Stress is a word I hear a lot – from friends, family, clients, and sometimes even out of my own mouth.
How often do you find yourself saying you’re ‘stressed out’ or using the word ‘stressful’ to describe your situation? We use it for everything from trying to multi-task work situations to the emotions that come from grief and loss. Kids misbehave? Mom and dad are stressed. Workload overwhelming? Boss is stressing us out. New bills piling up on the counter? Life is stressful. Marital discord? Stress at home. Planning for a big family vacation? More stress.
What is Stress?
Given we all experience stress, we intuitively know what it is. But to better understand stress, let’s look at its most common definition – a condition or feeling experienced when someone perceives that “demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.” Basically, stress comes when things feel out of control for us.
Things we consider to be difficult to manage right now may actually be pleasant and exciting at other times. The number and the degree of the weight of the demands on us is directly proportional to our ability to manage them. For example, you may normally be incredibly excited for your upcoming wedding, but if you’re also experiencing a job change, new home, financial changes, and other variances in your life, it can be very hard to cope with it all.
Our Response to Stress
Are you familiar with the “fight or flight” instinct? “Fight or flight” is the idea that when faced with a perceived threat or stressful situation, an organism will release hormones to help it survive. These hormones help us to either fight harder (fight) or run faster (flight). When experiencing a fight or flight reaction to a stressful situation, our bodies experience a number of things:
- an increase in heart rate and blood pressure
- more oxygen and blood sugar delivered to our muscles
- an increase in sweating to help cool those muscles
- blood diverted away from the skin to limit blood loss if we are hurt
- our attention focuses on the threat – excluding everything else
This reaction doesn’t just occur with life-threatening events. It happens any time we come across something that hinders our goals or is unexpected or….wait for it….stressful. When the threat is minimal, our response is minimal and probably unnoticed. But when we’re overwhelmed by the number of stressors or the magnitude of one, the results of the fight or flight instinct also have negative consequences:
- more irritability and anxiety
- difficulty in our relationships with people
- difficulty with precision and skills that require calm focus
- poor judgment and decision making based on limited sources
- more accident prone
- exhaustion and burnout
- headaches
- heartburn and other gastrointestinal issues
- panic attacks
- excessive or inadequate sleep
- significant weight loss or gain
How Much Stress Can You Manage?
So, given we experience a variety of life events, how much can we handle? Better yet, how many things can you manage before the scales are tipped and things push you overboard?
It’s important to note that not all “stressors” have equal weight and equal impact. The stress from a change in careers doesn’t necessarily compare with the loss of a loved one. Because of this variance, it helps to have a scale for measuring and scoring your total stress load.
The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale
In the late 1960’s a couple of psychiatrists developed a study on stress to determine whether or not it contributed to illness. Thomas Holms and Richard Rahe developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale – known as the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale – to help measure the stress we experience and what to do with it.
They surveyed over 5,000 medical patients and questioned them on 43 different life events they may or may not have experienced in the previous two years. They then assigned a Life Change Unit (LCU) or different magnitude for each stressor. Thus, the more life events the patient claimed to have, the higher the score added up. What they found was that the higher the score and the greater the weight of each event, the more likely the patient was to develop an illness.
You can take the stress inventory by clicking here: Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale.
Managing Your Stress
In order to manage your stress, you need to identify where it is coming from. Ask yourself questions like: What events have led to my stress? Where has my focus been? What responses have I shown? Based on the source of your stress, there are different ways to manage it, but they all require a change.
- Change your external stimuli.
When stress is caused by external factors – work, too many demands on your time, other people, etc – you have to make some choices and changes.
- Use calendars, lists, and automated systems to help you better manage your time.
- Prioritize your daily tasks and allow yourself to say “no” to things that need to wait.
- Avoid multitasking and overuse of electronics.
- Take intentional breaks from social media and television.
- Create boundaries and stick to them.
- Communicate your needs to your family.
- Avoid workplace “drama” and leave work at work as much as you can.
- Change your thinking.
A lot of our stress comes from our perspective. As mentioned above, stress can cause us to hyperfocus on the threat. Additionally, negative thinking produces more stress.
- Create a gratitude journal to write down 5 things daily that you’re thankful for. This will help shift your focus to positive thoughts.
- Use visualization exercises to picture yourself releasing your stress. You can picture it as a balloon you release into the air or as a heavy rock that you sit down and walk away from. Silly as it may sound, the visualization forces you to stop, pause, and alter mental patterns of negative thought.
- Use positive affirmations to redirect your thoughts. I know people who keep sticky notes on their computers/mirrors/dashboard/etc and background pictures on their phones of affirmative quotes, bible verses, or sayings.
- Change your reaction.
There will be things you just cannot control. You cannot control death. You cannot control the way that other people treat you. Some situations are just genuinely bad and we have no power to change them. But, we can change our reactions to them.
- Use relaxation techniques like prayer, meditation, and breathing exercises to calm yourself.
- Keep a close network of family and friends to support you and help you.
- Get enough sleep and exercise so you can more easily bounce back from stress.
- Learn to view some stressors as a chance to build resilience and grit so you’re better able to overcome future obstacles.
Finally, consider talking to a counselor about what you’re experiencing. A trained professional will help you identify stress causing events and thoughts and will help you develop practices like the ones above and more. You’ll learn to process, manage, and release your stress so you can become a healthier version of you. Let the mending begin. Contact me today to chat.
– Joel