This month, our mental wellness specialist, Philippa Saunders, talks about how to break the stress cycle
I’m sure it’s not news to you that stress can have a hugely negative effect on your personal and professional life, as well as your health and wellbeing.
The body’s stress response is actually designed to help us and keep us safe – running away from something genuinely threatening is a really important reaction to have. But if we are oversensitive to perceived threats, and don’t believe that we would cope well in a situation, we can keep the stress response turned on. And when it stays on for prolonged periods, it starts harming you.
How well are you managing your stress levels?
Imagine stress as what you experience in the moment, and anxiety as the stress you create about something in the future or past. Both are created by the way you react to events, rather than the event themselves (some people love dogs, some have a phobia of them – it cannot be that the dog is genuinely terrifying or we’d all feel terrified). It is our thinking that keeps the stress response turned on. If your general stress levels are quite high, you’re going to go ‘into the red’ quicker than someone whose stress level is quite low.
Imagine a ‘stress-o-meter’, like a revometer in a car, with a dial numbered one to 10. One is the most relaxed you can be, 10 is very stressed - when you’ve gone into your ‘red zone’. At this point, you have lost all perspective and it’s difficult to think clearly. Where are you on that scale right now?
Most people have a level that they can get to and still stay relatively calm and in control. If they can stay below this number, they will prevent themselves from getting really stressed or anxious. If they go above this number, they get stressed very quickly and begin to lose perspective. When we have more stressful thoughts, like “I can’t do this”, “It’s overwhelming”, “I’m never going to get it done”, we creep up this scale. We start to believe our thoughts, rather than challenging them, which causes us to feel more stressed, and then we create more stressful thoughts… cue a downward spiral. The more stressed you are, the less perspective you have because of the amount of emotion that you are generating. These high levels of stress continue, you believe your thoughts and bam, you’re stuck in the stress cycle.
Breaking your stress cycle
If you’ve got yourself stressed, angry and upset, you can reset to a much calmer emotional state by following these three steps:
Recognise that you have got yourself stressed and that your stress needle is officially in the red of your stressometer.
Realise that you have created this state by the way that you have reacted to events. Even if you don’t know how or why at this time.
Reset. Choose to reset, to calm yourself down and get out of the red zone by doing the following:
Focus for a few moments on your breathing; slow it down. Try breathing in for five, holding it for five, then breathing out for 10. Just a few minutes helps calm your vagus nerve and completes the stress response.
Recognise that you might be thinking in a catastrophic or black-and-white way and that you need to start thinking in a calmer way. Keep saying to yourself, “it doesn’t matter if X (insert as appropriate) happens, I’ll cope” and “It will be ok”. This will help calm your thinking and help you regain perspective.
Change your attitude to that of someone who feels powerful. If you have an attitude of “I can do this”, “I can cope with this”, you will find it much easier to manage your breathing and thinking. Really try to believe it when you say these things, and create a powerful attitude.
Strategies for reducing stress
Identify your stressors – there may be several things causing you to create stress all at once. When you have identified them, look for possible ways to avoid these stressors.
Check-in regularly during the day where you are on your stressometer. This is a great way to catch yourself as you’re climbing up your stress levels and then to intervene before you head into the ‘red zone’.
Physical activity – walking, running, dancing around the kitchen, it all counts. Because stress is physical, physical activity is a big part of ending stress cycles.
Physical contact – a long hug (20+ seconds), or time with a pet - these release the bonding hormone oxytocin that shifts the sense of danger that your body was holding onto. Hormones shift, our heart rate slows, we feel calmer.
Laughter – laughing is a great way to disarm anger and to express emotions we are keeping inside. Especially when you can laugh with someone else.
Know what helps you calm down. This could be lots of things from the list above, and might be different for different situations, but they all reduce the intensity of the emotion you create and allow you to think more healthy and helpful thoughts, instead of getting into that spiral.
Philippa Saunders is a licensed ThriveR Coach based in Knutsford. You can find her on Instagram @thrive.with.philippa and Facebook @thrivewithphilippa
