Managing Stress

    Welcome and welcome back! It’s the remix to ignition! Nah, I’m just kidding – but that’s a good song though. Anyway, this is kind of like Stress Part II: Armed and Fabulous. Okay, enough with the obscure pop culture references. This is a follow up to the discussion we had about stress – stress management.

The Concept

                If you haven’t had a chance to read through the stress 101 post, I recommend that you do that to help get a basic understanding of what stress is before diving into managing it. Alright, that’s done. Welcome back. Okay, stress management is a set of activities to decrease the negative (bad or undesired) effects of stress on your body, your relationships, and your quality of life.  Stress management is specifically focused on chronic stressors, those situations that are pretty constant for awhile. It’s about helping your body to continue functioning at its best because stress wears down the body. The body’s stress response redirects energy from our “rest and digest” functions to power the “fight or flight” functions to help us escape or fight off a danger. Well, you can imagine, our rest and digest systems need energy too! Otherwise, we don’t have the energy to power the rest of the body – like the immune system! Stress management is designed to guide energy back to the rest and digest (maintenance) parts of the body.

    

            

    So how do we do it? One way is to physically support our body to be able to function better. This means getting good quality and regular sleep, eating nutritious meals, drinking plenty of water, getting regular exercise, showering, brushing your teeth, and staying regular on any medications we take. All of those things are daily, routine activities that support our body to be the most functional it can be.  Another set of activities is manually shifting the body from “fight and flight” to “rest and digest” – aka RELAXING! These activities include: meditation, yoga, deep breathing, being in nature, coloring, journaling, praying or reading the Bible, reading in general, going for a walk, talking to friends/family, playing a game, cooking/baking, listening to music, or petting an animal.

                Other stress management techniques include getting rid of unnecessary stressors. Unnecessary stress could be a toxic relationship, self-criticism, perfectionism, trying to do everything yourself rather than asking for help, or being involved in too many things. The stress management would be terminating the relationship, setting boundaries, increasing your positive self-talk, and asking for help. The goal is to support your mental, emotional, and physical selves to be able to handle the necessary challenges in life. Remember that stress is challenge.

Why It Matters

Actually, earlier today I was talking with a client who talks about feeling “overwhelmed”, “drained”, and “just done”.  I used the analogy of a bath tub. Imagine you’re a bathtub.  Your energy is the water. The goal is to keep you filled up with energy to be able to live your life without feeling drained and tired all of the time. Each stressor in your life is a drain. Stress management is both plugging the drains and turning on the faucet.  In order to avoid being drained, we have to match the input and output. Meaning, the more stress (or challenge) you have in your life, the more stress management you have to do! Maybe that means setting boundaries, saying no, or challenging that perfectionist in you. Maybe that means setting a regular sleep schedule and eating a salad instead of a donut.

We have to slow down. Our society is always saying “go, go, go”. There’s this mentality that if we CAN do more, then we SHOULD do more. Here’s a crazy idea: maybe doing less IS doing more. Imagine not forcing yourself to fill every night with an activity, but actually letting yourself enjoy doing nothing for a change. Or, maybe you actively do something relaxing.  Perhaps that means reading a book or playing a game instead of zoning out in front of the tv. I read in a fortune cookie once, “you’re tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a flame in you”. Notice what gives you energy. Do more of those things.

Action Item

                Find yourself a nice warm, cozy place. Grab your blanket, tea, or puppy to snuggle up with. Close your eyes. Exhale fully, using the muscles of your stomach to gently push the air out. Inhale, feel the air come in through your nostrils. Move down your throat. Follow it down past your chest and into your belly, filling it like a balloon. Once you feel full, exhale again using the stomach muscles to softly guide the air out of the stomach, back out the throat and lastly the nostrils. Maybe notice what it feels like to be empty of air. Inhale again noticing the air travel through nostrils, throat, chest, and into the deepest part of the belly. Notice the fullness. Then exhale again. Continue for a few cycles of breath on your own.

Take a moment to notice what it felt like to slow down and become aware of something as simple as breathing in and out. Feel free to journal about this experience, and even to transition into the following questions, should you be so inclined.

Questions to Consider

• How can I tell when I’m feeling mentally/emotionally/physically drained?
• Where in my body do I feel stress?
• Who can I go to that will support me?
• What are my biggest drains? How can I make them smaller or plug them up?
• What are my strongest sources of energy? How can I make them even stronger?

 

Thank you again for allowing me a place on your journey to self-discovery. It is such an honor to share your time and energy.

As always, feel free to leave any questions/comments/experiences in the comments section.

 

Namaste.