The most useful and practical thing is to learn, and regularly practise, relaxation of the whole body. Lying down on a firm bed, hold the limbs up in turn until slight fatigue develops, then let the arm or leg fall like a bag of sand. Allow your feet and calves to sink into the bed, then your bottom, back and shoulders. Open your mouth and allow your head to sink back.

It is advisable to examine your life-style. Is the business too much? Do you come home in time for an evening meal with the family? Is housework and/or caring for your children becoming too much for you to cope? Are you too obsessed with detail? Are you too tired to appreciate home life? Joint domestic problems, especially those concerning finance, should discussed by the whole family, not taken on by you alone. Extra-marital affairs are a serious and frequent cause of anxiety and must be put in perspective alongside the rest of the lives of those involved. Diversionary activity, such as gardening, walking and other physical activity, visiting friends or doing some craft work, all may help, and painting in particular is excellent therapy.

Study carefully the times and situations that cause tension and try to remake your programme. For example, it is known that aggressive driving raises blood pressure, so learn to drive skilfully and calmly without competitiveness, and leave enough time to make your journey without having to hurry. Some people have a quickly lowering level of sugar in the blood (too little will make you feel unwell), so study any relationship there might be between feeling up well and tense and the eating of meals or fasting. If necessary, eat something to avoid this kind of reaction (if driving a long distance, take along a snack).

It is not always easy to personally study one's own situation, so it may be beneficial to seek the help of a psychotherapist for this type of exploration. Particularly in middle life it is a good idea to work out where out are going and what your life is all about, so that retirement and ageing, when business striving and career drive will have to be modified, can be accepted calmly. A stress situation in which you feel trapped and see no way out needs special study. Other possible means of combating tension are meditation, yoga, hypnotism, bio-feedback techniques (identifying the rhythms of the body cycle by means of electrical impulses), deliberately focusing interest away from the itself, and relaxation training by physiotherapists or other skilled persons.