, doodles, or designs to their journal pages. This is super easy to do with colored pencils, watercolors, embellishments, stickers, and other similar items. These can be really inexpensive, and make a huge difference in how motivated your teens are to use their journal.

Keep Your Journal Private | Journaling Tips

Journaling Tips – It is really important that you make a promise to your teens that their journals will remain private and confidential. If they have any fears of someone (like a younger sibling) reading their journals, they won’t be as open and honest as they could be, which does diminish some of the potential benefits of this writing practice. Give them somewhere they can lock up their journals, or even get a diary with a key if they would feel more comfortable with that.

Writing Ideas | Journaling Tips

Journaling Tips – There are a lot of journal prompts out there, but many of them are geared towards adults. For teens and pre-teens, look for journal prompts about school, friends, getting ready for college, and this sort of thing. Here are some examples of great writing topics for teens:

• What does your ideal life look like?
• What do you want to major in?
• What college are you interested in?
• What are your future career plans?
• Where you would move to if you could move anywhere after high school?
• Talk about your BFFs
• What subjects do you love in school?
• Which subjects do you always dread?
• How do you like spending your free time?

Set Goals

Journaling Tips – You can also use journaling as a way of setting goals for yourself and tracking your progress over time. For example, if you want to learn a new skill or get better grades in school, write down what your goal is and then break it down into smaller steps that you need to take in order to achieve it. This will help keep you motivated and focused on reaching your goals. 

Creating Space for Reflection | Journaling Tips

Journaling can also be used as a tool for reflection and self-discovery. Take some time each day (or week) to reflect on what has been happening in your life recently – both the good and the bad – and consider what lessons you can learn from these experiences. You might want to think about how these experiences have impacted your relationships with others or how they have shaped your outlook on life going forward.

Journaling is incredibly powerful tools that can help teens cope with stress, anxiety, and other emotions that they may not be able to express verbally. It provides them with an outlet for their thoughts and feelings while also teaching them useful skills such as goal setting, self-reflection, and creative expression. For parents looking for ways to support their teens during this challenging time in their lives, encouraging them to start a journal is one of the best things that they can do! Check out our shop here.

Therapy in Brandon  

If you find that you’re feeling stuck more than often, or you’re noticing that your anxiety or trauma is especially high during the winter season, know that you’re not alone, we encourage you to reach out. Our counsellor here at Bliss Counselling & Wellness Centre have experience working with anxiety, stress, grief, trauma, depression, and so much more. We offer both in-person and online services. To learn more, reach out to us at 431-302-8803, or go here and fill out an online form!