Creating a stress management toolkit...
Stress is not going away. Unless you’re preparing to go and live on a desert island alone with no technology or contact with the rest of the world, then stress will be part of your day to day on some level.
As much as we would like to eliminate all stress from our lives, it’s not possible. So what’s the next best thing?
Create a stress management toolkit that you can tap into to help you through tough, challenging and stressful times.
Why do you even need a stress management toolkit?
Although all of us experience stress, we experience it in different ways and to different extents. What works to relieve stress for one person isn’t necessarily going to work for someone else. What makes you want to reach for a glass of wine after a bad day, may have someone wanting to take a nap.
Both of these are stress responses, but one has someone activated, and the other has someone feeling collapsed. In these responses, the way to manage them would be different.
And because you experience stress in a particular way in one situation, doesn’t mean that you will experience stress in the same way in every challenging event that comes your way.
But before you build your stress management toolkit, there are a few things that you need to look at:
1. Understanding your stress responses
Understanding your stress responses is key. Before you start to build your toolkit, you need to have a good idea about what or who has you feeling stressed. You will also need to look at what happens for you when stress starts to rear its head.
2. Understanding your nervous system
You don’t need to have a medical level knowledge of the nervous system, but you do need to know which parts of the nervous system are in play when you are feeling stressed. This is because the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system have different ways of responding and so require different ways of bringing them back into regulation and creating a sense of safety.
3. Recognising your patterns and behaviours
When you understand what causes your stress and how your nervous system then comes online, you can start to recognise what types of patterns and behaviours you employ to manage your stress. Here is where you get to start making different choices that will help you to start managing your stress in a more effective way.
4. Learning to resource yourself
You don’t want to start managing your stress at the point it is unmanageable. There are ways to resource yourself so that when stressful situations come along, you are more prepared and able to face those situations. This takes combining all the points I’ve mentioned above and using them as information to inform how to resource yourself.
The foundations of stress management…
There are behaviours and activities that are scientifically and medically proven to help us manage stress. The problem is that these are not always behaviours and activities that we want to hear about!
- Drinking more water to ensure we are sufficiently hydrated
- Getting enough good sleep to ensure we are well rested
- Moving our bodies on a regular basis to ensure that we are mobile and able to be independent for as long as possible
- Making good food choices so that our body can run in an optimal way and doesn’t feel sluggish
Hydration, sleep, exercise, and good food are a solid foundation not only for our health, but for stress management as a whole. Once we can improve our foundation, we can start to look at other stress management tools.
Tools for stress management…
There are many different types of tools available to help us to manage our stress. Here are just a few…
Relaxation techniques
When we want to relax, we want to bring our nervous system into a regulated and ventral vagal state. Taking part in activities such as yoga, meditation or progressive muscle relaxation can help.
Mindfulness practices
How often do you watch TV, or scroll through your phone or other device whilst you’re eating? How often do you go for a walk and take in your surroundings? How often do you feel present to what you’re doing?
When we are not focused on what we are doing, we are not slowing down enough for our nervous system to move into our ‘rest and digest’ state. Instead we’re putting our body under more stress because we’re trying to do too much at once.
Social and emotional support
There are times when we need the help and support of others when it comes to stress. This could be regularly spending time with family, friends and loved ones. For some this comes in the form of therapy or support groups.
This type of interaction also helps us to co-regulate, an important function for our social nervous system.
Lifestyle changes
I mentioned the foundational behaviours and activities that can help manage stress. Different circumstances in life can mean changes in lifestyle so that we don’t overload our nervous system and cause ourselves even more stress.
We may have to make choices, or sacrifices, that are difficult to begin with, but in the long term will help us to manage our stress more effectively.
Somatic practices
Different types of somatic practice can help to manage our stress. Different nervous system states require different practices. Shaking, self-soothing, and behaviour switching techniques can help you to move out of a stress response and into safety.
I’ve mentioned a few tools and techniques in this post. When it comes to stress management, it isn’t a ‘one size fits all’. We are all individual and we all experience and respond to stress in different ways. It is important to understand your own unique ways of experiencing and coping with stress so that you can create the best stress management toolkit for you.
I help individuals to understand their stress and practice more effective and healthy ways to manage their stress. If you would like details on how I can support you in your own stress management journey, and help you create your own toolkit and strategy, please reach out to me.
Much love,
Harmesch x