We Need To Talk About Stress…

Stress

We all experience it, a sense of overwhelm, a feeling of dread, feeling frozen and unable to cope. Stress can manifest itself in high blood pressure, short temper, shutting down or running away. But what exactly is stress, and can we learn to deal with it? People talk about managing stress, but a lot of the time management techniques are a distraction, another thing on the to-do list rather than a genuine solution.

A stress reaction occurs when we are confronted with a situation which we feel unequipped for but obliged to deal with. In essence, stress is a fear of failure, and the consequences of it. I would argue that it is this fear, and not the stress it’s self which causes the body to react in the way it does to stress, and that short temper (fight,) running away (flight) or shutting down (freeze) are the limbic system’s way of dealing with this very real fear.

A question I often ask my clients is how old they felt when they were last in a stressful situation. More often than not, they respond with experiencing themselves as a young child. There is good reason for this. As a young child we were vulnerable in the world. Uninformed, unexperienced and reliant on the care and assistance of others. When care and assistance were not administered where required, our limbic system took over to get us through whatever situation we were in.

The limbic system can be useful in all sorts of situations where we are genuinely incapable of doing anything to help ourselves (think of meeting a bear in the woods), but it can also cause us to react inappropriately in other situations (fight, flight or freeze).

Next time you are feeling stressed, ask yourself this -how old do you feel, are you genuinely incapable of helping yourself in this situation, or are you reverting to an instinctive childhood coping mechanism and, in the process, ignoring the real options you have in the here and now?

If the stress is deadline related, are you discounting the option of asking for assistance or postponement? If the stress is relationship related are you discounting the options of talking? If the stress is overwhelm related, are you discounting the option of politely saying no? All these options are frequently discounted, possibly through having had a bad experience in the past, possibly through grandiosity (blinkered, black and white thinking), but by subconsciously discounting these options you are limiting your responses to stress inducing situations and reverting to reliance on your limbic system.

If you take anything from this post, let it be this, stress is not inevitable, it is a response, and responses can be changed. Sometimes we need help in raising awareness of what our options are and why we automatically discount them, and that is where therapy and counselling can help.