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The current economic crisis can be a major source of stress. Writing in Work & Family Life (March 2009), Doc Childre offered some advice on how to manage your stress in such a period:

Communicate and interact with others. Get together with people who can share or understand your experience. Collective support from a group can lift your spirits and increase your ability to find a solution for the problem at hand. The energy of the whole has a multiplying effect. Talking and laughing (and crying) together offers a tremendously beneficial release.

Decrease the drama. It's natural to vent, especially during the first phase of a crisis. But excessive drama is draining and it blocks solutions. When you catch your inner dialogue looping with fearful projections or you hear yourself dramatizing the downside of a situation in conversations, tell yourself: That will not help change what's already happened. Practice realigning your thoughts, feelings, and conversations with ideas that support your needs and action plans.

Manage your reaction to the news. Practice listening to the news from the "state of neutral." In other words, don't jump to conclusions or focus on worst-case scenarios.... Don't pour your emotional energy into replaying something you heard or read.

Practice heart-focused breathing. Imagine your breath passing in and out through your heart. Breathing in the "attitude" of calm and balance can be an emotional tonic to take off the rough edges.

Avoid comparing. Making comparisons between what's happening now and how things used to be — or might have been — use a natural response. But it's more constructive to use your energy in ways that will allow you to regain stability and move forward with your life.

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Speaking of stress relief, Exchange has a number of extremely helpful resources for supporting teachers in dealing with children with challenging behaviors:

• Our Beginnings Workshop book, Behavior, has 24 articles written by experts in the field on how to deal with challenging behavior.
• Ten Out of the Box Training Kits on "Positive Discipline" provide directors with all the resources you need to conduct in-house training sessions.
• Two Exchange CEU modules, "Managing Challenging Behavior" and "Social and Emotional Development", provide credit for reading Exchange magazine articles.
• Exchange's newest resource, Facing the Challenge DVD (an expertly crafted video training tool).

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