How to have a happy, less stressful 2024

It is the beginning of 2024, and it's important to start it off right. There are many small habits, activities and perspective shifts that could increase overall life satisfaction and lead to better stress management for the new year. Bethany Hanusch, a local licensed professional counselor, teaches her clients how to have self-compassion and has some advice for simple ways to incorporate a little self love into your everyday life.

Hanusch said people tend to avoid emotions because of the uncertainty around the needed response. Hanusch recommended just making space for whatever emotion is felt throughout the day. She said just the act of labeling the emotion is a simple and useful mindfulness-based practice.

“What we want to do is notice without having to respond,” Hanusch said. “Most of the stuff that comes up throughout the day doesn’t need a response. It just needs to exist. It will dissipate on it’s own.”

Hanusch said the key when attempting to make a perspective shift involves incorporating thoughts that contain duality, which means thinking in the gray areas rather than in black and white terms.

“Something can be really hard, and you’re still going to do it because it’s what you value,” Hanusch said. “That’s the introduction of self-compassion — acknowledgment that something is hard, but not giving yourself an out because of that.”

Hanusch had a formula to create a simple affirmation in whatever situation called a Distress Tolerance Statement.

“What we’re trying to do in the mental health world, often, is increase our tolerance skills for the natural stress that comes in life,” Hanusch said. “It starts with acknowledging what you’re feeling. ‘I feel X.’ … You would follow it up with some empathy. ‘This is uncomfortable, and it’s hard.’ You’re not overindulging it, you're just simply saying, ‘Yeah, that’s hard.’ Then you’re following it up with, ‘And, I can tolerate it.’ It’s uncomfortable, but it’s tolerable. The ending point is, ‘And it will pass.’ So, we always want to remember [that] whatever peak feeling we have doesn’t stay at that heightened point.”

Hanusch said she tells clients to incorporate small things into the day that can be accomplished quickly. One of those activities is heel drops, which involve standing up on your tip-toes then slowly coming down, relaxing the muscles as you descend, and pressing the ball of the heel into the ground repeatedly.

“This has been shown in research to induce the relaxation in your nervous system,” Hanusch said. “If we do it with that slight intention of what we’re trying to induce with it. It just reminds our brain, ‘Oh yeah, we can do that.’” Hanusch recommended another very simple activity that is a good way to show your body a little bit of self-love and ease anxiety before a difficult task.

“If you place your right hand over your heart, and leave it there for a moment,” Hanusch said. “They actually show scans of people … You can see the oxytocin hormone is released when you place your hand over your heart, and that’s like the love and kindness hormone. That can induce some calm as well.”

Hanusch said to take a moment for a brief mental transition between activities. She gave the example of taking a moment in the car before walking into work to acknowledge that it is time to go into work mode.

“It’s as simple as that,” Hanusch said. “It’s literally what you’re doing, but we move so quickly that our nervous system just doesn’t catch up.”

Hanusch said there are a couple of signs to look out for in order to ascertain if a bad or anxious mood warrants seeking the help of a therapist or other mental health practitioner.

“If you find yourself just generally having a negative outlook on most things in life. If you are feeling really fatigued and lackluster about life,” Hanusch said. “If you’re noticing a general dissatisfaction that you are unable to navigate through on your own. I would say the voice of shame is really loud for most of us, especially in America. I don’t know why that’s what we use for motivation, but if you find yourself saying a lot of shoulds to yourself and being frustrated with yourself a lot. … Definitely irritability towards others.”

Learn more about stress tolerance techniques and other ones to implement at this link positivepsychology. com/distress-tolerance- skills.