Managing Emotions and Stress

It is normal to experience fear and anxiety or anger when something of high importance to you is at risk. Facing a lot of these emotions at once along with other feelings can feel overwhelming. This chapter describes ways to cope with uncertainty, stress, and overwhelm and strong feelings like anxiety and anger.

Coping with Uncertainty

Medical education involves a series of potentially stressful uncertainties. It starts even before entering medical school, with not knowing whether or not your application will be accepted or where. It continues when you are waiting to receive licensing test scores to see if you passed and if your scores are high enough to help you get into the residency training program you desire. In the fourth year, you wait to find out if you will match with the residency program or specialty you want. Unanticipated events like a pandemic create more uncertainties.

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Coping With Anger and Feeling Overwhelmed

Reviewing statements that change your thinking about the situation to thoughts that will help you better cope can help when faced with strong or stuck unpleasant emotions that are harming your well-being. Try repeating the following to yourself if feeling angry or overwhelmed. 

Coping Statements for Anger Management

• It’s not worth getting angry about.
• I will not take it personally.
• I am in charge, not my anger.
• I will breathe slowly until I know what to do.
• Getting angry isn’t going to help. 
• I can handle this and stay in control.
• Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe.
• People aren’t against me – they’re for themselves.

Coping Statements for Overwhelming Feelings

• Take a breath.
• Stay focused on the present. What do I need to do right now?
• It will soon be over.
• It’s not the worst thing that could happen.
• One step at a time, until it’s over.
• I don’t need to eliminate stress, just keep it under control.
• Once I label my stress from 1 to 10, I can watch it go down.

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Coping with Anxiety

Relaxing Anxiety During Stressful Times. Being Well Podcast Episode #123. By Rick Hanson, Ph.D. Psychology. © Copyright 2020. Drs. Rick Hanson and Forrest Hanson. Includes: Rational, appropriate stress and anxiety, the cost of ‘negative’ emotions, practicing ways to calm stress, accepting some amount of stress, dealing with the bad and turning toward the good, and an exercise for calming and centering.  Time: 51 minutes with the time for different subtopics marked. 

Highlights of this resource. When feeling stressed:

•  Slow down and breathe* and then widen your perspective. Focus on what is true in that broader picture. 
• Acknowledge that stress is normal and appropriate in some circumstances. But try not to dwell or get stuck there. Ask yourself, “Am I basically ok at this moment?” Or tell yourself, “I did my best given the circumstances.”
•  Deal with the bad, turn to the good, take in the good.
• Accept the limits of your influence AND Find the place where you can have a lot of influence. 
• A 5-breath calming practice. Breathing while feeling: your chest, caring, cared about, peaceful, content. Described at minute 38 in the podcast.

Coping with Anxiety A brief pdf with 7 tips for dealing with a wave of anxiety. Written for the Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY healthcare community to help health care providers cope with stress. 

The tips include not judging or avoiding your anxious feeling, which may include disappointment, the anticipation of something, or change fatigue. They describe how to check to see what you are worried will happen and how likely that is and several other steps. 

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Stress Management

A Simple, Brief Stress Management Activity

4 x 4 breathing: A simple, easy-to-remember breathing exercise to disrupt the stress response: Breathe in through your nose slowly to a count of 4, breathe out slowly through your mouth for a count of 4. Repeat 4 times.