Are You Stuck in the Stress Cycle?

You can learn everything there is to learn about how to handle stress, but the more stress you experience, the more sensitive you become to new stressors and any grandiose change in behavior to improve your stressful state seems like it causes more stress. Am I right?

You know that feeling when you can feel the stress in your whole body, you’re clenched, exhausted, and extremely overwhelmed. Susan from accounting decides to point out that you look stressed and you should, “relax,” which in your less stressed state, you wouldn’t have been offended by, but because you’re already at your tipping point it’s the last straw on the overstimulated camel’s back and it blows up everything.

Or you come home from the most stressful day at work. Everyone-superiors, clients and coworkers, have been down your throat about everything all day long. You walk into your house and snap at your kids when they all yell excitedly that your home. Your stressful response makes you feel guilty and more stressed and then your partner tells you, “They’re excited to see you, you should be grateful….have some perspective.” Insert red, angry face emoji with grawlixes covering it’s mouth….You’re cooked.

When this cycle (see above) goes unchecked, it inevitably leads to overwhelm and burnout. Common go-to habits in an attempt to lessen the burden of stress are avoidance behaviors to escape it such as overeating, overexercising, binging tv, infinitely scrolling social media, unwinding with a drink or five, etc.. Unfortunately, avoidance has only been shown to exacerbate stress because you have to face the source of it at some point. Procrastination anyone?

The solution is to learn to manage your stress more effectively. You can actually learn to look at it in a positive manner and even appreciate it, but you won’t find those skills at the bottom of a bag of chips or in the fifth season of The Office. You can read about everything you should be doing to reduce your stress response, but too much too quick is a fast way to more overwhelm.

To help, we’ve assembled 30 days to Shed the Stress. You can sign up HERE for the 30 days of email prompts that will help you slowly and sustainably build habits and behaviors to better manage your stress.