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Top strategies for shutting down stress fast

Discover strategies that can help ease tension, refocus your thoughts, and calm your body in seconds

Sebastian Hermann / Unsplash

Stress can hit before you have time to think about what caused it. Your heart speeds up, your breathing gets shallow, your shoulders tense, and suddenly a minor problem feels much bigger than it did a moment ago. The good news is that you don’t always need a long meditation session or a quiet afternoon to interrupt that reaction.

The Healthy highlights several quick techniques designed to help you shift your attention, relax your body, or change the way you’re responding to a stressful moment. Some take only a few seconds to start, making them practical when you’re at work, stuck in traffic, dealing with an argument, or simply feeling overwhelmed.

These strategies aren’t meant to erase the source of your stress. Instead, they can give you a quick reset so you’re better able to deal with whatever is happening. The key is choosing something you can actually remember and use when your mind is racing.

Here are five of the fastest ways to start bringing the pressure down.

1. Take a slow, deep breath

Engin Akyurt / Unsplash

When stress kicks in, start with your breathing. The Healthy recommends paying attention to your breathing pattern and deliberately slowing it down with deep breaths.

Stress can change the way you breathe, and focusing on slower breathing gives you something immediate to........

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