Feeling overloaded, overwhelmed and stressed? Focus on these 3 things first…
I know how it feels to be stressed. I have spent most of my life dealing with ‘stress’ and overwhelm in one way or another.
I’ve had more than my fair share of stressful events in my life (serious childhood illness, major surgery and treatment lasting almost 2 years, and moving house involving relocating three times (once to a different county and once to a new country and continent) - all by the age of 5; my dad and mum both died before I was 42; I experienced a strained pregnancy and a difficult birth with my son, following which coping with a very sleepless, highly sensitive baby left my highly sensitive system a bit traumatised and emotionally and physically exhausted; working in a job that I hated in a career that completely drained me and left me psychologically overloaded, and nearly burning out - twice).
I grew up in a household where my dad was often showing signs of ‘stress’, and I still deal with the presence of stress in others close to me in my life.
I have worked with and supported numerous people over the years in a professional capacity - individually, running stress management workshops and supporting managers in dealing with issues in their teams.
I have studied the subject academically, as a psychologist, and HR practitioner and most recently as a coach (I have a coaching certificate in Stress Management) and have pored over books, papers and articles on the subject. I know that it’s the single biggest cause of lost productivity, ill-health and absence from work in the UK - costing the economy billions of pounds every year.
I have also done a LOT of work personally to tackle my own ‘stress’ issues.
And I’m a Highly Sensitive Person, which means dealing with feelings of overwhelm is pretty much an everyday thing!!
So I know a thing or two about ‘stress’ - and there is a LOT I could say on the subject.
And therein lies a fundamental problem with ‘stress’.
It’s a word that we throw in when we’re feeling generally snappy, grumpy intolerant, tired and weary, and generally that it’s all become ‘too much’. We lose patience, we drop balls, and we crash-and-burn or we snap.
And we say to ourselves “I’m so stressed’.
Defining Stress
But what does that really mean?
I have been reflecting on this a lot lately, because I am a strong believer that words matter. The way we talk to ourselves matters. And the extent to which we can be specific about describing our emotions in order to understand them and respond to what they are telling us also matters.
And I have a problem with ‘stress’ language.
The thing is - ‘Stress’ in and of itself is not ‘bad’.
The Biology of Stress
In common with all living creatures we have an inbuilt mechanism, driven by our hormones, that signals to us when we are in potential danger. It’s a sensible evolutionary system that helps to ensure our survival. It was originally termed the General Adaptation Syndrome (which I much prefer to its more modern iteration of Generalised Stress Response) and refers to the hormonal changes in our bodies that take place when our body senses a potential threat.
When our body senses danger our stress hormones are released, triggering our Autonomic Nervous System into action - our digestive system slows right down (hence the dry mouth and butterflies we can experience) our heart rate increases as does our breathing rate (to get oxygen circulating and pumped into our muscles, so our arms and legs are ‘ready for action’), our pupils dilate so we can focus and ‘see’ more, our hearing becomes more attuned so we can ‘hear’ the danger, and our body then releases Cortisol (a hormone that helps us to heal more quickly by making our blood clot faster … and we are ready to fight or take flight.
Once the danger has passed (either because we have biffed it in the nose, or been biffed, escaped, or it was a false alarm) then our system begins the process of calming and our Parasympathetic Nervous System activates with relaxing hormones like seratonin.
And that’s the basic cycle as it’s ‘supposed’ to work. It’s a ‘flag’ that we may need to take some sort of action to reset our system back to its' default ‘calm’ state and it evolved in an environment where sudden or unexpected events that might pose a threat cropped up - but in-between times, we would be hunting, gathering and feeding, procreating, maybe chilling out a bit, and sleeping. We would rest, relax and if need be, recuperate to recover from an illness or injury.
And this is what we see when we observe nature. We see periods of activity, but also siginficant periods of time when birds, mice, bees, fish, are simply resting or sleeping. Just think of the lions on the Savannah - they spend most of their time resting and sleeping.
For humans, modern life is not like this.
Stress & Modern Life
Modern life brings with it a relentless flow of demands on our resources, an endless assault on our senses and a constant artificial pressure to ‘do’ that means that we rarely rest or relax, we often don’t sleep well, and we don’t always give ourselves the recuperation time that we need either (though we are more likely to give ourselves permission to take some time out if we have been ill or injured, especially if it’s a physical thing). In short we don’t give ourselves the reset time our brains and bodies need to function effectively.
Which brings me back to my ‘problem’ with how we talk about stress.
Because in my experience believing that we’re ‘stressed’ is quite an all-encompassing, nebulous feeling, and it feels quite disempowering. We end up ‘blaming’ the cranky child, the broken plate, the late train, the traffic jam, the annoying person at the check-out who is soooo sloooow.
We then throw an ‘intervention’ at it because it has reached the point where we have ‘crashed’ or ‘snapped’ and we’ve turned into the Bitchy-Witch from the Dark-Side .
Then we feel GUILTY about being the Bitchy Witch.
THEN we might snatch a day off to drink wine and watch crappy films, or we head to the spa, or we finally make sure we get to our yoga class for the next few weeks - just to ‘recuperate’ so we can bring our better-self back…until life gets in the way and we miss one or two classes again, and then we fall out of the habit again, and then we crash and snap again, and so it continues...!
But, life’s so busy, and surely that’s a good thing, that we do take action, no?
Well, yes, but what’s more important is to understand why we leave it so long and so late.
Why does it have to reach crisis point before we take that action?
Why don’t we rest and relax just because that’s what we need, and it’s what we’re designed for?
Why we don’t rest and relax
I think there are 3 main reasons
Firstly, we live life on AUTOPILOT. Life is busy, we are on autopilot a lot of the time, and it’s often not until we are feeling ‘stressed’ that we even notice that we’ve been neglecting our needs. And by then we are in crisis mode and need to do whatever it takes to calm our system again - but we don’t necessarily stop to really think about HOW we’ve ended up here or reflect on how to stop it from happening next time.
Secondly, we don’t usually take the time to reflect on WHY we feel exhausted, drained, ratty and grumpy, frazzled and to really unpack what we mean when we say we’re ‘stressed’. Yet without unpicking it, breaking it down, we can’t really being to understand what it actually MEANS for us, and therefore we can’t begin to know how to change things. Are we taking on too many things? Saying yes too often? Making ourselves too available for others? Are we an introvert doing too many social things in order to keep everyone else happy? Are we a highly sensitive person surrounded by busyness, noise, light, emotional demands, never giving our senses a rest by taking some alone and quiet time? Are we trying to diet, and learn new job AND design a new kitchen, all requiring decisions, decisions, decisions?
Thirdly, even when we do take time to reflect on the previous two things, and we recognise that we ‘should’ be (let’s rephrase that as “we know we would benefit from…”) giving more time to our need for rest and relaxation, for emptying our psychological and emotional ‘buckets’ - we still don’t do it. Partly because, as I’ve already mentioned, we’re in autopilot, but mainly because we feel GUILTY about taking the time for ourselves when there are so many other people and things that need our attention and our service. We feel guilty about prioritising ourselves, so we don’t.
Hang on…
I’ve written guilty before somewhere….
Oh yes - Remember?!
The guilt we feel when we show up as the Bitchy-Witch…?
………..
Let me leave a coachy-style silence here for a minute while you ponder that…
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Then let me ask - “If you’re going to feel guilty whichever way you land - which guilt will you choose? “
A) The one that leaves you showing up as your very best self, that has oodles of emotional and mental space, sacks of compassion and bags of fun?
Or
B) The one that is preceded by you showing up as the Bitchy Witch?
So, here’s an invitation…
Decide which Guilt you are going to live with (only answer accepted is A - he he!!)
Pay attention the things you are saying yes to! You may be thinking that you struggle to say ‘no’ and you’re saying ‘yes’ to too many things, and this leads you to take on too much. It might help to think of it this way: For everything you say ‘yes’ to, you are by default saying ‘no’ to something else. So, for the next two weeks, pay attention to the things you are saying yes to, and every time you say yes, ask yourself what you are therefore saying ‘no’ to, and is that the best choice for you and those around you. Which ‘guilt trip’ will this feed?
Get intentional about putting time in your schedule for rest and relaxation! You know deep down as well as I do that if you don’t make the time, on purpose, it won’t happen. So, you are in charge - make the time!
And try for something every day - even if it’s just 5 minutes with a cup of coffee on your own in the kitchen, a sneaky sit on the bathroom floor with your book, or 5 minutes in the car to just empty your ‘head’ bucket before you set off home. You could be brave and be blatant about it, making a show to your family that you are making time for rest and relaxation, that you feel this is important, that you will be a nicer person for it. AND know that by doing this you are also showing others, leading by example, that it’s important to prioritise yourself as well as others, and that by doing so everyone benefits. You don’t have to be selfless all the time, in fact it’s not helpful to be. And choosing yourself sometimes doesn’t make you selfish. It just means that you value yourself too. And that you matter too.
And if it helps, keep in mind that by tending to your needs, alongside everyone else’s, you are keeping the Bitchy-Witch away!! And that has GOT to be an all-round win (it is in my house anyway!!). Let me know your thoughts and how you get on!
Helping you to get intentional about your wellbeing so you can create a life you love and enjoy it to the full is what I LOVE to do - if you’d like to chat about how to get better at doing this, or find out more about how working together could support you, let’s hop on a call together and have a really informal convo with a virtual cuppa…
