The question of how to lower stress when a person doesn't like sports can be answered that there are a number of other ways to manage stress and sports, or we might just say physical exercise or physical activity, is one way to help discharge stress.

First of all, recognize what stress really is all about. Fundamentally, stress is about the adjustment to some change that we have to experience in our lives. It may be financial, relational, occupational, health wise; it could be any number of different areas of our lives where change or adaptation to the change is necessary, and that generates stress. Stress can be, or the change can be either positive or negative, although most of the time we're thinking about the negative aspects of stress. When we're experiencing stress we're activating a physiological reaction that's associated with the fight and flight syndrome, or fight or flight response, which activates us to be able to address or respond to threats in our environment. Now, that's a very primate response pattern and today in our modern society that kind of fight or flight response probably doesn't apply in most situations. Most of the stress we experience we have to sort of sit and stew in, we can't run or fight against. After all, if we're having financial problems or we're having relational problems there's really not something that we run or fight to.

So, if we're going to lower our stress we want to recognize that relaxation is the antidote to the over activation of that stress response. There's a number of ways that we can relax; slow deep breathing is the most, perhaps, fundamental way, and there are a number of different approaches to deep breathing or breathing exercises. Another is progressive muscle relaxation exercises. Yet another way is to create a mental frame of reference that changes how we think about the stressful situation. What I mean by that is that the more we see the adaptation or change that we must make as unpleasant, difficult, onerous, or in other ways very highly intensive or reactive, we are going to respond with a greater level of the fight or flight response. So one of the strategies, in addition to relaxation training, is what's called 'cognitive,' and that is we think about things differently. There are about 10 different typical cognitive distortions or traps that we can fall into, and if you're interested in learning more about that you could google the term 'cognitive distortions' or 'cognitive traps' and you'll come up Dr. David Burns who is a seminal researcher and clinician in this area; he's written a great deal, including the book "The Feeling Good Handbook" which is a great resource.

So for lowering stress it certainly helps to discharge some of it through physical activity; it doesn't have to be sports, it could be simply working out in a gym, bicycle riding, or doing some physical activity that burns off the adrenaline. Alternatively, we can do some relaxation exercises beginning with deep breathing and moving on to progressive muscle relaxation, passive muscle relaxation, mental imagery and visualization of quiet, calming scenes, and then the cognitive approach to changing our thoughts. Finally, lifestyle changes can be helpful too. If we're putting additional stress on ourselves, such as taking on too much in our lives, we might want to look at that and see how we can reduce some of the pressures that we put on ourselves which will contribute to the stress that we're experiencing.

This is Dr. Peter Lambrou for MyExpertSolution, and I hope that's been helpful. If you have further, more specific questions please feel free to submit them.