Category: mental health

Common Stress Questions Answered

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by Jackie Cortez, Guest Blogger

Common Stress Questions, Answered

Q: What are the first steps to identify the main sources of stress in my daily life?
A: Start by tracking patterns for three days: what happened, what you felt in your body, and what you did next. Circle the top three repeat triggers (people, tasks, time pressure, money, noise). Then choose one small change you can test this week, like shortening a meeting or batching errands.

Q: How can establishing a work-life balance help in reducing feelings of overwhelm and anxiety?
A: Clear boundaries reduce the constant “on-call” feeling that keeps your nervous system revved up. Pick one hard stop (end-of-day time) and one protected block (lunch or a walk) and treat both like appointments. Even modest limits create more recovery time, which lowers anxious momentum.

Q: What specific habits can I adopt to maintain a positive attitude during stressful situations?
A: Use a quick reframe: “What is controllable in the next 10 minutes?” Pair it with movement since getting exercise can help discharge stress energy. If stress feels persistent or heavy, connect with a mental health expert for personalized tools.

Q: How does improving sleep quality contribute to better stress management?
A: Better sleep improves focus and emotional regulation, so daily hassles feel less threatening. Choose one sleep anchor: consistent wake time, dimmer lights after dinner, or caffeine cut-off midafternoon. If racing thoughts keep you awake, do a two-minute brain dump on paper.

Turn Daily Awareness Into Steady Stress Relief That Lasts

Stress can sneak in through familiar triggers and pile up until it feels like life is running the day instead of the other way around. A simple stress-spotting mindset, notice patterns, respond early, and practice small supports, builds stress management motivation without needing perfection. Over time, reflection on stress benefits makes ongoing stress reduction feel more doable, and the stress reduction outcomes often show up as a steadier mood, clearer focus, and better sleep. Small, repeated choices are the most reliable path to feeling better. Choose one next step you’ll repeat daily, like a brief check-in on what set stress off and what helped, and treat it as a commitment to wellbeing. That consistency matters because it strengthens resilience and makes everyday life feel more stable and connected.

Reducing Stress with a Career Pivot

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by Jackie Cortez, Guest Blogger

Could a Career Pivot Reduce Chronic Work Stress?

If the quick tools help at the moment but your job still keeps your stress level high, it may be worth looking at whether the work itself needs to change. Opening your own business can reduce chronic work stress when your biggest pressure points are things like lack of control, nonstop demands, or a poor fit with your role, because you can shape your workload and priorities more directly. To get started, choose a simple business idea, pick a name, file the paperwork to form your business, and set up the basics to operate day to day. If you want guided help, ZenBusiness is an all-in-one platform that can help business owners form an LLC, manage compliance, create a website, or handle finances. Whether you pivot or stay put, the next step is building daily habits that make you more resilient to stress over time.

Daily Habits That Build Stress Resilience

Stress shows up fast, but resilience grows through repetition. These small habits help you spot early signals, recover sooner, and make long-term stress management feel doable.

Two-Minute Stress Scan
  • What it is: Name one body cue, one thought, and one urge you notice.
  • How often: Daily, midday or before dinner.
  • Why it helps: You catch stress earlier, before it spills into your evening.
Reminder-Linked Reset
  • What it is: Tie these habits to your environment like a kettle boil to stretch and breathe.
  • How often: Daily, tied to one routine.
  • Why it helps: A reliable cue makes the habit stick on busy days.
Planned Downtime Appointment
  • What it is: Block 20 minutes for a walk, hobby, or quiet sit.
  • How often: 3 times weekly.
  • Why it helps: Scheduled rest prevents burnout from becoming your default.
Consistent Sleep Bookends
  • What it is: Keep a steady wake time and a 15-minute wind-down.
  • How often: Daily.
  • Why it helps: Regular sleep stabilizes mood and lowers reactivity.
Connection Check-In
  • What it is: Text one person a real update and ask one question.
  • How often: Weekly.

Why it helps: Supportive relationships reduce isolation and normalize asking for help.

5 Tools to Lower Stress

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by Jackie Cortez, Guest Blogger

Use 5 Quick Tools to Lower Stress This Week

When you’ve already spotted your stress triggers and early warning signs, you don’t need a total life overhaul, you need a few reliable “next steps.” Try these five quick tools this week and notice which ones calm your body and mind the fastest.

  1. Do a 60-second deep breathing reset: Set a timer for one minute. Breathe in through your nose for 4 counts, then out slowly for 6 counts, keeping your shoulders relaxed. Longer exhales signal “safe enough” to your nervous system, which can soften racing thoughts and tension. Use this right when you notice your first stress cue, jaw clench, tight chest, irritability, so stress doesn’t build momentum.
  2. Take a 5–10 minute movement break on purpose: Pick something easy: a brisk walk, a few flights of stairs, gentle stretching, or marching in place while water boils. Movement helps burn off stress energy and can lift your mood without needing a full workout. Tie it to a trigger you identified, like “after a stressful email” or “between meetings,” so it becomes automatic instead of optional.
  3. Set one small boundary that protects work-life balance: Choose a boundary you can keep for seven days, such as no work messages during dinner, a firm stop time two nights this week, or turning off notifications for one hour. Pair the boundary with a replacement plan, what you’ll do instead (shower, short walk, play with your kids, prep tomorrow’s lunch). If stress mainly comes from work demands, this boundary experiment also gives you real data about what needs to change long-term.
  4. Build a “sleep runway” you can actually repeat: Start 30–45 minutes before bed with the same three steps: dim lights, put your phone out of reach, and do a low-stimulation activity like reading or a warm shower. Keep wake-up time as consistent as you can, even on weekends, because your body learns patterns. If your stress trigger is late-night scrolling or worry spirals, write down tomorrow’s top 3 tasks before bed so your brain doesn’t have to hold them overnight.
  5. Try a quick mindset reset in writing: When something goes wrong, write 5–6 sentences answering: “What happened? What does this mean, and what else could it mean? What’s one helpful next step?” A practical version is to write a short paragraph about how you want to handle a similar challenge in the future, which turns stress into a plan. Keep it short and private, notes app, index card, scrap paper.

Used together, these tools help you respond earlier, recover faster, and see whether your biggest stressors are situational (a tough week) or structural (a role that keeps pushing your limits).

Managing Everyday Stress Successfully

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I’m going to feature Guest Blogger posts on the blog I keep here. I’m open to featuring other authors with a compelling voice and insightful ideas and information.

The four-part blog carnival here is courtesy of Jackie Cortez:

Effective Strategies to Identify and Manage Everyday Stress Successfully

For busy parents, caregivers, and working adults balancing deadlines, bills, and family needs, everyday stressors can start to feel like a constant background noise. The core challenge is that stress often becomes “normal” until it shows up as irritability, poor sleep, trouble focusing, or other signs of stress impact on health. General stress management begins with stress awareness, spotting what triggers tension and how the body responds, so choices can feel more intentional instead of reactive. With the right foundation, stress coping strategies become easier to use consistently.

Explore Alternative Stress-Relief Modalities Safely

Once you can recognize stress in your body and mind, it’s easier to test a few low-risk add-ons that help you unwind.

  • Mindfulness practices: Try a few minutes of quiet attention on your breath or present-moment awareness.
  • Gentle relaxation exercises: Simple, easy movements or guided relaxation can help release tension.
  • Essential oils: If scents feel soothing to you, use diluted oils and follow label directions to avoid irritation.

Understanding Your Stress Triggers and Patterns

Your stress signals make more sense when you know what sets them off. Stress mapping means spotting your common stress sources, your repeat patterns, and the earliest warning signs that your body and mind are shifting into stress mode. Many stress triggers can be thoughts, feelings, or events, so the “cause” is not always just what is happening around you.

This matters because catching stress earlier gives you more choices. Instead of reacting on autopilot, you can pause, name what is happening, and pick a steadier next step. Since stress is harder to pin down, simple observation is often the first practical skill.

For example, you might notice emails after dinner lead to tight shoulders, faster scrolling, and a shorter tone. That pattern helps you act at the first sign, not after you feel overwhelmed. With your early signs clear, small tools like breathing, movement breaks, boundaries, sleep routines, and a mindset reset work faster.

The Personal Plate Principles

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The Personal Plate Principles are:

Give Yourself a Lifeline

Decades ago I coined the term of giving yourself a lifeline not a restrictive impossible deadline in which to achieve a goal. As we have our whole lives ahead of us.

Try on Different Approaches

Have multiple options to choose from. A friend called this “stacking the plates.” Pick from the alternatives and assess what works and what doesn’t. The key is to figure out the best approach when the system is normal, and all fouled up.

Be Flexible and Adaptable

Your needs will change as you go along in life. What works today might not be effective tomorrow. Keep an open mind. Resenting that you’re “forced to” change will keep you stuck. Try to think in terms of having free choice. You get to Choose Your Own Health Adventure.

Take the Long View

A slip-up here and there over two weeks two months or two years is not what will end your progress. Feeling like a failure and giving up will impede you. Getting back on track is what counts. So, think in terms of the long-term.

Appreciate the Life Lesson

See if my experience can motivate you to see things differently.

Before I had a freak arm accident and was resigned to PT sessions I had taken my fitness level for granted. Then a curious thing happened when I returned to lifting weights in my home gym.

See things differently I did in that I thought an exercise routine could be a spiritual practice. Not just an exhibit of physical prowess.

To that end I started wearing a Celtic cross necklace when I exercised. Before I lifted the first dumbbell I recited a prayer: “Bless my body. Give me the energy to go about my daily routine and the health to achieve my goals.”

Plating our lives with delicious and healthy meals this way can make all the difference in how we feel and think about ourselves. This kind of cooking really is soul care. Enjoy!

Feasting on the Personal Plate

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Italians eat well to live well. Or as we say: mangia bene vivere bene.

One day as I was editing and revising the second recovery guidebook that I aim to publish the idea of filling and getting sustenance from what I call The Personal Plate hit me in an instant.

In my life I’ve found that choosing from the four “Food Groups” each day helps me live life well. Every day would ideally contain a “serving” of these foods on each of our plates.

The Food Groups are the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual balanced on each day’s Personal Plate to choose from. The mental is the helping of thoughts that you serve yourself so that you can attend to the task for that given day. The emotional part of the plate is checking in with yourself through the day to contact how you’re feeling.

The physical portion is comprised of the food and fitness you get in while going about the hours from morning to evening. The spiritual is taking time for gratitude and reflection on what’s sacred for you, I say engage in a spiritual micro-habit every day.

The four food groups would optimally work in harmony with each other. On the days when it’s hard to achieve balance it’s okay for one portion to get attention over the other.

Plating our lives with delicious and healthy meals this way can make all the difference in how we feel and think about ourselves.

Cooking is soul care. As an Italian woman, I’ve taken up using recipes that I find in cookbooks, magazines, and online blogs.

I’ll end here with a recipe that my health coach recommended that I call a Protein Shake It Up!

12-oz almond milk

1 Tbsp almond butter

1 scoop vanilla protein powder

Mix in blender until smooth and creamy.

The Triangle of Recovery

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A friend posted the article I’m publishing here below on his website circa two years ago. I’m reposting it on my blog as the kickoff of my new focus on mental health not solely our physical bodies:

Five years ago after interacting with a narcissist I was struck with insight one night. That’s when the words The Triangle of Recovery burst into my head. Right then the three sides of the Triangle hit me in thirty seconds:

Fostering healthy relationships as the gateway to recovery. Giving and receiving love compassion and forgiveness as modes of healing. Honoring and accepting each person’s individuality as their superpower for living well and whole.

As regards healthy relationships:

The undeniable effect of trauma on a person, like having a mother or father who is a narcissist, was what got me to promote healthy relationships as the new focus of my Advocate work.

We can’t change other people’s behavior. We can vow to treat ourselves and everyone else the way we want to be treated. Kinder and gentler is the way to go. This is on us to do regardless of how others act.

Interestingly, near the time of my Triangle epiphany I met a kind and caring person. This reinforced that being in a healthy relationship can be curative for the individuals coming together.

As regards love compassion and forgiveness:

Without these healing modes illness worsens. Giving and receiving love compassion and forgiveness is required for us to heal from illness trauma or injustice. Oppression thrives in a loveless world.

Forgiveness exists on a continuum: It can come and go. It’s possible to have anger at what a person has done to us even though we’ve forgiven them.

Confronting them with how you feel isn’t always viable. Writing the person an unsent letter reading it aloud then ripping it up and throwing it away could help you come to terms with what happened.

As regards individuality being a superpower:

Often expressing our individuality is what other people like narcissists don’t like. What causes illness is being cut off from our true selves out in a society where we’re judged and criticized for being different. Living in a buttoned-up family can shred our self-worth when we think dress and love differently from an early age.

Illness sets in when we’re denied the right to express ourselves freely and without fear. The famous quote is: “Genetics is the gun. Environment pulls the trigger.”

Healing is possible when we commit to expressing our feelings. The act of showing up as ourselves I call “self-presentation.” Hiding who we are can cause emotional distress. The only thing hanging out in a closet should be a fabulous frock not our identity.

This is why our individuality is our superpower: Our gifts traits and strengths help us recover. Part of why I speak out is to fight stigma with velvet boxing gloves.

Using the Triangle of Recovery on our journey of healing can allow us to have a happier and healthier life. What if God or the Universe or a Higher Power is saving the best for last for us.

I hope that talking about the Triangle of Recovery sparks ideas for you about how to heal and recover.

New Focus of Blog

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As ever I will talk about physical fitness in the blog. However going forward in this winter season I’m focusing on mental health more so. For a couple of years now I’ve been thinking about the truth: a person who is not in peak health in terms of illness can have a full and robust life.

Acting as a caregiver for an old person I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like for an individual NOT to roll over and passively give up faced with physical limitations.

It’s our mental state that impacts physical disease. Emotional wellbeing really needs to be talked about in what I’ve called in Our One Big Messed Up World.

Our world is beautiful too not just messed up. What’s dis-ordered is what I read in an email newsletter: the use of conversion therapy on individuals who are not heterosexual.

Controlling and trying to repress a person’s identity causes real harm like emotional and mental distress.

Thinking of all this I was keen to take up the cause of mental health. As the stigma of being “different” hasn’t gone away it appears.

For awhile now I haven’t wanted to glorify physical bodies that are in elite shape. So, I will be taking a hard pass on writing anything that insinuates that being in ideal health is the goal.

Becoming and being whole and well while living with illness or any kind of ill-ness is possible. I will focus on this: finding wellness for ourselves while living with whatever challenges we face.

Coming up: recipes that are simple and easy and healthy and tasty to use.

Weight a Minute

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The winter issue of Women’s Health magazine features an article with information about how to approach getting the right healthcare.

Fact No. 4 of the article talks about the weight stigma that often prevents women from seeking medical help.

We’re all used to getting on the doctor’s scale pre-visit. Per the WH editors you can tell your doctor to not have the assistant weigh you at all. Or at least weigh you after the exam.

No grown girl should weigh 97 pounds in only a hospital gown when she’s going for a procedure. And even though I weighed 102 pounds recently I don’t think any adult women should weigh less than 110 pounds unless they weigh that much naturally.

And if you’re thin but flabby—what one M.D. calls TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside) that’s another thing entirely. Either way the obsession with the number on the scale is terrible. Who wants to be humiliated when an M.D. is fixated on that number too?

Weight sensitivity training and a HAES—Healthy at Every Size approach—should begin in medical school coursework.

Do you know what it’s like to be told you’re too thin? I have. And though I don’t weigh 200 pounds I don’t like people commenting on my weight either. Other women not men are the ones who do this.

I say: tone down the talk about weight. Use reflexive statements as in: “I weigh 155 pounds, and that’s OK.” Instead of referring to how much someone else weighs or used to weigh.

We don’t know their story. The issue I take with the WH Fact No. 4 is that they talk about what if you consider yourself a “normal weight.” I detest that they used the word normal. Even if it was in quotation marks.

The perpetual hang-up people have with being normal must end. Today I don’t weigh 102 pounds anymore and I think this is far better. I’m going to have the Caramel Apple Pie Sizzle dessert at Applebee’s when friends gather for lunch.

What heated me up–and I care even though others think I’m thin–is the Netflix series Virgin River. I watched a couple episodes then quit tuning in. The love interest characters were extremely thin. Maybe like I referred to above they were naturally a lower weight. Okay–fine.

Why can’t we see 200-pound love interests on Netflix?–or anywhere else for that matter. People who love each other love each other. And that’s a beautiful thing in our One Big Messed Up World where people tend to hate and judge in evergreen expressions of belief about the worth of you and me.

Let’s throw the critical caustic comments in the garbage can. Those of us on the receiving end of body-weight barbs shouldn’t have to develop the thick skin needed to let those digs roll off our backs. The haters should not be flaming us to begin with.

“You’d be so pretty if you lost the weight” is not a compliment. It’s like a microaggression. Everyone is pretty darn beautiful even if our pounds are the source of other people’s pain. Why do they care?

This is their problem not ours. So fire away–order the Caramel Apple Pie Sizzle and have fun with friends.

Finding Good Habits

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I’m pulled in a magnetic way to buy special edition magazines. To read to get information that can help me have a better life.

The latest issue was the Real Simple Finding Good Habits: Simple Keys to Feeling Happier, Healthier, and More Fulfilled. I quote from the guide to encourage followers to buy and read it.

Though I haven’t read every article yet one stands out about The Power of Habits. In the feature it describes making your bed in the morning as a “keystone habit.”

In fact if this can be believed:

“Bed making is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger money management skills.”

Do millionaires make their beds every morning then? Could this be a hidden secret to wealth-building?

In Small Changes Big Results:

Adding a tiny micro-habit to our daily routines can give us joy. Rather than take a once-a-year Cozumel vacation to an azure beach (that we might not afford to pay off) happiness can be had for a song every day of the year for free or low-cost.

One study reported in the article that adding a food ritual can help us. It’s why wine drinkers who swirl their glass before drinking are apparently more satisfied.

Making it convenient to perform a habit is the key. Fill a 23-ounce aluminum water bottle before going to bed. Keep it on your night table. Voila–it’s easy to start the day with imbibing what I’ve called The Drink of Life.

One last key factor in this second article is to Rework your vocabulary. Quoting Seattle-based life coach Patricia Love: Repeating the phrase “I choose” or “I get to” “helps shift us into a happier state.”

Reworking our vocabulary this way can get us to see a healthy habit as a positive choice we’re making not a burden. This is why I believe too that not using the vocabulary of “I have to” is the key factor in transforming how we view what we need to do.

Framing what we need to do as something we want to do is the difference.

In the end changing our perception from negative to positive is what it’s all about. Those rituals we engage in might just keep us happier, healthier, and more fulfilled.

One habit I have is using a different ceramic mug each season to drink water from at the dining table with meals. I choose a mug whose color complements the table decor. This subtle change keeps me motivated to drink the water with every meal.

I’ll end here with this:

Like with anything I’ve recommended you could be fearful of doing something that appears to be strange or out of the ordinary. It can be unsettling for some of us to think that others will think we’re not normal. The question is: Why should we care about people who don’t care about us?

Our health and wellbeing count more than others’ opinion of how we choose to live and what we choose to do. If they’re really interested in being healthy, when they see how effective we are they’ll want to copy us!