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How to
Avoid stress
How to avoid stress
The truth is, you can’t avoid stress completely — you can’t control other people or the circumstances of life. But you can reduce stressful situations and weaken stress’s power over you by:
Avoiding toxic environments and behaviours
Changing your mindset and perspectives
Learning to manage stress
Recognising your triggers
Avoiding toxic environments and behaviours
Stress can come from anywhere
Stress can come from the people around you, your school, your family, your friends, or even your own actions. When an environment or a relationship hurts you, it isn’t normal — even if everyone around you pretends it is. When you can distance yourself from toxic environments or people who cause you distress, do it — especially if they crush you instead of helping you grow in a healthy way.
eustress et Distress
Remember: not all stress is negative.
If your environment or certain people bring you positive stress (eustress) — the kind that pushes you to grow, to improve, to challenge yourself — those are the situations you should try to stay connected to. In reality, you can’t always cut off relationships or escape your environment. For example, your family: you can’t reject them or walk away from them. In this specific case, you’ll need to learn how to shift your perspective so you can handle the situation better (we’ll see how to do that in a moment). In other cases, when you’re faced with a toxic environment or harmful behaviours, you can:
Handling Toxicity
+ info
+ info
+ info
+ info
+ info
Changing Your Mindset and Perspective
Not just the event, but also your interpretation
Stress doesn’t only come from what happens to you — it also comes from the way you see it. Two people can experience the same situation and react completely differently, simply because their mindset and perspective are different. Changing your mindset means learning to see things in another way so they lose some of their power over you.
Automatic Thoughts
This doesn’t mean denying reality or pretending everything is fine, but choosing a fairer, more balanced way of seeing things that helps you move forward instead of crushing you. Sometimes, what exhausts you the most isn’t the situation itself but the automatic thoughts you repeat to yourself:
- “I’m worthless.”
- “I’m going to fail.”
These thoughts create shame, anxiety, and discouragement. But you can learn to reframe them (change the way you see them) with a simple 4-step method.
THE COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING METHOD
Hover over each box to read the step description.
Identify
Listen
4-STEP METHOD
Evaluate
Replace
Examples
Instead of saying “I’m useless,” say: “I made a mistake, but I’m learning.”
Instead of saying “Everyone is against me,” say: “At least I have one person who supports me.”
Instead of saying “I’ll never manage to do it,” say: “It’s difficult, but I can make progress little by little.”
Important to remember
You can’t always change other people or the circumstances around you — but you can change the way you think. And when you change your thoughts, you change your emotions and your reactions. Once you start shifting your mindset, you can go even further by identifying what triggers your stress.
Recognising your triggers
It’s not the big source (for example, “school”), but the small event, the small thing, a person, an idea, or a thought that makes you switch into stress (for example, “a bad grade” or “being compared to your sister”).
A stress trigger is a specific element that sets off your stress like a spark.
Types of Triggers
There are two types of triggers.
Click on + to read and X to close the window.
External triggers
Internal triggers
Important to remember
Even when events are external, it’s the way you perceive them that increases or reduces your stress. Two girls can experience the same situation (a comment, a criticism): one breaks down, the other puts it into perspective and moves on.
How to Recognise your triggers
Observe your physical reactions: fast heartbeat, stomach ache, wanting to cry.
Write down the pattern in 3 steps:
- What happened (situation)
- What I thought immediately (automatic thought)
- What I felt or did (emotion + reaction)
Look for repetitions: does it always happen when you’re compared to someone? When you feel ignored? When you have to make a decision?
How to Recognise your triggers
What next?
Once you recognise your triggers, ask yourself:
- Can I eliminate it? (For example: leaving a toxic group.)
- Can I reduce it? (For example: organising your time better to avoid last-minute stress.)
- Do I need to learn how to deal with it? (For example: accepting a situation you can’t control and using techniques to stay calm.)
SCENARIO TO ILLUSTRATE
- External trigger: being compared to her sister.
- Automatic thought (internal): “I have no value.”
- Emotion: shame and anger.
- Reaction: Faith slams the door and locks herself in her room or leaves the house.
Faith comes home from school. Her mother says: “Look at your sister, she always helps without being asked. You are useless! Why can’t you be like your sister?”
Later, Faith writes down her pattern. She realises that the trigger wasn’t just her mother’s comment — it was also what she thought about herself: “I have no value.” Next time, she can remind herself: “I don’t have to be exactly like my sister. I have my own strengths, and they’re different from hers.” Then she plans to breathe deeply to calm herself. Remember: You can’t always control your triggers, but you can learn to recognise them and choose a better response.
Summary
You’ve seen that stress doesn’t only come from difficult situations, but also from the way you see them, the environment you live in, and the often invisible triggers that activate your reactions. By learning to recognise these elements, you can reduce stress’s impact on you and find more inner freedom. Take a moment to think about a recent situation: how did you react, and how could you have responded differently?
Well done!
You've completed this exploration.
Début
Set respectful boundaries: Say no, step away, refuse to stay silent when you need to defend yourself.
Reduce your exposure: Spend less time in places, situations, or with people who create negative stress for you.
External triggers
They come from the outside. Examples: an argument, a criticism, a surprise test, family pressure, a loud noise, or an unexpected situation.
Identify what hurts you: Mocking, humiliation, injustice, pressure, loneliness, comparison, etc.
Avoid your own harmful actions: Identify the habits or behaviours you do yourself that end up stressing you (procrastination, lying, making promises you can’t keep, etc.).
Internal triggers
They come from inside you. Examples: worry (“I’m going to fail”), unrealistic expectations (“I have to be perfect”), fear of being rejected, negative thoughts.
Seek support: Talk to someone you trust — a neutral adult, a sincere friend, etc.
How to avoid stress
Muriel Akahi
Created on December 11, 2025
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Transcript
Use the arrows to navigate
How to
Avoid stress
How to avoid stress
The truth is, you can’t avoid stress completely — you can’t control other people or the circumstances of life. But you can reduce stressful situations and weaken stress’s power over you by:
Avoiding toxic environments and behaviours
Changing your mindset and perspectives
Learning to manage stress
Recognising your triggers
Avoiding toxic environments and behaviours
Stress can come from anywhere
Stress can come from the people around you, your school, your family, your friends, or even your own actions. When an environment or a relationship hurts you, it isn’t normal — even if everyone around you pretends it is. When you can distance yourself from toxic environments or people who cause you distress, do it — especially if they crush you instead of helping you grow in a healthy way.
eustress et Distress
Remember: not all stress is negative.
If your environment or certain people bring you positive stress (eustress) — the kind that pushes you to grow, to improve, to challenge yourself — those are the situations you should try to stay connected to. In reality, you can’t always cut off relationships or escape your environment. For example, your family: you can’t reject them or walk away from them. In this specific case, you’ll need to learn how to shift your perspective so you can handle the situation better (we’ll see how to do that in a moment). In other cases, when you’re faced with a toxic environment or harmful behaviours, you can:
Handling Toxicity
+ info
+ info
+ info
+ info
+ info
Changing Your Mindset and Perspective
Not just the event, but also your interpretation
Stress doesn’t only come from what happens to you — it also comes from the way you see it. Two people can experience the same situation and react completely differently, simply because their mindset and perspective are different. Changing your mindset means learning to see things in another way so they lose some of their power over you.
Automatic Thoughts
This doesn’t mean denying reality or pretending everything is fine, but choosing a fairer, more balanced way of seeing things that helps you move forward instead of crushing you. Sometimes, what exhausts you the most isn’t the situation itself but the automatic thoughts you repeat to yourself:
These thoughts create shame, anxiety, and discouragement. But you can learn to reframe them (change the way you see them) with a simple 4-step method.
THE COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING METHOD
Hover over each box to read the step description.
Identify
Listen
4-STEP METHOD
Evaluate
Replace
Examples
Instead of saying “I’m useless,” say: “I made a mistake, but I’m learning.”
Instead of saying “Everyone is against me,” say: “At least I have one person who supports me.”
Instead of saying “I’ll never manage to do it,” say: “It’s difficult, but I can make progress little by little.”
Important to remember
You can’t always change other people or the circumstances around you — but you can change the way you think. And when you change your thoughts, you change your emotions and your reactions. Once you start shifting your mindset, you can go even further by identifying what triggers your stress.
Recognising your triggers
It’s not the big source (for example, “school”), but the small event, the small thing, a person, an idea, or a thought that makes you switch into stress (for example, “a bad grade” or “being compared to your sister”).
A stress trigger is a specific element that sets off your stress like a spark.
Types of Triggers
There are two types of triggers.
Click on + to read and X to close the window.
External triggers
Internal triggers
Important to remember
Even when events are external, it’s the way you perceive them that increases or reduces your stress. Two girls can experience the same situation (a comment, a criticism): one breaks down, the other puts it into perspective and moves on.
How to Recognise your triggers
Observe your physical reactions: fast heartbeat, stomach ache, wanting to cry.
Write down the pattern in 3 steps:
Look for repetitions: does it always happen when you’re compared to someone? When you feel ignored? When you have to make a decision?
How to Recognise your triggers
What next?
Once you recognise your triggers, ask yourself:
SCENARIO TO ILLUSTRATE
Faith comes home from school. Her mother says: “Look at your sister, she always helps without being asked. You are useless! Why can’t you be like your sister?”
Later, Faith writes down her pattern. She realises that the trigger wasn’t just her mother’s comment — it was also what she thought about herself: “I have no value.” Next time, she can remind herself: “I don’t have to be exactly like my sister. I have my own strengths, and they’re different from hers.” Then she plans to breathe deeply to calm herself. Remember: You can’t always control your triggers, but you can learn to recognise them and choose a better response.
Summary
You’ve seen that stress doesn’t only come from difficult situations, but also from the way you see them, the environment you live in, and the often invisible triggers that activate your reactions. By learning to recognise these elements, you can reduce stress’s impact on you and find more inner freedom. Take a moment to think about a recent situation: how did you react, and how could you have responded differently?
Well done!
You've completed this exploration.
Début
Set respectful boundaries: Say no, step away, refuse to stay silent when you need to defend yourself.
Reduce your exposure: Spend less time in places, situations, or with people who create negative stress for you.
External triggers
They come from the outside. Examples: an argument, a criticism, a surprise test, family pressure, a loud noise, or an unexpected situation.
Identify what hurts you: Mocking, humiliation, injustice, pressure, loneliness, comparison, etc.
Avoid your own harmful actions: Identify the habits or behaviours you do yourself that end up stressing you (procrastination, lying, making promises you can’t keep, etc.).
Internal triggers
They come from inside you. Examples: worry (“I’m going to fail”), unrealistic expectations (“I have to be perfect”), fear of being rejected, negative thoughts.
Seek support: Talk to someone you trust — a neutral adult, a sincere friend, etc.