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Managing Stress
Fred Johnson • May 12, 2023
Identify, Redirect, and Plan
Perhaps one of the more mysterious ailments of modern life is the varying effects of stress on our being. One of the most used phases in my office is some version of, “I’m so stressed about that.” So how can we identify stress, manage it, and reduce its impact on us? Read on for some simple and effective tools.
Here's a wonderful quote that enables us to begin to understand and manage stress:
“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” – Joan Borysenko
Let me offer you a tool I use with clients to help understand, control, and change stress levels in life. Just know this takes practice! Let’s start with a definition of stress:
Stress is the perceived resistance to a desired goal.
Stress can, and does, come in different forms such as physical, emotional, mental, environmental, or situational). Stress is all the internal, external, imagined, real, or threatening indicators that the way you wish or need something to be, isn’t going to happen.
The more crucial a desired goal, the higher the stress levels you may experience per resistance. For example, if you are staking your entire career’s success upon arriving on time for a pivotal job interview, any bump in the road that slows your driving may very well induce a disproportionate amount of felt stress. As compared to simply driving to get groceries with no required timeline. The more important something is to you, the higher the level of stress you may experience.
If you’d like to begin practicing stress management, here are a few simple steps to help.
1. Identify the Actual Goal
What is it you actually want to have happen? What do you feel should be different? What are you trying to accomplish in a given moment or task? Sometimes it really helps to dig a little deeper on what we are working on that stresses us! I've color coded these examples so pick a color example and see if this will work for you.
Examples:
a. Perceived goal: Host a fun holiday party with friends.
Actual goal: Make sure everyone feels happy.
b. Perceived goal: Get to the appointment on time.
Actual goal: Control how other’s see me.
c. Perceived goal: Be a great parent.
Actual goal: Be a perfect parent.
2. Redirect as Needed
Once you have determined what the actual goal you are aiming for, you are then free to decide if it is a goal you’d like to keep working towards. Perhaps you can allow yourself to completely redirect to a healthier and achievable goal, that is also within your control.
Examples:
a. Actual goal: Make sure everyone feels happy.
Healthy goal: Show love and kindness during the party.
b. Actual goal: Control how other’s see me.
Healthy goal: Be safe and grateful for a safe drive.
c. Actual goal: Be a perfect parent.
Healthy goal: Invest in the relationship with my children.
3. Plan for Resistance
It should never surprise us that gravity exists. Gravity is a constant. Stress will be a constant unless you can anticipate and counter it. To help reduce stress, plan for it.
Know what your actual goal in a situation is, decide if that is even healthy or realistic, then plan and accept when you feel yourself stressing over things completely out of your control.
Examples:
a. Healthy goal: Show love and kindness during party.
Resistance: Other’s feelings are out of my control.
b. Healthy goal: Be safe and grateful for a safe drive.
Resistance: I will feel urgency when late.
c. Healthy goal: Invest in the relationship with my children.
Resistance: There will be moments I am annoyed.
Remember, everyone experiences stress a little differently and how to deal with it can look very different. Find what helps you and do more of that, but if you are stuck in your ways, try reaching out for help from a professional who can walk along beside you.
A Gift Called Grace, a heartfelt reflection on the power of grace in our lives—how it heals, empowers, and transforms us.
Most of us don’t want to admit it, but the arrival of October signals the official start to the holiday season. Within the next 91 days, there will be everything from spooky lanterns, stuffed turkeys, and sales catalogues arriving in the mail or inbox on the regular. Parties to attend, events to support, and special “once a year” gatherings will all demand our focus and presence. One thing is for certain, If you’re of adult age with even a mild case of responsibility, you will begin to experience what I call, “Holiday Time-Slippage.” Holiday Time-Slippage is the phenomenon wherein the busier and faster our lives become during the holidays, the less time we have to enjoy the holidays. In trying to do it all, we miss all that we do. Ok, I’ll admit I made that up. I even googled it to see if it was a thing. It’s not. Perhaps I just made it a thing, but more likely it is just a fun play on words that ends with this blog post. In either case, I think it’s important to be mindful of the changing of the seasons and what those signals for many. The 16th century produced a carol of Welsh origin we now know as “Deck the Halls.” Within the lyrics, the phrase “‘Tis the season” has become a popular connotation of the holidays in general. Sometimes we use it as a greeting, coping phrase, or in an excusing manner, because after all, “’Tis the season, right?” What we miss in doing so, is the instructive reply the original lyric provides: “… to be jolly.” To experience a cheerful and happy time. In talking with people daily about their lives, I am reminded that not everyone enters this season with the hope of joy and jolly nature. Life can be hard. Holidays can bring triggers, those sharp painful reminders. The holiday seasons can be an extremely isolating time for many. We need the care of each other in these times. We need connection. We need people in our life who will laugh and love, who will share a moment. Maybe you are the person able to provide that for another. Maybe you’re the person who needs that. If I can remind and encourage you today, that in all your seasons upcoming, allow time to simply be jolly.
Each year, on the first day of August, I remind myself that we are closer to the end of the month than ever before. Each day after, as sweltering humid heat swarms us here in the south, I am reminded that it is now one day closer to the sweet relief of fall temperatures. I’m not sure how I would fair, if by chance, I believed the rampant heat waves of August would never leave. Thankfully, I know seasons come and seasons go. The dreaded drudgery of a hellacious August will soon be gone. The expounding beauty of fall, with leaves changing and cool breezes blowing, will soon arrive. Admittedly, this confession of seasonal distaste is a bit melodramatic. Yet, it serves as a practical example of what is known as “tolerable” stress and an adaptive coping response. Types of stress vary, but the three main categories are “good/positive”, “tolerable”, and “toxic” (1). These categories are not concrete or strictly defined by rules and circumstance necessarily. What is “good” stress for one person, may be “toxic” for another. Throughout our lives, the same stressors can change categories multiple times. Stress levels depend on the degree to which a person perceives control over a stressor or situation and whether they have support systems or resources in place to handle the stressor over their lifespan (2). A flat tire one day may be nothing other than a slight inconvenience. Yet on another day, it may represent all the uncontrollable forces keeping you from arriving on time to an important job interview. An easier way of saying all of this is, when we lose our sense of being (ability to control or make decisions) to a circumstance, we are a susceptible to toxic stress. This is where endurance comes in. I would love to say there is short and simple method to reduce and mitigate all toxic stress in our lives. Unfortunately, this just isn’t so. It doesn’t need to be. Because life, people, the world we live in, are all super complicated. What is important and hopeful: the effects of chronic/toxic stress in the brain and body are responsive to recovery and healing. Let’s talk about endurance as a helper for stress. Endurance, or the ability to withstand hardship or adversity, can be a simple, but effective tool to transition from toxic stress to tolerable stress. Enduring is a mindset of “thriving despite”. Thriving despite the terrible. Living beyond the hurt or difficulty. Healing to be able to accept good again. The difference in the stress types is significant. Remember that our perception plays a major role in which is which. Positive/good stress: normal life challenges such as receiving a promotion, learning a new skill, exercise, or having a child. Here we are allowed goals, enjoy success, and try new things. Choice remains in these. Tolerable stress is usually non-normative. Examples are loss of a loved one, serious illness, or natural disasters. There is a sense of unfairness in this. Often the choice to feel good is removed or feels wrong to do so. Our choice is questioned here. Toxic stress is typical adverse and inappropriate. Over time it can carry heavy physical and psychological consequences. All of life is darkened by this. Seeing good is tinted by what we have been through or currently in. We usually feel there is no choice in these. Abuse, intimate partner violence, Determining in our mind, to endure, withstand, and survive a critically difficult situation can move us from toxic stress to the tolerable type, then eventually the good type of stress. Living to allow good again. If ever there was a sentence that embodied the old phrase, “easier said than done” ---- that one was it. Tragically, it seems toxic stress only makes us good at surviving trauma or the terrible. It limits our ability to enjoy or even to see the beauty in a moment. The healing process allows us to be more human than before toxic stress skewed our view of the world. Talking with a counselor can be a critical part of healing. I hope that perhaps today in reading this, you’ve found a tool to help enduring despite what you’re up against. Notes: 1. https://center.uoregon.edu/StartingStrong/uploads/STARTINGSTRONG2016/HANDOUTS/KEY_49962/TypesofStress.pdf 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864527/
