Calm Yourself: Easy everyday ways for busy people to combat stress

by Vee Freir

Are you tired of feeling stressed out? This practical guide will show you how easy it is to bring calmness back into your life.



In this book, you will

Actions to take right now to quickly change how you feel.How easy it is to get some calm into your life.Dr Vee’s simple 5-step method of stress management to use whenever or wherever stress arises.How to become the serene person who manages no matter what life throws at you.

The book includes quick exercises that take less than a minute and holistic approaches designed to fit into your busy life. Don’t wait to take control of your stress—transform your life with Calm Yourself today!

157 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 25, 2024

About the author

Before she became a Clinical Psychologist Vee worked in the art field for 15 years, but having children and moving to the far North of Scotland changed everything for her. Starting off in counselling and setting up new services for young people through Community Education while doing a psychology degree with the Open University led to even more changes. Then, by chance, getting offered a job in the local Child Psychology Service, led to her being lucky enough to get offered a place on the Edinburgh University Clinical Psychology Course.

Vee has worked with Children, Young People and Families, in Cancer Care and in Adult Mental Health, her forte being setting up new and vibrant services for patients. She finished her NHS career by working at a strategic level making sure Mindfulness was available for all patients in Scotland for whom it was a valid therapeutic way forward for them.

Vee’s areas of interest, ever since her counselling days, have been stress management and bereavement, loss and adjustment, as well as having an interest in keeping people mentally healthy. She currently does individual stress management sessions and teaches Mindfulness and Qjqong internationally.

Reviews

[Cliff M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to a previous book by the author (‘START to stress less’) this book gives practical advice on how to calm yourself - both generally, and during moments of stress, worry and crisis. I found the five-step START method described in the previous book to be very useful as I struggled with a heavy workload, constant business travel and the weight of my responsibilities. Nowadays, my life has changed and my need for the method reduced, but that doesn’t stop me recommending it to people I know. Which brings me to this new book, which I confess gave me no more than ‘START to stress less’. Yes, it has more content, but I still found the magic to be in Part 4 (‘The START method’) and in the excellent section on breathing (the first section of Part 2). I believe strongly that the section on breathing would help anyone, regardless of their situation, BUT ONLY IF PRACTISED! For this book is a practical guide, which means reading it won’t help you in the slightest if it is not turned into actions. I recommend choosing your preferred breathing method (Vee Freir always provides options) and doing it one to four times a day, everyday. In a few days or weeks you will realise that a noticeable change has come upon you. And, you can do it anywhere, anytime. No need to go all weird with candles, chanting and trying to fold your legs in half. As well as the breathing exercises, I recommend people practise the START method whenever their pulse starts to rise with anger or frustration. And I do mean every time: every time you get cut up by an Audi driver; every time you see a politician’s face on the TV; every time you look inside your daughter’s bedroom, and so on. For if you do it this regularly and repeatedly, it will soon become automatic. When it is automatic it will become your superpower. A superpower that will make the world an easier place. Once the world is thus changed in your head (because you know you can handle anything) you will lose a lot of your fear (eg of being unable to handle a challenge, such as public speaking), and therefore a lot of your stress. The worst thing you can do is wait until you have a crisis and then try to do START for the first time. It probably won’t work. The method has to have become habitual before the crisis arrives.
Yes, of course read the rest of the book once you have read and practised START and breathing ad nauseam, but you will have heard most of it before (diet, exercise etc). Eg from those two doctor brothers who dominate daytime television in the U.K.; or from the late Dr Michael Moseley on the radio; or, from a zillion people on YouTube…
I haven’t read any other self-help books on calming yourself, so I can’t compare it. There may be better ones, but what I do know is that the START and breathing methods in this book work.
This book was free on Amazon on its first two days of release, so I didn’t pay anything for my copy. I confess that now I have read it I would say either buy this one or buy ‘START to stress less’ but not both. But I suspect the previous book is no longer easy to obtain so this one it is!

[Hera D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straightforward techniques / easy to read

It’s easy to forget how to calm ourselves when we are under so much stress. Having simple tools to manage the stress roller coaster and being able to access them easily is crucial. This is why it’s a book I will read again and again and recommend often.