FRANÇAIS PRINT-READY PDF TABLE OF CONTENTS PREVIOUS PAGE NEXT PAGE RELATED LINKS Managing Your Health, 1999 edition Emotional and Spiritual Support
Stress
How you deal with stress makes a difference in how you cope with your feelings about being HIV positive. Too much stress can affect your health.
As a person living with HIV/AIDS, you may find that there is pressure on you to be “well adjusted.” This pressure often comes from people who care about you but have their own ideas about how you “should” be behaving. It can create more stress for you. Try to help the people who care about you understand that how you live your life is your own business.
You may wish to explore different ways of reducing stress in your life. Exercise can be helpful; so can yoga, massage, and other forms of meditation and relaxation (see Chapter 6). Some AIDS groups offer free massages or stress management programs. Activities you enjoy, such as reading, going for walks, seeing movies, etc., can help you reduce stress and make you feel better. Some people use spiritual exploration as a way of finding inner peace and decreasing stress. You can also talk to someone at an AIDS group or a nearby hospital, or check with your doctor, for more ideas about dealing with stress. There are resource books and tapes on stress reduction. Stress can also be reduced by dealing with problems in your life. Some people feel better after leaving an abusive partner, getting a job, leaving a job, finding a better place to live, or making other changes.
Financial and legal issues that may cause stress are dealt with in Chapters 10 and 11. | 
