WHY YOU NEED TO GET A GRIP ON STRESS
It’s so common to hear people say “I’m stressed” isn’t it? Think about it, how many times have you said it this week, even today?
But do you know what stress is and how it shows up for you? Are you clear on what triggers your stress response and why you seem to get more stressed about the same thing time and time again?
What is stress and how does it show up?
I’d say I grew up in a pretty stressed type of home. Both my parents were people who had quick stress responses and it was something I was very aware of even as a young child. This led me to grow up being very familiar with stress and having a belief that being stressed was very normal and the ‘right’ way to react to certain situations and feelings.
The way we respond to stress in our lives is individual, it’s our choice how we respond. The issue is that this ‘choice’ comes from our subconscious mind, it’s learned behaviour that has become automatic for us and was in most cases what we learned as a child from what we saw and heard around us.
Like many people, I reacted quickly to stressful situations, often with little patience and a negative response. I felt stress often and from all kinds of things, traffic is a big one - like many other people! I struggled with anxiety for many years of my adult life and although I know I will always be prone to anxiety, I now understand why I have it and how my body and mind react to stressors that lead to anxiety. I’ve learned how to better handle my stress response and because of this feel less stressed less often. I do still have times when I know I feel stressed, but the difference is I’m aware of it much sooner so I can choose how to respond and manage it. I’m also able to respond from my subconscious mind more healthily because I have consciously practised how to respond differently to the way that was my norm for so many years.
This is where you can begin to change how much stress you experience and the way it impacts your mind and body. By becoming aware of what stress feels like for you, you can begin to spot the symptoms and signs. You can get familiar with what it feels like and how you respond. Sometimes, it’s not so much about how we feel it as our response is the fastest thing we’re able to see and realise we’re reacting to stress. Once you start understanding how it shows up for you, it’s about learning to react differently, a way that would help you to not have such a harmful response. This takes practice and will over time, help to form new habits that become your new automatic way to respond to these types of stressors, but now, you’ve built up your resilience and can avoid suffering the way you used to.
The next step is to find ways to avoid and reduce the steps of things that might lead to stress in the first place. There are lots of ways you might go about this, again this depends on you, your lifestyle, what types of things often trigger you and what it is you want your life to be like in your future.
A few ideas to think about here include starting your day with some intention setting and getting clear about how you want to feel and show up that day. A great practice to do is to visualise your day and picture yourself the way you’d ideally love to be that day, really picture how you’re responding and feel how it feels. This can set your mindset to stay focused and go about your day the way you’ve visualised so that if something might arise that would usually trigger a heightened stress response, you can step into that picture and feeling of yourself and ground yourself back in how you want to be.
Taking regular exercise, especially walking outdoors is a great way to lower your stress and help to calm you as well as strengthen your resilience so you don’t feel stress as quickly as you might have in the past. Knowing your non-negotiable and putting boundaries in place to support and protect you is an important step to take to help reduce stress influences. This might include when and how often you use your mobile phone, the hours you work when you look at emails, how much time you spend on virtual meetings, and taking regular breaks and passes in your working day.
There are endless stresses in the world - there is no way to live a stress-free life! It really is about the way you react that determines how stressful your response is. Reframing how we see stress and our relationship with stress and making sure we have resilience tools that we can use when we encounter those stresses is key to making sure you’re protecting and investing in, your mental and physical health.
“In the past 12 months, 53% of workers interviewed cited that they felt more stressed than one year ago and 74% of people have felt so stressed that they have felt unable to cope. It’s on the rise, as is burnout - 52% of all workers are feeling burned out, up +9% from a pre-COVID survey.”
With burnout and stress both on the rise and evidence pointing to the role this plays in other illnesses such as autoimmune diseases, you must take time to understand how stress manifests in your mind and body and get clear on what you need to be able to thrive in your life. Check-in with yourself every day and ask yourself what you need that day to be at your best and feel in control and well.
There is power in slowing down and pausing. Rest and recovery, an opportunity for you to restore and feel revitalised should not be overlooked. So, take time to get clear about stress and reset for a more resilient and calmer life.
Sources:
Mental Health Foundation
Rethink Mental Illness - advice on what stress is, signs & symptoms, causes and how to get help coping.
Deloitte Mental Health Report 2022
Find out more about getting a grip on stress.
Listen to the Live Healthy Now podcast with guest expert April Likins sharing more on what stress is, getting clear on how it shows up for you and how to put healthier habits in place to feel better and avoid burnout.
