The four science-backed strategies for recovering from chronic stress are simple but by no means easy—especially if you’re still in the middle of a stressful period. Eating well, sleeping well, exercising, and socializing are much more doable when things are going well, but Sinha says they require a lot of energy and attention during hard times.

“Survival mode is all about surviving at this moment, but recovery is about long-term thinking… We have to get out of that short-term thinking—but it’s brutally difficult,” O’Donovan reiterates, so giving yourself grace as you try to make these things a priority is key.

You also don’t have to wait until stress hits to practice these healthy habits. As you build them up over time, you’ll give yourself a buffer against stressful events in the future, and the tools needed to more quickly recover moving forward.

“A lot of times, we base our self-confidence on things we actually have no control over—what other people think, the outcome of a project, others’ reactions, etc,” Cruz explains. “To build self-confidence, we need to release our attachment to the things we can’t control and start basing our self-confidence on what we do have control over.”

Take for example when you’re working on a presentation, she says. You might invest a lot of energy into other people’s opinions, the outcome of your project, or your peers’ reactions to your work. To build self-confidence against things you don’t have control over, Cruz advises to focus on the things you can control—for example, how prepared you are, your passion for the presentation topic, and how much work you’ve put into it. 

“Remind yourself of these things consistently and repeatedly until they become your new beliefs,” she adds. 

Grounding yourself in things you can control, even just one aspect of your goal, will provide you with more stability to move forward. And remember: Building confidence builds more confidence. By starting in the places you have control over, you can ensure that you build confidence from a place of inner strength.

And last but certainly not least, having a controlling person in your life requires knowing and acknowledging when it’s time to walk away. As Tsabary notes, when setting boundaries doesn’t work, “then it is important to create emotional space and distance in another way.”

It’s really important to look at how this person responds when you bring up what’s bothering you, when you set boundaries, and when you talk about how their behavior is affecting you. If they continually get defensive, violate your boundaries, and/or continue exhibiting controlling behavior, that’s simply an unhealthy relationship dynamic to be in.

If you’re dating this person, that may mean it’s time for the relationship to end. If it’s someone like a friend or family member who you don’t want to cut off completely, you can create some space within the relationship. For example, therapist Tiana Leeds, M.A., LMFT, previously told mbg that ending a controlling friendship can be as simple as “no longer initiating contact or plans as frequently and allowing the connection to naturally fade.”

Whatever you decide the best course of action is, don’t lose sight of your own needs, how this controlling person really makes you feel, and what you require from your relationships going forward. Anything less is less than you deserve.

If you are in immediate danger, call 9-1-1. For anonymous and confidential help, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233 or TTY 1-800-787-3224) and speak with a trained advocate for free as many times as you need. They’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also speak to them through a live private chat on their website.

The technical definition of conflict resolution is a process you use to find a peaceful solution to a dispute, according to Loren Margolis, MSW, CPC, founder of Training & Leadership Success. The human definition, however, is “the most effective and appropriate approach to resolve conflict that works well for you, the other person, your relationship, and the situation.”

Learning conflict resolution skills is important to success at work and in life, says Margolis—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone.

“People even feel conflicted about the word ‘conflict’! It evokes anxiety and fear, so they shy away from learning how to approach resolution,” she notes.

Conflict resolution is also the glue that keeps relationships together successfully, says Alysha Jeney, MA, LMFT, a licensed relationship therapist and co-founder of The Modern Love Box.

No matter how much love two people have for each other, if they don’t know how to effectively resolve conflicts, “they can easily deteriorate their relationship,” Jeney tells mbg. “Conflict resolution serves as a place to build on trust, vulnerability, and clear up any misunderstandings, which all contribute to building more security within the relationship.” 

“We cannot control the uncertainty side of the scale, which is why saying, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ or, ‘It will be OK,'” doesn’t work—because we know it’s not true. We can’t control the uncertainty. What we can control is focusing on the other part of the equation: our belief and confidence in ourselves of being able to handle it. That focus is really what helps us support our mental health in the big picture.”

—Licensed clinical psychologist Nicole Beurkens, Ph.D., CNS

Read more about a psychologist’s tips for easing anxiety, here. 

Despite our hesitance to get deep with strangers, the results of this study suggest deep conversations between strangers were not only less awkward than participants thought they would be, but also more enjoyable, which resulted in stronger feelings of connection between the pairs.

Interestingly, the participants also often assumed strangers wouldn’t be interested in learning about them, when this proved to not be the case. On top of that, participants who had some deep conversations and some shallow ones thought they’d prefer the shallow conversation. Again, not the case.

As professor of behavioral science and study co-author Nicholas Epley, Ph.D. explains in a news release, “People seemed to imagine that revealing something meaningful or important about themselves in conversation would be met with blank stares and silence, only to find this wasn’t true in the actual conversation.”

“We saw people leading different lives on weekends and workdays,” he says on a call with mbg. On weekends, many people slept at times that differed greatly from those during the workweek, as if “they were flying from Europe to the States on Friday evening and flying back to Europe from the States on Monday morning. That’s where the term ‘social jet lag’ came from.”

You might be thinking, why does it matter if you go to bed later (and wake up later) on weekends—as long as you’re still getting the same amount of sleep? Roenneberg has found that even if people clock their eight hours of on the weekends, social jet lag still has potential health consequences because of the way it puts them out of sync with their circadian rhythms.

These biological clocks dictate the time window when each one of us naturally wants to spend asleep and awake. Someone with an early rhythm—or chronotype—is known as an early bird or lark, while someone with a late chronotype is more of a night owl. Where we fall on this spectrum is the result of our genetics, age (most people have the latest chronotype during adolescence, and it gradually gets earlier from there), and light conditions, Roenneberg explains.

When we travel across time zones, those lighting conditions change dramatically, and our clocks need a few days to catch up. “But unlike travel jet lag, social jet lag doesn’t stop,” Roenneberg says. “It’s chronic.”

You can think of social jet lag as the gap between when our bodies naturally want to sleep and when our social schedules allow us to sleep. If you’re someone who needs to set an alarm every morning of the workweek and are exhausted come Fridays, you already know what this gap feels like. You’re constantly awake during times when your body wants you to be asleep—and have the caffeine dependency to prove it. Switching your sleep schedule on the weekends will only confuse your circadian rhythm more, making it harder to return to your alarm clock on Monday morning.

Roenneberg explains that the later your chronotype, the more likely you are to suffer from social jet lag since many workplaces and schools start early in the morning, and we are generally told that it’s important to wake up early to get a head start on the day. “The later you are, the more likely it is that the social times are forcing you to live against your body clock,” he says.

Since it was first coined in 2006, social jet lag has appeared in over 200 academic papers. “It’s a concept that has conquered the world unexpectedly,” Roenneberg laughs. Marc Wittmann, Ph.D., a time perception researcher who has worked alongside Roenneberg, has a guess as to why it’s become so popular: “It’s because we all deal with it.”

A polycule is a network of consensually nonmonogamous relationships that are connected to each other in some way.

The term polycule comes from a cross between poly, meaning “many,” and molecule, says licensed sex therapist Lori Lawrenz, Psy.D. “When the various polyamorous relationships are drawn in a diagram form, the construction resembles that of a molecule.”

Each person in the network is typically involved in consensual nonmonogamous relationships with other members, although not everyone is necessarily romantically or sexually joined with each other, says AASECT-certified sex therapist Janet Brito, Ph.D., LCSW. Instead, the polycule can function as a kind of family group, in which there are different kinds of bonds between all members—which is important in the context of an amatonormative society.

“An unavoidable aspect of nonmonogamy is that people are engaging in a system of relationships that all impact one another,” says Anna Dow, LCSW, a therapist who specializes in consensual nonmonogamy and practices it herself. “Having shared language for that system can add to some people’s senses of security and belonging while also offering practical information about how their own relationship dynamics may impact other people.”

Your handwriting has a characteristic look and feel. It may be small and constricted, big and bold, or somewhere in between. Similarly, most of your trigger reactions will look somewhat similar to one another and will arise from the same core fear (like fear of rejection, abandonment, not being good enough, not being heard, and so on).

Our trigger signature is an expression of our attachment style. If we have a preoccupied/anxious attachment style, we are more likely to pursue, prod, question, argue, challenge, or attack when we get triggered. If we have a more avoidant attachment style, we tend to shut down, withdraw, defend, explain, judge silently, or try to fix things when we are triggered. Knowing your unique trigger signature helps you quickly recognize the fact that you are getting triggered. This is a big step toward trigger mastery.

By the time you begin to recognize what your trigger reactions look like and feel like, you already have some ability to notice and take ownership of the fact that you sometimes get triggered. That’s part of the admitting and accepting step. But noticing a trigger reaction while in the midst of being reactive is not easy! When you are triggered, your ability to notice tends to go offline. That’s why you need to practice pausing. This is the next step.