Stress is an inevitable part of life, but how we manage it can make all the difference in our overall well-being. Whether it’s the pressure of work deadlines, personal responsibilities, or unexpected challenges, stress can impact our physical and mental health in profound ways. In this blog post, we will explore the nature of stress, its sources, and most importantly, practical and effective stress management tips to help you handle stress successfully. By understanding and using these strategies, you can manage stress in a way that supports your health, restores balance, and improves your quality of life.
What Is Stress?
It’s probably safe to say that we all know what stress feels like, but what exactly is stress?
Stress is the body’s natural response to any demand or challenge, whether physical, mental, or emotional, that disrupts its balance. There are 3 main types of stress:
Acute Stress is short lived. It comes and goes quickly and can be positive or negative in nature. The thrill of a heart dropping rollercoaster ride or the anxiety you feel right before having to speak in public are examples of acute stress.
Episodic Acute Stress occurs when you experience acute stress on a regular basis. Unlike acute stress, which is linked to a specific event, episodic acute stress happens more often and is linked to persistent stressors. Examples of episodic acute stress could be a very demanding job, like a frontline worker, or even consistently over-committing yourself so you constantly feel “under the wire.”
Chronic Stress is long term stress that continues over a long period of time and feels like a constant burden that just won’t go away. Being under chronic stress can result in long-term health complications including issues with mental health, cardiovascular disease and a weakening of immune function. Potential causes of chronic stress are all around us and can range from ongoing financial problems to chronic health issues.
Now that we have a better understanding of stress in its various forms, it’s important to note that not all stress is bad! Certain types of stress, known as eustress, are positive and can energize and motivate us. Distress, on the other hand, is the negative type of stress that can overwhelm us and harm us physically or mentally,
Common Sources Of Stress
If I tried to layout all the possible sources of stress, we’d be here all week! Sources of stress are all around us (and WITHIN us), but we can start by dividing them into two simple categories. External Stressors and Internal Stressors.
External stressors include things like environmental stressors (toxins, allergens etc), physical stressors (illness, overexertion), major life changes, financial struggles and social/relationship interactions.
Internal stressors encompass personal expectations, fears and chronic worrying.
The Stress Response
When the body encounters a stressful situation, it sets in motion a complex response to deal with the perceived threat. This is known as the “fight or flight” response and it prepares the body to either confront the threat or flee to safety. This response is triggered when the brain recognizes a threat to its balance. It then signals the release of various hormones, including epinephrine and cortisol, to prepare the body to take quick action against the threat.
The Role of Epinephrine and Cortisol in the Stress Response
Epinephrine (Adrenaline):
- Immediate Response: When stress is perceived, the adrenal glands release epinephrine into the bloodstream almost instantly. This hormone prepares the body for quick action by increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and energy supplies.
- Effects on the Body: Epinephrine dilates air passages, ensuring more oxygen reaches the muscles, and sharpens mental focus, allowing for rapid decision-making.
Cortisol:
- Sustained Response: While epinephrine acts quickly, cortisol takes slightly longer to be released and provides a more sustained response to stress.
- Effects on the Body: Cortisol increases glucose in the bloodstream and helps the brain use this glucose, keeping the body in a heightened state of readiness. Cortisol also curbs bodily functions that are not essential in a fight-or-flight situation, such as digestion and reproduction, in order to prioritize immediate survival.
Why We Need a Stress Response
The stress response is crucial for survival. It enhances our ability to respond quickly and effectively to threats, enabling us to protect ourselves in dangerous situations. Historically, this response helped humans survive by reacting swiftly to predators or other life-threatening scenarios.
When the Stress Response Goes Wrong – The Impact of Stress of Health
Problems arise when the stress response is triggered too often or stays active too long. Welcome to modern life! Our stress response was developed with short term threats in mind. If there is a bear attacking your clan’s camp, you want those hormones cascading through your system so you can fight the bear off or flee to safety. But you don’t need those same physiological effects while stuck in rush hour traffic or dealing with an unexpected financial burden. This chronic activation of our stress response can lead to various health issues, such as:
- Cardiovascular Problems: Persistently high heart rate and blood pressure increase the risk of heart disease.
- Immune Suppression: Chronic cortisol release weakens the immune system, making the body more susceptible to infections.
- Digestive Issues: Prolonged stress can disrupt digestive functions (remember that cortisol “turns off” functions that are not immediately essential for our survival).
- Mental Health Disorders: Continuous stress can contribute to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.
How Much Stress Is Too Much?
While it may seem that the best way to manage stress is to eliminate all the stressors in our lives, that’s neither realistic nor advisable,
Remember, we do need some stress in our lives. Eustress, or short term stress, actually has some benefits! It helps motivate us to tackle certain challenges and meet our goals. This creates feelings of accomplishment and fosters a growth mindset.
Instead of trying to live a completely stress free existence, we should learn to recognize when our stress levels may become harmful. Recognizing the signs and symptoms of excessive or chronic stress, like those in the graphic below, will allow us to make changes to better manage these levels and limit their negative effect on our health.
The Stress Bucket Analogy
Everyone has a stress bucket.
Ok, well not literally, but let’s use our imaginations a little bit. Imagine that you have a bucket in your body that collects all of the stressors you encounter. As you experience these stressors, your bucket begins to fill up.
Stuck in a traffic jam? Add a few drops to the bucket. Furnace decided to call it quits in the middle of winter? Eating a lot of processed foods? Conflict at work? Drip, drip, drip… into the bucket they go. Soon all those drips begin to fill the bucket and, once it overflows, you begin to feel the consequences in your physical and mental health.
The size of your personal stress bucket depends on factors, like genetics, epigenetics and family history. So when you meet someone who seems to be able to take everything in stride and never gets “stressed out” – it just might be that they were blessed with a bigger bucket OR they’ve been using some effective stress management tips to keep their bucket from overflowing.
Managing the Overflow: Strategies to Keep Your Bucket From Overflowing
If you’ve got a bucket steadily filling up, there are two strategies to prevent it from overflowing:
- Reduce the drips: Look at the stressors dripping into your bucket and identify which ones are in your control. Take steps to lessen or stop their additions to your bucket. For example, consuming less processed and refined foods and focus on a whole foods diet.
- Punch holes in the bucket: When it comes to your stress bucket, the leakier it is the better! These holes are created by the things we do to relieve stress in our lives. Effective stress management skills, like regular movement, breathing exercises, time in nature and fostering quality relationships are a few of the ways we can create leaks in our stress bucket.
To help you identify what might be filling your stress bucket and ways to keep it from overflowing, we’ve created a FREE Balancing Your Stress Bucket guide for you!
Effective Stress Management Tips
There are countless tools you can use to lessen the load in your stress bucket. Some, like healthy dietary changes, work by reducing the drips. Others, like breathing exercises, act as leaks that let some of the stress out.
Taking Stock: Identify Your Stressors
The first step in effective stress management is to take stock of what is contributing to your personal stress bucket. Grab your FREE Balancing Your Stress Bucket Handout and a blank piece of paper. Write down all the ways stress is accumulating in your bucket. Now determine if there are any stressors you can keep from even getting into the bucket. Are there some changes you can make to slow or stop those drips? Can you eliminate some of the unhealthy foods are eating? Can you find ways to improve your sleep habits to lessen the stress of being overtired?
Choosing the Right Tools: Managing the Inevitable Stressors
Next, we look at the stressors we can’t avoid – we know they are going to drip into the bucket, so which tools are we going to use to poke enough holes in our bucket to prevent overflow? Effective stress management involves finding the tools that work best for you. Practice using a variety from the list below until you find which ones are effective for you and your bucket. You can never have too many tools in your tool belt!
Lifestyle Changes
- Eat a balanced diet with limited processed or refined foods
- Incorporate regular movement into your daily routine
- Adopt healthy sleep habits
Mindfulness/Relaxation Techniques
- Meditation
- Journalling
- Deep breathing exercises
- Vagal nerve activation techniques
- Spend time in nature
Time Management and Organization
- Prioritize tasks
- Learn to say no
- Set realistic goals
Build a Support System
- Foster social connections that you enjoy
- Enlist professional help if needed
Explore More Effective Stress Management Techniques
These are just a few examples of the many effective stress management techniques available. Other methods could include practices like yoga, progressive muscle relaxation, aromatherapy, and guided imagery. The key is to find the combination of tools that works best for you. If you’d like personalized guidance and support in emptying your stress bucket and finding balance, we’d love to work with you. Together, we can help you create a stress management plan tailored to your unique needs. Click here to get started.
Sources
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American Psychological Association. (2022, October 31). How stress affects your health. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/health
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