Managing Stress
According to Mr Google stress is “A state of mental or emotional strain or tension”. That sounds about right to me. With regards to the term “Managing” Mr Google advises this is having “executive control or authority over”. So it make sense to me that Managing Stress quite simply means we have control over our response to our own mental or emotional strain.
The term control means different things to different people so for the sake of this blog I am using the term of control in the context of what action we take to mitigate stress. That is both expected so as a result of normal work & life balance stress, and what actions we take after an event that triggers a lot of unexpected stress. To be clear, stress is a normal part of the human experience, we don’t want to get rid of it as at the right level the discomfort of it motivates us to take action. It is only when the thoughts creating it are primarily negative that it becomes overwhelming and that is a problem because this usually leaves us feeling stuck.
If you have been following me or reading my blogs, you will know that just like any other feeling, stress is caused by our thoughts (sentences in our heads) about the event, not the event itself. We know this because we all know of people, such as brothers and sisters, who have experienced the exact same childhood, but when they share the experience the stories are very different, often to the point where you think they must have grown up in separate households. This phenomenon simply comes down to people having different thoughts about the same experience. Even now when we are all sharing the COVID experience everyone is affected differently. If it was the event causing how we think and feel we would all feel the same, but we don’t.
This is great news, because this means if our thoughts and feelings aren’t serving us we have the ability to change them. I’ll try and explain this better. So one person may have thoughts about catching COVID and becoming ill, they will likely feel fear and from that emotional state they might choose not to leave the house, with the result being that they feel isolated and even more fearful. This is not a healthy or helpful place to live from, however upon realising what they are creating for themselves they could choose to think something else such as, “I’m less likely to catch COVID if I always wear a mask in public”, this may result in a feeling of confidence with the resulting action being wearing a mask at all times in public and creating the result that they don’t catch COVID.
Now you might think this is a bit too simple, don’t be fooled it is a simple example, but this is how the brain works. Our circumstances are neutral until we give them meaning with a thought about them, which produces a feeling, which drives our action, which creates our result. This is the process whether we use our prefrontal cortex and consciously chose our thoughts or whether we let past default learnings chose our thoughts.
If you can relate to this and are finding yourself more irritable than usual, watching more TV than you want or eating when you’re not hungry it is possible that your level of stress is building and your taking these actions in an attempt to avoid the feeling of stress. I promise you this doesn’t work and in fact it usually adds more stress because we aren’t moving forward or getting the results we want and the thoughts behind it simply build momentum.
A simple but highly effective thing to do If you’re feeling stressed is to go find yourself a pen and a piece of paper. Write down all the thoughts you are having about the circumstance you think is causing you the stress (remember its not, its your thoughts). Once your thoughts are down on paper look over them and pick one of the thoughts that feels the most painful or unhelpful. Ask yourself, is it true? What’s the evidence? Why am I choosing this thought? How would I feel without this thought? What would I like to think or feel? Really listen to yourself, get curious, the answers are often enlightening and allow you to really understand. These kinds of questions can help you find your way to more helpful thoughts which result in a better feeling state that supports more helpful actions and results.
If you want to learn to effectively manage stress go to my website www.pampoole.co.nz and take advantage of a free 15 minute introduction session.
