The best way to handle stress and stressful situations
As someone who used to be so stressed out I would climb under my desk each afternoon and cry, I understand how difficult living with chronic stress can be. I also know that left to run rampant in your life it leads to burnout, illness, disorder, and disease.
If you’re struggling with stress, or frequently find yourself in stressful situations, this post is for you! I’m covering several tips and techniques to help you not only deal with stress in the moment, but to prevent stress in the future.
Stress isn’t something to be proud of
In our culture we often treat stress like a badge of honor rather than the terribly debilitating thing it is. We’ve come to believe that the higher our stress, the more it demonstrates how valuable we are and how irreplaceable our contributions in many facets of our lives. But the truth is that chronic stress is simply a statement that you need to get clear on your unique priorities, you need to construct better boundaries, and you need more consistent self-care in your life.
Let’s talk about what stress is:
Stress is your body’s response to a perceived threat. It’s a triggering of your sympathetic nervous system, also known as the fight, flight, or freeze response. Learn more about the physiology behind this response.
So at the core, to reduce stress you need to remove the belief that what is causing your stress is a threat. And while simple in explanation, this requires a lot of introspection.
What belief is behind your stress
Start by examining what’s behind the stress. For example, if you’re stressed about a project at work, are you worried that:
- If you perform poorly your job will be in jeopardy?
- That if you don’t finish on time you won’t get a raise or bonus?
- Not reaching someone else’s standards for the project will cause your boss, coworkers, or clients to think less of you?
Is that belief true, and if so, is it really that bad?
Once you drill down to what’s behind the stress, you can start to think about how realistic it actually is. And if it is a realistic outcome, examine (again realistically) how dire the result of that outcome would actually be.
For example – if you fear that poorly executing a project would cause you to lose your job, and you truly believe that’s a realistic fear, consider why would you do poorly on the project:
- Are you out of your depth in the position?
- Do you dislike the work and so aren’t giving it your full attention?
- Are you overwhelmed and overworked and can’t give any project the attention it deserves?
- And then consider, would losing that job and having the opportunity to find a better fit be the worst thing in the world?
Once you’ve realistically and objectively looked at the pieces that go into the situation causing you stress, you’re able to shift your perspective to see opportunity instead of fear and worry. And this in turn reduces your stress levels.
I’m so stressed I can’t begin to answer those questions
If you’re so overwhelmed with stress right now that this level of examination feels like too much, I want to give you something a little easier to implement. The audible exhale is a tool that will allow you to immediately get relief from your stress.
When your body is in parasympathetic nervous system response, also known as rest and digest mode, your breathing is slow and relaxed. By intentionally breathing in this way, you’re able to send a message to your body to trigger it to shift away from stress and into a more relaxed state. When combined with a visualization, this becomes even more powerful.
The importance of self-care
An additional tool to help manage stress is to implement a self-care routine.
When you have a consistent self-care routine, and are regularly refilling your mental, physical, and emotional energy reserves, you’re more resilient and better able to handle the little bumps in the road of life without being thrown off track.
The more resilient you are, the easier it will be for you to see a situation realistically without defaulting to the worst case scenario which then causes you to spiral into stress.
To learn more about building a self-care routine that works for you, grab your copy of my FREE Self-Care Toolkit today.
I’m sending you a great big hug – you’ve got this!
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