
Stress Awareness Day 6 November 2024
Stress ebbs and flows. It’s an inevitability. While some may have more resources for managing stress – whether emotional, relational, temporal or financial – we will all experience its impact. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t all learn to live alongside stress.
Get to know your stress
When we’re stressed, we experience emotional, cognitive, physical and behavioural symptoms. They’re our stress fingerprint and as individual as the whorls on our fingers. We may first experience a pit in our stomach, headaches, or a feeling of panic. Getting acquainted with our stress symptoms is a vital starting point. Next time you’re feeling stressed, take a moment. Pause. Notice. How do I feel in myself? Tense? Achy? Where are my thoughts at? Veering towards the negative, neutral or positive? How do I feel? Anxious and on edge? Angry? Vulnerable? Tearful? Or surprisingly, calm?
By getting into a regular habit of checking in, we can notice when the tide starts to change. Having this awareness allows us to be curious about what’s causing it. Is there something going on in our lives now? Or are we anticipating something that is making us feel this way? The key here is to get in early and get ahead, putting techniques in place to help us when stress hits.
Befriend your stress
This may sound counterintuitive. But once we understand our stress better, and where it’s coming from, we’re in a good position to start befriending our stress. We will all feel anxious at times and fighting it will be a losing battle. Instead, accept stress as a natural response to a difficult situation.
We need to rethink stress. It our body’s alarm system, alerting us to when something is causing us discomfort or making us feel unsafe or afraid. It’s a lifesaving mechanism for emergency situations. But, just like a smoke alarm goes off during a fire, it also goes off when we burn the toast. It doesn’t differentiate between life-threatening and non-life-threatening situations. And neither does our stress response. So, let’s understand our stress for what it is. It’s there to help us – a friend not foe – keeping us well both in body and mind.
Work with your stress
So, what are some of these strategies? First, accept that we may not feel as motivated or be as productive. Focus on the most important tasks. Delegate or delay the others. A traffic light to-do list may be helpful. Habit bundling can help us find motivation by pairing a chore we don’t enjoy with one we do, such as listening to a podcast while washing up.
Secondly, we need to look after ourselves. Consider what our unmet needs are. Are we craving connection? An escape? An energy boost? Relaxation? Spend time with others. Talk about how you feel. Get some support. Distract yourself with a good book, a puzzle, or artistic pursuit. Get outdoors for a walk or run. Do some exercise or yoga. Engage in some mindfulness or have an early night. Refuelling ourselves holistically during hard times gives us extra bandwidth to cope better.
Lastly, be patient and kind with ourselves. Reach for extra support if you need it. Remember, it’s a normal and understandable reaction to stressful events. And we can all learn to manage it better.