How to Better Manage Your Stress Response
Please, take a minute to reflect on how stress affects you.
Specifically, I urge you to think about how we manage stress in a connected and isolated environment. Doing this exercise can be both insightful and difficult, so I recommend giving it a go! Chances are, it will become immediately apparent which environments are typically stressful for you. Yes, there are several sources of stress in our lives, but I’m willing to bet something came to mind immediately when trying to identify the main sources. On a personal note, the first kind of stress that came up was related to work. Work is one of the most common stressors in people’s lives, and when it is prevalent, it is typically because we have a large amount of work that needs to be completed with little time to do so. When this is the case, different people need different strategies to cope. Personally, I learned that my best coping strategy for work related stress, is to isolate and attack my work until I feel I have a better handle on it. However, if I am stressed for any other reason, isolating typically makes the issue worse. It can compound the issue and, without others around to keep my perspective in place, I can get lost in the idea that the whole world is troubled like I am. Take a minute to ask yourselves some of these questions and reflect on your most effective coping strategies that have worked for you in the past. Next, write down your top 3 answers!
Although it will likely depend on your personality (introvert, extrovert, etc.) it is important to recognize whether being around others has an impact on your stress levels. While I consider myself an ambivert, I tilt towards extroversion who generally enjoys being around others. When I am stressed, I find that being in the company of others often helps me. However, this might have a different effect for you and understanding this could help you make informed choices on how to handle future stress! Connecting with others can keep our perspectives intact, allowing us to not over-stress and sometimes provide a welcome distraction. Furthermore, if we are willing to discuss our stress inducing issues, we typically find that others have been through the same thing that we have… or at least a situation that is similar. This knowledge that we are not alone is powerful, and should not be undervalued. It can provides immediate relief. If there are no people around when we face an issue, simply researching the problem can be validating and comforting.
I’d like to end with an interesting thought exercise: when observing a herd of impala, who are faced with a threat, the first impala to notice will typically perk up when it notices a lion or another potential predator approaching. This stressful reaction causes a chain reaction, like a kind of hot potato that gets passed around - one animal perks up… and then pretty soon the whole herd is looking in the same direction and ready to take off. This same phenomenon is observable in humans. When one person gets stressed, that “hot potato” is then passed to the group around them until everyone is on high alert. However, if the group around them absorbs the stress and remains calm, that calm response subconsciously signals that there is no threat present and therefore no reason to be on alert! In other words, if enough people act calmly in a group, the effects are contagious. Keep this in mind the next time you are dealing with a stressful situation, and remember - feelings are contagious!
While some people shut down when faced with stress, others notice their tendency to persevere. Either way, learning about stress and the creative ways in which we tend to approach stress can invoke self-awareness and be useful information. At best, these exercises can urge us to have meaningful and healing conversations with those closest to us. Someone who pull’s away and avoids stress may be driven by a painful experience as pulling away is usually a strategy employed to prevent further pain from occurring. I believe that cultivating a willingness to discuss our stress can be a powerful tool in life, allowing us to better manage ourselves and the relationships we carry through life. One key aspects of better mental health, is better stress-management, so I encourage you to become familiar with your relationship with it!
