How to talk to your stress

Last week, I wrote about stress and anxiety – how they show up in our lives, how they affect us, and how we can manage them.

This is a vitally important topic in a world that constantly exerts pressure on us in a number of ways. We have fast-paced work environments that expect us to produce, produce, produce, and a 24-hour news cycle that is constantly reminding us of war and disease to keep us afraid and ratings high.

There is more to be said about stress this week.

Sometimes, stress is actually your friend. It is your body’s response to any perceived threat. Your heart rate quickens and digestion shuts down as your body prepares to deal with the threat.

It exists so that your body can either engage with the threat or run away from it. Likely, you have heard of this part of the stress response (“fight or flight”).

When you are running from a hungry lion, your stress response helps keep you alive!

But the threat that your stress ignites in response to only has to be perceived, not necessarily real. If the threat is a scenario that you have imagined in your mind, your stress response still activates – but in that case, you are running from something completely fabricated.

And if the situation you are worrying about is in the long term, you experience chronic stress… the same emergency response, but it is going on for a prolonged period of time.

It is like an all-hands-on-deck alert is going off in your command center, but for weeks or months or even years on end. Imagine trying to get anything done with alarms ringing at you all the time!

This describes my state of mind as I was approaching a particular exam in medical school.

I was not being chased or stalked by a jungle cat. Instead, I had envisioned a negative scenario in my mind. I saw visions of failing, maybe even failing out of school entirely, if I did poorly on this difficult test. I began running away from that idea like my life really was in danger.

But ironically the stress of that idea made it so much harder for me to prepare for the exam. I could not sleep; I could not focus; I felt absolutely horrible, and it only got worse as the test got closer.

I would try to cope by drinking unhealthy sodas and energy drinks to focus myself, but they only made the stress worse.

Of course, when you need your mind and body to perform at their best, like I did in the case of my test, this kind of response is not helpful at all – not to mention very unpleasant, discouraging, and distracting, which makes the whole problem worse.

In moments like that, it is important that we talk to our minds. We have to bring ourselves back from that desperate place and ground ourselves back in reality.

We have to ask ourselves about the threat itself. Is it real, or am I exaggerating things? Am I presently in real danger?

Is there something I can do about the threat right now or is everything about the situation out of my control?

Am I the only one worried about this or affected by it? How are my friends, family, and colleagues responding to this situation? How do they feel and what do they say about it?

Rationalizing like this can help us get out of our own troubled minds and put our fears into perspective. That can interrupt the stress response, easing the effects of chronic stress on our mind and body.

This weekend, take a break from looking at headlines, unless your safety would be compromised by doing so. Try putting your phone down for 24 hours and engaging with something offline that brings you joy.

Your work and the world will still be there when you return, but you will be able to look at things with fresh eyes.

Make today your masterpiece!

Florina