Managing Stress

How often do you say “I’m stressed” or “This is stressful”? You may even say this daily. But are you helping?

Do you understand what stress is, how it’s caused, and most importantly, how to effectively manage your stress? You cannot eliminate all stress from your life but, you can learn more about it to reduce its effects. You deserve to be as stress-free as possible👏

👆 What is stress? At its very core stress is the nonspecific response of the body to a demand (Selye 1936). Stress is your body's physical or mental response to a stressor. There is negative stress which is referred to as distress and there is positive stress which is referred to as eustress. The concept of positive stress may sound strange, but it can be caused by seemingly positive situations (e.g., holidays or weddings). When you experience stress caused by a favorable situation, you must remember to be compassionate with yourself. All feelings of stress are valid🤗.

👆 What causes stress? The cause of stress is difficult to label as stress has a different meaning for different people under different conditions (Fink 2020). People uniquely interpret an event and have unique subsequent thinking patterns afterward. The experience of stress differs significantly between individuals. Stress is a universal feeling but what causes one person stress may not cause the same response for another.

👉 Research exploring the cause of stress identified some of the most stressful life events someone can experience. This was achieved by examining people's health records and looking at common life events they experienced in the past two years. Some of these include: 🔷 Death of a spouse 🔷 Divorce 🔷 Marital Separation 🔷 Jail term 🔷 Death of a close family member 🔷 Personal injury or illness 🔷 Marriage 🔷 Fired at work 🔷 Marital reconciliation 🔷 Retirement (Holmes and Rahe 1967)

👆 Why is managing stress important?

👉 You mustn’t let yourself become used to feeling stressed. You need to manage your present stress and take positive action to reduce further stress where possible. Because experiencing prolonged stress is detrimental to your mental and physical wellbeing. Hans Selye was a scientist and is often referred to as the founder of the stress theory. He was the first person to identify stress as causing signs and symptoms of illness and developed the General Adaption Syndrome theory (Selye 1936). There are three stages to this theory:

🔶 Alarm – This stage is when your fight or flight response is activated in response to the behaviour/environment that you perceive as stressful. In this stage, you might notice physical symptoms such as an increased heart rate or a change in breathing. 🔶 Resistance – You then transition into the resistance stage. This stage is where your body tries to recover and repair from the alarm stage. If you can successfully respond to the initial stress you experienced, the physical responses you experienced in the alarm stage return to normal. However, if the stress continues those physical responses continue. This prolonged stress can cause health issues. 🔶 Exhaustion – If you were not able to recover in the resistance stage and your body continued experiencing the physical symptoms. You may now enter the exhaustion stage. This is where your body now becomes exhausted from enduring the stressor. This can result in you experiencing health problems.

👆 How to improve your ability to manage stress?

👉 The Theory of Cognitive Appraisal (Lazarus and Folkman 1984) states when you experience stress, you first appraise the stressor and determine how stressful it is. For example, your car has broken down. This is the stressor. You may think this occurring is not important because your new car is arriving tomorrow. You might think this is good because it has given you an excuse to not drive somewhere you were dreading going. You may think this is stressful because now you have to use savings to pay for it. Your brain then decides if this stressor is a threat meaning it can cause you future harm (e.g., now you have fewer savings) or a challenge (e.g., now you’re more motivated to save for a more reliable car to avoid this happening in the future and you’ll get fitter cycling the ten minutes to work while you save). While the primary appraisal is happening, your brain is simultaneously conducting a secondary appraisal. This stage is where you are looking at your coping resources to determine if you can cope with the situation.

✍️ This theory is worth explaining to you because it can be used to IMPROVE YOUR ABILITY to manage stress✨. The lessons from this theory are:

✍️ How you perceive the stressor can drastically improve or worsen your experience of stress. You may be thinking to yourself how can you not perceive the stressor as negative? Of course, you will be stressed if your car is broken down. But, this is not a stressor you can control. So by changing your perception of the stressor from “this is so stressful” to “Ok, this has happened, what can I do now to improve this situation” it gives you a positive appraisal. ✍️ If you have good coping resources in your life, then when something stressful occurs you will be able to handle it better. So, take action to develop/improve your coping resources. For example, building and maintaining a good support network, having a good sleep schedule, and being healthy.

👉 Managing Stress Example: John signed up to complete a marathon for charity. Originally he was excited but now he is experiencing a lot of distress surrounding his participation. John doesn’t want to just pull out as he has been sponsored. He is left feeling trapped in taking part. He doesn’t feel like he is fit enough to complete it. He is also concerned he hasn’t trained enough. John’s body is responding to the distress, he feels dizzy and starts feeling tension in his muscles when he thinks about the marathon. He is irritable when he is asked how his training is going and he feels highly anxious when he thinks about it.

Mary also signed up to complete a marathon for charity. Similar to John, Mary began to feel a lot of distress and had the same concerns John was having. However, Mary knew a little bit about stress management. Mary reframed her negative beliefs to positive ones. “I am fit enough to do it”, “Even if I don’t complete it, I know it is an achievement to even try”, “I am doing a really good thing for charity”, “I am grateful to my mind and body for letting me train as much as I have”. Mary felt motivated. The marathon was a new challenge for her and she reminded herself of this whenever the negative thoughts began.

Both Mary and John felt obligated to complete the marathon. However, John spent the time leading up to it feeling stressed📉 . Whereas, Mary changed her negative stressful appraisal to a positive one and spent the time leading up to it feeling motivated and proud📈

✍️ Managing Stress Exercise: You’ve been given a lot of science in this article and now it’s time for you to use it to your advantage with this exercise.

✍️ Take some time to consider your coping resources, this may take you some time as it’s not something many people think about Make a list of your resources ✍️ Think about positive changes you can start incorporating into your lifestyle that will help you better cope with stress in the future. For example, if you have a different bedtime each night, try and go to bed at the same time every night. This will improve your sleep hygiene and could help you to feel more energised. When you are rested you may be able to better manage stress.

✍️ Managing Stress Exercise 2: ✍️ Think about your stress and how you would respond in the following scenario.. You have a deadline approaching at work and you are concerned you might not get the work completed on time ✍️ Write down any stressful thoughts you might have in this scenario. ✍️ Think about how the negative thoughts make you feel. Ask yourself, do these thoughts make you less stressed? Do these thoughts get you closer to completing the work on time? ✍️ Now, look at any negative thoughts you have written down and practice reframing these into positive thoughts. For example, if you wrote “I will never get this done, I’m not good enough” change this to “This is a great opportunity for me to demonstrate my ability” or “This is going to be a challenge but ultimately I will grow from this”

Taking positive steps to help eliminate the stress you can, and place yourself in a better position to manage future stress is something that you owe to yourself. Happio can help you get to grips with this! 🤗