Thanks for your cheerful site and all the helpful tips!

Hope you won’t mind a couple of suggestions.

About Killer Stress no. 20 tip, “Hit a punching bag”…
Doing something physically active can help a lot with stress, but the recent research advice these days is not to hit punchbags (or scream) if you’re stressed or angry – stress often increases anger & vice versa, and many counsellors are changing their view and not recommending people shout or hit cushions etc as a “release”…

The reason is that, apparently, getting worked up in these ways tends only to feed that heightened anger & aggression in the long run, and the main reason you may feel calmer immediately after yelling/hitting the punchbag etc. is simply that you are tired and spent. You can also get a kind of “hit” from it, which encourages more of the same – so you can get hooked on loud, aggressive expressions of rage or stress (think of people with, e.g., road rage).

The advice is that when dealing with your stressed emotions, it tends to be better to try to avoid angry, explosive expressions of them – but that doing something physical in a measured way, like running or aerobics, is very helpful.
And instead of shouting – laughing! So if you can find some way to laugh long & hard each day – even if you don’t feel like it – that is stress-relieving. There are laughter clubs springing up, aren’t there, and even phone nos. that you can ring for a daily laughter dose. And apparently, it doesn’t matter to the brain whether you really feel happy/amused or not, as long as you laugh! So even if you’re sharing your stressful feelings with friends, it’s good to try and laugh about it at the same time – it really helps.

The other mention was about your tip of “Laying out in the sun”…it’s a lovely idea, but when you say, “…feel free to get a nice tan!”, please also mention safe tanning…? For pasty white people, getting a tan is so tempting, but skin cancer is big & getting worse, and people I’ve known with it have deeply regretted not realizing the dangers. Not that that detracts from the pleasure and benefits of sunshine, though!

Thanks again for your site – the brainwave information is fascinating…!