When you feel ‘stressed out’ you’ve actually triggered a body function known as the stress response, also known as the fight or flight response. The stress response creates physical changes in your body systems to keep you alive in life threatening situations.
An example of it in action. You’re walking to a client’s office and a car mounts the curb and veers towards you. Your stress response will be triggered: your heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure will rise in order to give you extra strength and speed to jump out of harm’s way. In this way the stress response can help save your life.
Thoughts trigger the stress response
The stress response is triggered by thoughts related to the event, not by the event itself. When you saw the car, you thought, “Danger. Going to get hit. Run!” Your brain processed these thoughts and triggered the stress response. Once the threat passes you tell yourself that you’re safe and in response to these new thoughts, your body systems will eventually return to their natural state of balance.
Why stress can be bad for your health
The brain is poor at distinguishing between real and perceived threats. Perceived threats include problems with finance, health, relationships and business. They are perceived threats because in most instances they can’t immediately kill or hurt you.
The problem here is that unlike the curb-mounting car, these threats don’t go away in a short time; they hang around for weeks, months and even years. As a result the stress response is being constantly triggered and in some cases, is continually ‘on’. This causes numerous health risks including high blood pressure which increases the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke.
In this way, the very response that serves to keep you alive can actually be life threatening.
Managing stress - the good news!
Stress can be managed and there are numerous strategies to help you do this. You’ve made a key learning today: that stress is triggered by thoughts and not by the event itself. Knowing this, you can change your thoughts in order to change your response.
Let’s look at an example. You’re stuck in traffic on the very day you’re due to see a new client.
Choice 1: You think: “The client is going to be fuming. I’m going to lose their business. Look at this bunch of idiots on the road.” You trigger your stress response and with adrenalin coursing through your bloodstream you start honking the horn and bashing the steering wheel. You feel totally stressed out. You eventually speed to your client, nearly killing yourself in the process.
Choice 2: You take a few deep breaths and challenge your negative thoughts. You say to yourself: “I have no control over this. I’ll call the client and apologise for being late.” You may still feel uncomfortable about the situation, but at least you’ll get there in one calm piece, rather than a million harried ones.
Be kind to yourself
This is just one strategy for managing stress that works in conjunction with many others and while it seems simple in theory, it is of course much harder in practice.
No one manages their stress effectively all the time, so don’t set yourself up for disappointment. Aim to do your best and remember that every new moment is another opportunity to put your best thought forward.
So, what stresses you out? And how do you deal with managing stress?
By the way for more advice on managing stress, have a look at the advice that Andrew May gives Robert Gerrish on the video How to avoid Burnout.
“ The brain is poor at distinguishing between real and perceived threats. ”
Lucinda Lions is a website copywriter who specialises in writing persuasively in order to turn browsers into buyers. She also loves conducting website assessments and revamping existing website copy.