Stress is defined as our body’s way of responding to any kind of demand or thread. Both good and bad experiences can lead to stress. When individuals feel stressed by something going around them, their nervous systems respond by releasing a flood of stress hormones, which include adrenaline and cortisol. These chemicals give people more energy and strength, which can be a good thing due to speed people’s reaction time and enhance their focus if their stress is brought about by physical danger. However, this can also be a bad thing if their stress is in response to something emotional. This is because there is no outlet for this extra energy and strength.  In this paper, I will mention my major stressor, how stress affects me, which coping and relaxation techniques I am utilizing and the effectiveness of these techniques. Many different things can lead to stress from physical such as fear of something dangerous to emotional such as worry about your relationships with family or friends. Identifying what may cause you stress is the first step in learn to how to better cope with your stress. My stressor is breaking up with my boyfriend. The fact is that relationships can end and everyone knows that. However, I could not accept this fact. Two months ago my ex-boyfriend decided to end our relationship because he did not love me anymore. I was surprised because I thought we were good. I accepted his decision and started moving on with my life. Nevertheless, everyone knows that break-up of a relationship is emotionally difficult. I loved him so much. I was still waiting for him. This is because I thought he was confused and he came to me again. However, three weeks went by, and one day I saw him holding hands with a girl. I was devastating and crying all day in my bed. I was left with a big hole in my heart and life as well as uncontrollable mind.  If you have had to accept that someone you loved does not want to be with you anymore, you could probably understand the rush of feelings and thoughts that come to you every day, every hour, every minute. This made me under large amount of stress. Stress can affect your body, mind and emotion. I experienced all symptoms of stress. I became unable to concentrate or think clearly. I remembered only my mistakes towards him even though he had much more than me. I felt overwhelmed, agitated and moody. I had some sense that I was lonely and isolated. I suffered from depression and unhappiness. When I saw him after breaking up, I felt chest pain and rapid heartbeat. Moreover, I always felt fatigue and lost my appetite. I isolated myself from others and wanted to sleep all days. I became a procrastinator and neglected my responsibilities. For example, because I cannot concentrate on my study, I carry over my studying and writing papers. I found myself to felt sad that he was with someone else, and I was still thinking about him. I was torturing myself with my thoughts. In order to deal with my stress, I used several coping techniques. First one is social support in which family and friends provide instrumental, informational or emotional assistance. Social support positively affects individuals’ well-being. The greater social support individuals perceive, the more the support will buffer the impact of stress on their well-being (Chao, 2012). Similar to this study results, talking about it my sisters and friends helped me to relax and decreased my negative thoughts about my behaviors towards him. However, it only helped momentarily. Hours later I always found myself thinking all those things I should not be thinking again. My mind was a hurricane of all the wrong thoughts. I did not know how to handle this state. Furthermore, I realized that the only person who could assist me was me. I used another coping technique which is information seeking. I searched on internet, read books, and essays. I was trying to find the key wisdom that enables me to feel peace of mind. Through this process, I discovered the power of positive thinking and acceptance. Individuals are different to act toward situations. Therefore, they handle situations in different way. I am a very sensitive and vulnerable person. When someone hurts me, I cry a lot and I can forgive immediately. This is because I do not hate and not seek revenge. However, the feeling of disappointment and sadness stick with me for a long time, and I attempt a lot to let go of those feelings. What I learned through searching is that it is requires a lot of strength, patience, determination, hope, and self-esteem. For example, I need to be strong to control my thoughts, to stop crying, and the most important thing is to find happiness in the present moment. After that, I started to use cognitive restructuring technique. I accepted that my relationship had ended. Moreover, I realized breaking up is not the end of the life. We were not married or having a baby. I do not feel guilty for being sad or wishing things were different. I allowed myself to feel the pain of losing the person I love. Each day I am thinking something positive.  I remind myself every day that life is good and eventually the pain will pass. Maybe I do not have more time to live, so stop to waste more days feeling sad about the past. Furthermore, I thought that he did not deserve my love because he did not do anything for me. I always arranged things we did together. I deserve a better one because I am smart, healthy, pretty and hilarious. Besides, I filled my mind with something that inspires me. I started thinking of my responsibilities for near future such as graduating with high GPA to get master degree. Another coping technique I used is pray and faith. I pray five times a day. When I am praying, I imagine that I talk to Allah and ask for forgiveness, mercy and help. I raise my hands in supplication and ask for relief my immense love toward my ex-boyfriend and help to find peace in a short time. I feel the comfort that comes from feeling close to Allah, the peace that comes from Allah’s love and mercy as well as the serenity. That enables me to feel strong, and to have high self-esteem. I think that this technique helps me to find peace of mind and the serenity. By the way, scientific studies show that religious involvement can help people to deal with psychological problems. Religious involvement could provide better individual health, greater well-being and lower depression and stress (Oman et al, 2008). According to Morris (2007), African American women explain the technique in which prayer enables them to effectively cope with stressors within their daily lives. In other words, he shows prayer as an effective coping mechanism for African American women. Journal writing also enables me to cope with stress. Journal writing provides people express their feelings and thoughts related to stressful situations. This method improves participants’ long-term psychological, physical, and behavioral, and social functioning. Also, emotional disclosure through writing is useful in the improvement of dysfunction reactions and participates in personal development (Kallay, 2015). I am doing journal writing for over two years now. By keeping a journal, I learn truth about myself. For example, when I read through some old entries, I can see my strong emotions that occur frequently such as anger, misery, and excitement. I can rethink my problems or difficulties and evaluate how I deal with my problems. Also, journal writing serves me as reminder of accomplishment I am proud of and great moments I want to remember. Writing about my emotion decreases my stress level. I can stay honest with myself and write my secrets which I cannot tell anyone. Thus, I feel much better when talking about my inner emotion and thoughts about my stressors. With this in mind, I easily went through breaking up with my ex-boyfriend. I could write my expectation and disappointment to see how much he did not deserve me. I can realize our relationship needed to end through reading old entries. By this way, I accepted that it is the best for me to end our relationship. I am still writing about him and each day I feel that I achieve to forget him.    In conclusion, anything that causes a challenge of threat to our well-being is known as stress. It is fact that some stresses get you going and they are absolutely good for you whereas the stresses can undermine both our mental and physical health. In this paper, I focused on stress that is bad for me. It is important that stressors are correctly defined in order to cope with them effectively. How we see that stressful situation is the major factor that affects on our physical and mental health. It is known that stress is not the problem, but rather how we react to stressors. I explained how my stressor affects me by demonstrating cognitive, behavioral, physical and behavioral symptoms which I experienced during encountering stressor. Furthermore, I showed the effective coping techniques which I utilized for long time.   Reference Lists Chao, R. C. (2012). Managing perceived stress among college students: The roles of social support and dysfunctional coping.Journal Of College Counseling, 15(1), 5-21. doi:10.1002/j.2161-1882.2012.00002.x   Kállay, É. (2015). Physical and psychological benefits of written emotional expression: Review of meta-analyses and recommendations. European Psychologist,20(4), 242- 251. doi:10.1027/1016-9040/a000231   Morris, M. A. (2007). The effectiveness of prayer in coping: An African American female perspective. Dissertation Abstracts International, 67, 7385.   Oman, D., Flinders, T., & Thoresen, C. E. (2008). Integrating spiritual modeling into education: A college course for stress management and spiritual growth.International Journal For The Psychology Of Religion, 18(2), 79-107. doi:10.1080/10508610701879316