I know what it’s like to be stressed. I’ve experienced the sleepless nights. The feelings of complete and utter overwhelm. The heart palpitations, the tightening of the chest. The incessant negative self-talk. I’ve even dipped in and out of depression from time to time. I’ve been unable to manage my anger and my anxiety about what might or might not happen.
And to be honest I don’t have some great big fancy story behind it such as abuse or trauma. My stresses come from everyday regular living. Of being a mum of young kids, having a husband who works really hard and isn’t home a lot of the time, and with no particular schedule. I live in a state different from family, so I don’t have a lot of support. I spent a few years travelling through the outback living in a caravan with babies which may sound very glamorous but it was terribly isolating. I experienced the deaths of three people I was extremely close to within 2 years of one another. And probably the most stressful of all were the dreadfully high expectations that I had of myself as a wife and a mother to three kids.
I’ve been working on it though and now I am now sleeping better (still not perfectly but I’m a work in progress), I have more days where I get stuff done, rather than letting excuses (my stresses) get the better of me. I am less withdrawn and therefore able to connect a lot better with my husband and have less resentment towards my kids.
Stress isn’t an emotion in and of itself. It’s more like the effect that emotions have on us. When we feel anger, this is a stress. When we experience fear, this is a stress, and so on.
In this article I’m going to share the lessons I learnt that motivated me to do something about my stress. And in my next article I’ll look at what I did about it. For now, we’re going to look at the different types of stress, what stress can do to you, and how it does that, physically. We’ll look at the different types of stress and begin to identify them in your life. Because we can’t change it if we don’t know where it’s coming from, right?
Physically, stress can cause increased heart rate, pain of any kind, skin conditions such as eczema and acne, weight issues – either over weight or under weight. Long term stress can cause heart disease, auto-immune diseases, reproductive dysfunction, digestive problems, diarrhea or constipation, reduced sex drive. And this final one, which was a big one for me – suppressed immunity. I was experiencing mild fatigue, and a feeling that I was just about to get sick, all the time.
Emotionally, stress can cause depression and anxiety if it builds up enough. It affects our concentration and judgement. Of course, it leads to poor sleep, poor memory. Stress can cause moodiness, irritability, anger. Feelings of overwhelm, loneliness, isolation, because when we feel stressed, we have trouble accessing that fun part of ourselves, and we struggle to connect with others.
I want to show you a contrast, so you can see where you’re heading if you’re committed to reducing the stress in your life. So, these are the symptoms, they’re not really symptoms, the experiences people have when they feel relaxed, when they’re not stressed. Can we agree that being relaxed is the opposite of being stressed? Good.
You’ll experience overall improved health and energy levels, an increased sex drive. Greater levels of happiness, joy and overall contentment. Increased focus and concentration. Improved access to your memory. You’ll be making better decisions that you feel more comfortable and confident with. Increased self-esteem. Greater levels of connection with others. Your weight will balance out. And you’ll have a better sense of humour!
So what’s happening inside of us when we’re stressed and how is it supposed to help us? Imagine this: it’s the year 100,000 AD, you’re with your pack on the African Plains, hunting down a zebra to feed your family. A sabre tooth tiger appears in the distance and one wrong move could mean certain death. What happens to you physiologically? Our autonomic nervous system has two parts, the sympathetic nervous system (this is our stress response) and the parasympathetic (our rest and repair). When we perceive danger, the stress response (otherwise known as the fight or flight) channels all our available energy into our arms or legs so we can fight the danger or run away from it. When we do this though, there’s no longer energy available for our digestion, immune health, cardiovascular health, hight brain function and other vital systems of the body.
Now it’s important to know that these two systems can’t actually operate at the same time. So, if you’re living in a state of constant stress, even if it’s low level stress, you’re not giving your body the chance to operate optimally, which is going to lead to health issues and guess what else – more stress.
There’s many different ways we can categorise stress, this is the one that makes the most sense to me. All of these triggers signal ‘danger’ to our system and activate the sympathetic nervous system. On a daily basis we are exposed to Physical, Chemical and Emotional Stresses.
Physical Stress
- Wearing high heels
- Sleeping in a wonky bed or using the wrong pillow
- Carrying kids
- Past injuries and accidents
- Many other things
Chemical Stress
- Drugs – including medications
- Processed foods including sugar, gluten and artificial colours and flavours
- Alchohol
- Smoking
- Air pollution
- Toxic cleaning chemicals
Emotional Stress
- Thoughts – beliefs and the meaning we give our experiences
- Unprocessed or trapped emotions – usually from negative or traumatic past experiences
- Unmet needs – such as not being heard, feeling isolated, or not receiving love in the way you desire it
- Unfulfilled values – for instance you may have a longing for fun and adventure, but, well, corona. And also connection with other humans, same thing. This is causing huge emotional stress at the moment.
- Unmet expectations – of course these are usually expectations of ourselves.
Now that we’ve explored what triggers the stress response, what the stress response looks like and how it affects us when we experience it too often, next time we’ll look at the best ways I know to reduce the stress in our lives.
Things to think about this week:
- Go through the list of physical, chemical and emotional stresses and identify the culprits that are causing stress in your life
- Brainstorm ways in which you can reduce these stresses