Working on your stress response is a huge part of everyone’s healing journey. When we say “I am stressed” the underlying meaning is that there are a lot of “stressors” in our life and that the best way to not feel stressed is to “get rid of” those stressors.
But what if I were to say to you that it is not the stressors in our life that are the problem – it is our response to them. If you could hypothetically give 20 people the same stressors, there would likely be 20 different responses – from “curl up into a ball I can’t cope” to “that’s no problem, I’m fine” and everything in between. This in itself tells us that we all choose our stress response.
So, if we all choose our stress response (although mostly sub consciously) then we are all capable of switching from a negative stress response (feeling overwhelmed, anxiety, craving coffee/sugar/cigarettes, adrenal stress etc.) to a healthy stress response (ability to cope, calmness, rational thinking etc.).
Therefore, the best way to lower our “stress levels” is not necessarily to get rid of the stressors (although this obviously works but it is impossible to rid ourselves of all the stressors in our life) but to learn how to choose a healthy stress response. By learning this, any future stressors that arise, and let’s face it life is full of stressors, can be dealt with in an appropriate and healthy manner.
The first step in changing your stress response is actually recognising that you are becoming stressed or anxious and to “nip it in the bud”. The faster you can reduce your feelings of stress and anxiety the less cortisol will be released by your adrenals. Once that cortisol is released it takes up to 2 hours to be broken down by the body, so reducing its release is important. And if you are under constant stress, those levels may remain high for weeks or months.
Once you have realised that you are feeling stressed or anxious you need to work as soon as you can on reducing those feelings. Self-talk is a wonderful tool in helping to find calm and to put things into perspective. It is important not to “catastrophise” events. Talk to yourself – “Will I be thinking or worrying about this situation in 12 months?” Usually the answer is “No”. “Is becoming stressed or anxious helping the situation?” The answer is always “No”. “Is becoming stressed or anxious making the situation worse?” The answer is always “Yes”. The self-talk can also include things like “I am more than capable of handling this situation without feeling stressed” or “Everything will work out for the best” or “I refuse to allow myself to feel stressed – it is not helping the situation”.
Then delve a little deeper, asking yourself why you are responding in this way. Your situation could be triggering memories from childhood which need to be dealt with.
If appropriate, choose physical things to help. It could be removing yourself from the situation, doing some deep breathing, going for a walk, doing some vigorous exercise – the list is endless. For anxiety that is building up, distraction is the best response. This can be doing star jumps on the spot, finding your wrist pulse and counting it, counting backwards from 100. There are many different techniques.
Practical examples:
I had a client who was at her wits end with the behaviour of her immediate boss, to the extent that she would become extremely stressed, anxious and angry. She would get home from work and find it difficult to “wind down” and would find herself constantly ruminating about his behaviour. She felt the only solution was to resign. Her boss would hover over her shoulder when she was on the computer, watching everything she was doing and making negative comments. There was nothing physical she could do in that situation – she couldn’t remove herself, couldn’t go for a walk etc., so she used self-talk. Once she started to “rethink” about her boss and practise self-talk, she found she could cope with his behaviour without any negative effects on her.
Her self-talk centred around “this is not my problem, it is his” and “I need to feel empathy for him rather than anger” and “I am more than capable of ignoring his behaviour”. While he was hovering over her, she would think these thoughts. She started to think (and realise) that he had a self esteem issue and felt the need to “micromanage” and criticise others in order to feel better about himself. Once she realised this, her thought process completely shifted. Instead of feeling frustrated, angry and stressed about his behaviour she learnt to accept and ignore it and to feel empathy for him because of his need to “pump up” his ego. This is a perfect example of how self-talk can completely shift our response to stressors.
Another client was having relationship difficulties because of the anger of her partner. Their anger would impact her particularly badly because her father was prone to anger outbursts and as if often the case, these situations take us back to our childhood memories and make our response worse. Let me make it very clear, there was no abuse either emotional or physical – it was a situation where her partner would “loose their cool” over little things like dropping something or some little thing going wrong. The anger was not directed at her. We spoke about how she could change her stress response around by self-talk. Firstly, she made sure she removed herself from the situation so she didn’t have to hear their outburst (an example of a healthy stress response is to remove yourself if possible). Then she started self-talking – telling herself (as with the previous example) “It is my partner’s problem not mine”. She started to delve into why they were angry and told herself “This isn’t a reflection on me, it is a reflection of problems my partner has” and “I am more than capable of ignoring their anger” and “I feel sorry for them because it can’t feel good to be out of control” and “I am not a child any more, anger from other people does not impact me”. After practising her self-talk, she was then able to walk away from the situation feeling calm instead of stressed and anxious. Once she started to feel calmer about their anger they were able to discuss it rationally and they addressed the anger issues.
I must emphasise that if the anger of a partner steps over the boundary and into abuse of any sort, then the best stress response is always to immediately remove yourself from the situation, taking yourself out of harm’s way and then consider what your future options are.
Even chronic low levels of stress impact every part of the body, so it is important to work daily on this. Probably the most important aspect of it all is to teach yourself to be aware of what is happening and “nip the stress in the bud” so to speak to stop the cortisol from increasing, then start talking.
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