How to complete your stress cycle

I've had a lot of high-achieving clients showing up with varying levels of stress and overwhelm recently. For some, it's about specific events and circumstances; for many it's about long-held patterns and beliefs that burden them; and for others it's the compound effect of all sorts of things, from the push to return to the office, to the learning curve in a new role, to unrealistic workloads, family dynamics, and the uncertainty and challenges in the wider landscape.

If you're in the same boat, you are not alone.

I've been through three patches in my career and life where I felt totally overwhelmed and it resulted in a lot of stress. I learned that, isolating as extreme overwhelm and stress can feel, it's critical not only to prioritise helping yourself, but also to invite help and make it easy for those around you to support you, too.

I encourage clients to explore a three-pronged approach:

1) Getting really clear on your priority/priorities, non-negotiables, and where you can say no, not now, or not me. (Although this article isn't focusing on this element, this part is absolutely critical, because if the external stressors are genuinely too much, then it's not a sustainable nor healthy approach to think the problem lies with you to fix);

2) Building awareness of where you can reduce or eliminate your internal triggers, beliefs, patterns and stressors that result in or contribute to the stress; and

3) Investing in yourself and things that are an antidote to stress for you, to allow you to process and move through the stress that you are already feeling in your body.

On this last point, I listened to an interesting Unlocking Us podcast with Brené Brown, and Emily and Amelia Nagoski this week on how stress shows up in our bodies, burnout and how to complete the physical stress cycle.

The Nagoski sisters explain that we experience a stress cycle in response to each stressor, so it's not about having all our stress disappear overnight. (Indeed, it's well recognised that not all stress is detrimental to us - it's about having an ongoing Goldilocks approach to it, to finding your 'just right'.)

Instead, it is about consciously investing in completing our stress cycles and in particular lowering the stress we are experiencing in our bodies.

This body-centred approach gives you incremental gains that can feel a little better right away and over the longer-term completely reshape your relationship with stress and your typical stressors.

If you don't acknowledge and listen to the stress you are experiencing in your body, then it tends to have a way of turning up the volume to a point you have no choice but to listen, whether that's a serious physical illness, or physical or mental breakdown.

When you can successfully turn down the unwanted stress volume by processing it, it supports you to get out of your stress-hijacked state and into balance, to a place where you have the energy and groundedness to:

• Re-establish your healthy boundaries
• Gain clarity and perspective on what really matters to you
• Empower your mindset
• Make choices that serve you, and
• Take courage and meaningful action to create outcomes that you really want.

I've combined the Nagoski's top seven tips on how to support your body to process stress with my own to create a list that I hope gives you some inspiration about where to start building at least one new daily habit:

1. Any physical activity (running, dancing in your kitchen, tensing and releasing all muscles, yoga, Pilates, walking, boxing, gardening, cleaning etc - any movement of your body counts)
2. Bonus points if that activity involves you being in nature. When we exercise or spend time in green spaces, the impact on our mood, wellbeing and mental health is far greater than if we are spending that time indoors, or in non-green spaces.
3. Mindful, slow breathing. Regulates your nervous system - slow, deep breaths in and out for a count of 6-8. Mindful breaths involve noticing the expansion of your chest and tummy as your breath fills you. Noticing how the exhale feels in your body, without needing to make sense of it. It might sound too simple, but don’t underestimate it!
4. Positive social interaction. Connection and belonging tells our body that it is safe. Whether that is a connecting moment with a stranger, colleague, or friend.
5. Belly laughter - not laughter that's just meeting social need or masking awkwardness. Even reminiscing about a time when you laughed that way. This kind of authentic expression also serves to connect people and promote safety.
6. Affection. The 20-second hug can have the same impact as jogging a couple of miles. While maintaining your own centre of gravity, turn your body and face to your hugger, lean in and hug until relaxed, breathing together, until you feel you are in your place of safety. It changes hormones, lowers blood pressure, improves mood, and produces oxytocin.
7. Touch. A gentle or moderate massage, whether foot, head, shoulder or body, can stimulate the vagus nerve and promote connection, communicating a sense of safety to our body. We shouldn't be surprised - we know that premature babies have a much great chance of survival with touch and skin-to-skin care: when we're feeling vulnerable as adults, that need to feel safe and nurtured can still be met with touch. But avoid deep tissue and hard massage with a body stuck in a stress cycle.
8. Cry. Complete a true physical expression of emotion, rather than suffocating it. Whatever is overwhelming you, set it aside for a moment and turn to the physical experience of crying, the sensation, the warmth and number of tears, how it feels in your body. Do not focus on the thoughts - to move through it, just focus on the physicality and physical experience of it. The Nagoskis say it can take up to around five minutes until the physical feelings subside as they are released.
9. Creative expression of the stress and feelings, whatever that might be for you. Externalise it to drain it. Poetry, photo album, painting, sketch, pottery, sculpture, imaginary story. or fantasy - using characters or not.
10. Loud gargling, humming or singing. Drop your inhibitions, and go for it!
11. Cold water immersion. You can take a cold shower or plunge, but it doesn't have to be your whole body nor a Wim Hof ice bath set up. Even just immersing your full face into cold water for a held breath cycle can help to release held stress.
12. Meditation and/or mindfulness. A lot of people find the idea of a 30-minute class off-putting. But there are lots of 2-4 minute examples on YouTube, or you can download free apps with short guided examples.
13. Practice intentional gratitude and awe. If this feels too much of a stretch, start very small - even expressing your awe at the detailed formation of a flower bud or leaf, for example. It shifts our brain back into wonder and curiosity, and away from threat and overwhelm (plus you get the bonus 'green points' if you're doing it in nature).
14. Eat well. Your body is currently in and under stress. It needs to reduce any additional stress on your gut and be supported to keep you healthy.
15. Ditto for good, quality sleep. 

All of these are practical things you can do to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system and get out of the survival 'fight, flight, freeze, flop etc' responses.

Whatever you choose, the important thing is committing to regular, consistent practice - habitually as a part of daily self-care. To start with, you might keep it simple and commit to one specific activity - perhaps even multiple times in a day - to build that new habit and make sure you are reducing your stress faster than feeding it.

👉 Which one or two would best serve you? Or have you got any others you prefer to use, to add to the list?

Your body will tell you when you have completed the cycle. With each stress cycle you complete, you will feel incrementally better - one step closer to peace.

Maintenance can involve all these things, and ongoing wellbeing is a bubble of protection by you, and ideally by those around you who care about you.

If this has piqued your interest, a few more examples of deeper levels of work I do with clients in 1:1 settings include:

1. Knowing your values. When we don't honour our values, or when others tread on them, it can add another level of threat and fight, flight, freeze, flop etc reaction on top of already high stress levels. When you know your values, you can spot these situations for what they really are and be at choice about how you respond, rather than react. 
2. Identify and build on your strengths - strengths-based strategies are rooted in what is working, where and how you can trust yourself to show up, and what it is easy and fulfilling to build on, to counter the stressor triggers.
3. Understand, recognise and overcome your automatic negative thoughts and beliefs that can create and exacerbate stress.
4. Build your awareness of how and why you self-sabotage, and how that is related to your stress and sense of overwhelm. 
5. Get clear on your Goldilocks balance for what amount and type of stress is 'just right' for you.

Too much stress is not helping you, the impact you really want to have, nor your career.

And life is too short and precious to settle for living with overwhelming stress.

📩 DM me to book a chat and tell me more about what that could mean for you...

=======

I’m Genna Clark, an ICF-certified Personal Development, Leadership and Life Coach for managers.

My sweet spot is confidence, self-awareness, values-led choices, and giving good people the leadership and communication tools they need to thrive and make a difference.

#personaldevelopment #leadershipdevelopment #lifecoach #stressmanagment #burnout #careercoaching #impostersyndrome