Stress is so ubiquitous in our society that we often don’t give it much thought beyond describing ourselves as being stressed. But having a good understanding of the stress cycle can make a significant difference to how we manage it.
In
their book, Burnout, Emily and Amelia Nagoski describe the stress cycle as another
biological process in our bodies that has a beginning, a middle and an
end. They emphasise the fact that
dealing with your stress response is a separate process to dealing with the
things that cause your stress, the stressors.
Stressors
are the innumerate number of things
that cause us stress every day. The work
project, the job interview, our commute to work, being a parent… All of these things have the capacity to activate
the threat response in our bodies.
Stress,
on the other hand, is the
physiological response that happens in our bodies when our threat response is
activated. This response gets a lot of
bad press but it is fundamental to our survival and developed to keep us safe
in hostile environments. Imagine if one
of our ancestors is walking through the wood and they meet a lion (stressor),
what they need in that moment is their brain to immediately spot the lion and activate
their stress response to either attack (Fight), run away (Flight) or play dead
(Freeze). What is interesting about this
scenario is that most of us believe that it is getting away from the lion
(stressor) that reduces our stress when, in fact, it is the act of running or fighting
that returns our bodies to a calm state. This is what our threat system was built
for, short sharp busts of hyperarousal to help us survive life threatening
situations.
Most
modern-day stress is not created by lions but things that we experience everyday
- our commute to work, being a parent, an aggressive work colleague, meeting
deadlines… Each of these things can activate our stress response but since it
is not life threatening, we generally try to ignore the stress and keep moving
forward. But this is not a great plan. Every
time we experience stress our bodies are flooded with neurochemicals like
adrenaline and cortisol. If we
experience this stress response infrequently and for short periods of time it
has little or no impact on our emotional and physical health. But most people are not that lucky, most of
us experience ongoing low-levels of stress which we now know can have significant
consequences for our health and wellbeing.
So,
what do we do?
What
most of us would like to do is to remove the stress from our lives – who
doesn’t want to take the day off when work is stressful or not bother paying
the bills when money is tight … stress is part and parcel of life nobody gets
away stress free. Of course, this
doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and reduce the stressors in our lives, we
should, but this is not enough we also need to pay attention to how we support
our bodies to manage the days stress. And
we do this in two ways
·
We engage in
activities that allow out bodies to siphon off the build up of neurochemicals
·
We send a clear
signal to our bodies that we are now safe and the stress response can stand
down
The
Nagoski sisters give us some really good practical ideas about how to do this….
Move
your body: This is the single most effective
way to reduce the hyperarousal in our body and the good news is that any kind
of physical activity is an effective strategy for completing the cycle. This might be a 5-minute kitchen disco (recommend
Lady Gaga), ten jumping jacks or even a short walk around the block. It really doesn’t matter what it is just as
long as you are moving.
Breath: I know I know we are sick of people telling
us to breath, but breathing is an actual superpower. When you take slow steady breaths, this
activates something called the parasympathetic nervous system. This is essentially the bodies relaxation
switch and our bodies literally has no choice but to reduce the level of
hyperarousal when this switch has been flicked. Maybe
start with breathing in for 5 and out for 7 and repeat 4-5 times and see how
you feel. The most important thing to remember is to keep the exhalation longer
than the inhalation.
Positive
social interactions: Casual friendly
chat is one of the first ways of letting our brains know that the world is safe. These can be big or small interactions; it
might be saying thank you to the cashier in the supermarket or chatting to the
guy next to you in the queue. This is a super helpful way of letting out brains
know all is well.
20
second hug: I love this
one. If you hug someone you love and
trust for a full 20 seconds the research suggests that this will change your
hormone levels, lower your blood pressure and even improve your mood. It lets your body know you have survived the
threat and are now home safe. This works
best if both people involved stand over their own centre of gravity.
Crying:
Have you ever had to leave a stressful
situation and just have a big cry; I have and while I don’t particularly enjoy crying,
I almost always feel better afterwards.
And the reason for this is that when we cry, our tears are actually a
way of releasing the stress hormones in our bodies.
Laughing:
If crying feels too scary or hard
laughing is also really effective at regulating our emotions and reducing our
hyperarousal. When I work with children,
I know that giggling is a sign that they are in a relaxed state. For laughing to be helpful it needs to be genuine,
the kind of laughing where your sides start to ache and your whole body shakes
a little bit😊
How
will we know when we have completed the cycle?
Some
people are really good at recognising this and for others it is really hard. We might experience it as a shift in mood or
maybe a shift in how tense our body feels.
For many of us it’s that relaxed feeling we get when we come back from a
run, we are not sure why we feel better we just do.
What
is important to remember is that most of us are going to experience some level
of stress every day and this means we need to build some way of completing the
cycle into every day, Some days you will do more and some days you will do
less and that’s OK, consistency is so much more important than intensity.
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