Let’s Talk About Stress
I’m absolutely delighted to be asked to write this guest blog about stress for Mindset Maintenance CIC. I’m Charli and I’m the founder of Think Big Do Bigger. We’re a burnout and stress management coaching and consultancy company working primarily (but not completely exclusively!) with frontline workers and trauma informed services. I wasn’t always a coach, it was my own experience of burnout whilst working in frontline homelessness services, which led me to realise the need for greater awareness around stress and a better way for people to be able to tackle it.
What is stress?
I’d like you to imagine for a moment. You’ve had a long day, you’ve just finished dinner, done the washing up and left it on the side to dry (For all of you lucky enough to have a dishwasher – work with me here, let’s pretend it’s broken for now!). You sit down on the sofa and start watching your favourite TV show. You’re starting to relax from your day and suddenly you hear an almighty crash! Now for some of you, you’ll leap out of your seat to investigate, for others, you’ll stay put, but either way, as soon as you hear the crash, you’ll feel your heart rate increase and a pounding in your chest, you’re now hyper alert. It’s that feeling we describe as ‘making us jump’.
In a physiological sense, what’s just happened is that your limbic system (the primitive part of your brain that controls your instinctive survival responses) has identified the unexpected noise as a threat, triggering a release of hormones to initiate the stress response (cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline), also known as ‘fight or flight’. This automatic and primitive process is a completely normal phenomena, designed to keep us alive! Once activated the hormones cause an increase in blood flow and glucose, to fuel our muscles with the energy they need to keep us safe. We become physically ready to fight or take flight from the threat.
How do we recover from Stress?
Now after the initial shock you feel from the crash, you’ll likely do one of two things. One, you’ll go into the kitchen to investigate and notice the saucepan that’s just fallen of the side and onto the floor. Or two, the ‘intellectual’ or ‘rational’ part of your brain will wake up and tell yourself ‘I’ve heard that noise before, it’s just something falling off the draining board’. Either way, the rational part of your brain is now back in control, you feel your heart rate return to normal and you’re no longer looking around for the possible danger. As long our bodies can return to their baseline state, the stress response is actually highly useful, not just to keep us safe from harm, but also for times when we would benefit from increased performance. The most common examples here would be during competitive sports or meeting a deadline when the stress response gives us that extra push to achieve our goals.
Can stress be bad for us?
When we are exposed to too many threats or stressors, and we lack the tools to adequately manage our symptoms, we develop what is called chronic stress. If left unmanaged, chronic stress can lead to a whole range of physical, mental, and emotional issues. We will start to experience symptoms throughout our bodies such as headaches, stomach-aches, irritability, sleep disturbances, back and neck pain, and increased colds. Chronic stress can have an impact on almost every system within our bodies. Not only this, it’s also likely that chronic stress will impact on our relationships, poor sleep and irritability puts a strain on things and we become less patient and more prone to snapping at others or misunderstanding things, thus creating even more difficulties in our lives. Eventually, we feel completely overwhelmed, and we experience burn out.
This prolonged exposure to stress and its impact on our bodies greatly increases the risk of developing long-term and serious health conditions such as anxiety, depression, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. We tend to brush off stress as something quite insignificant, however the reality is far from it.
How can we avoid chronic stress?
When I coach people experiencing stress and burnout, we always begin by exploring the impact stress is having on all the different areas of their life – work, family, relationships, self-care, health, hobbies etc. As they look at their situation more closely, most people discover that chronic stress is negatively impacting many, if not all areas of their life. At this point we can start to imagine what their world would look like without stress and what is holding them back from making this a reality. By considering alternative perspectives and options it becomes possible to see a clearer pathway out of chronic stress and begin taking the steps needed to get there.
Learning to manage your stress isn’t just about healthier living. Sure, exercise, eating healthily, mindfulness, breathing exercises etc. all go a long way in reducing and managing your stress levels and I strongly encourage anyone to start implementing them into their daily lives. But when it comes to chronic stress, we need to address the cause, not just manage the symptoms. Stress coaching takes you on a journey where you come to understand the root causes of your stress. It enables you to challenge your mindset around the things that trigger your stress and consider alternative ways of viewing the situation. Reframing how you see and respond to your stressors, coupled with a few helpful tools for managing the symptoms of stress when they arise, can place you well on the way to reducing and managing your stress for the long-term.
You can find out more about the coaching services I offer as well as my work place solutions such as workshops, employee assistance and service evaluations at our website www.thinkbigdobigger.co.uk and follow us on Facebook and Instagram for tips and tools for managing and reducing stress.
