Unpacking: Stress

If there is one thing most adults can understand, it’s stress. There is tremendous pressure to succeed, all while a vice grip of mounting economic disparity and concerns for our futures loom over our heads. Stress can be detrimental to our health and mental state, so understanding it and learning to disarm it can be extremely beneficial. Stress is defined as a state of mental worry or tension caused by a difficult situation. When we experience stress, we can experience moodiness or anxiety and have trouble sleeping and focusing. We may also experience physical pain in the form of headaches and stomach upsets. Not to mention, chronic stress has the potential to worsen pre-existing conditions, such as cardiac issues. With all that in mind, it’s evident that stress is terrible for our bodies.

But how do we deal with stress? How do we find ways to disarm this emotion and our body’s reactions to difficult situations? We’re concluding our Unpacking series with some information and actionable tips to help you kick excess stress to the curb. Today, we tackle the anxiety-provoking emotion head-on, with hopes of better understanding and learning to live with it.

The first step to overcoming a challenge is understanding it, so let's examine some of the finer points of stress and the stress response within our bodies. Stress can come from many sources, such as work, school, or social stimuli. When experiencing stress, you may feel your heart racing, your head reeling, or maybe just an uncomfortable feeling that it’s all “too much”. It can feel overwhelming and might even trigger our fight-flight-freeze-fawn reaction in extreme situations. We may have trouble functioning or otherwise struggle with feeling on edge, and though it affects every person differently, it’s all due to the same response within our brains. Stress begins within our bodies. When we experience dangerous or stressful stimuli, our amygdala jumpstarts our sympathetic nervous system, the system responsible for producing epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. This chemical increases our heart rate and helps us function quickly and efficiently. However, this chemical also affects our brains, making us hyper-aware. Though the uptick in epinephrine can contribute to improvements in memory or reaction time, it has largely negative results for processing and decision-making. 

The second part of this response relies on our body's built-in mechanism, the HPA Axis, which helps us stop producing epinephrine when danger has passed. The pituitary gland prompts the adrenal gland to release cortisol. As cortisol levels fall, our parasympathetic nervous system neutralizes the stress response. During the comedown, we may feel a deep sense of calm or even exhaustion. Our bodies return to the resting state until the cycle begins again. This process happens within our bodies subconsciously, and we can’t necessarily stop it. However, we can find ways to trigger the coming down more quickly or prevent situations that might spike our adrenaline. So, it’s worth learning stress avoidance and management techniques to help us work through the response.

I’m sure you all are dying to know: how does one avoid stress? Well, It’s worth noting that we don’t want to avoid all stress, as it plays a role in our motivation and self-preservation. Still, finding ways to prevent unnecessary or excess stress in our daily lives can be helpful. As always, we believe that one of the best tools you can use to prevent any kind of negativity is mindfulness. When it comes to mindfulness around stress, practicing compassion for your mental health and learning to prioritize tasks in a way that helps ease your burden should be your main goals. Choosing not to bite off too much, taking days off when you need them, and reminding yourself of what is and isn't necessary can help anchor you in the present and reduce the mental spiral associated with stressful situations.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to you that we also recommend caring for your physical well-being as a means of managing stress. Stress can target your body in many ways, so help give yourself a leg up by sleeping enough and eating healthy. These activities can improve the condition of your heart and assist with processing, two things that stress negatively affects. We also recommend avoiding destructive habits such as smoking or drinking as a means to manage stress. Several studies have been conducted on the role of stress in using or abusing alcohol, drugs, and smoking. These studies posit that those who struggle with stress-related disorders such as anxiety and PTSD have an increased risk of abusing recreational substances. This is why it’s important to remember that starting is easy, but quitting may be difficult; these behaviors are temporary bandaids to a bigger problem. 

Finally, we recommend focusing on routine, schedule, and planning to avoid stress. It’s much easier to be stress-free when you’re prepared and know what to expect. You might find keeping a scheduling app or journal handy for writing down engagements and timelines helps you feel more in control. We also recommend clearly defining your goals and making sure that they’re grounded but still challenging to you. We don’t want to lose our sense of urgency completely, but we do want to ensure we don’t overload ourselves and are prepared for any situation. 

Now, we can turn our attention to stress management techniques. The suggestions we’ve already discussed are preventative, but perhaps that’s not where you are in your stress cycle. We still want to help you learn to manage your stress response in a healthy way. Stress is an unavoidable part of life; however, it doesn't have to be a defining characteristic in your experience. There are several ways to destress day to day; one of the most commonly discussed is deep breathing techniques. When your body is flooded with stress hormones, your pulse elevates, and your blood vessels constrict. The natural remedy is to put more oxygen into your bloodstream and try to regulate your heartbeat. Taking deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth may help in regulating. Some also enjoy other breathing techniques, such as diaphragmatic breathing or humming. 

Another option for relieving stress is dispelling excess energy through exercise and meditation. Meditation can help you block out stress-inducing thoughts and aid you in mindfully approaching daily struggles. Exercise gives you a good outlet to work through stress and can also increase the amount of dopamine your body produces. Dopamine works in contrast with cortisol and adrenaline, so having high dopamine can lessen our body's response to stress. There are also a number of things you might want to avoid if you find yourself stressed and on edge. You should avoid consuming excess caffeine or multitasking. If your stress response gets out of control and you can't find ways to quiet it, you may find yourself on the receiving end of some unpleasant symptoms. Muscle stiffness, grinding of teeth, and excess water retention are a few things you might experience due to excess stress.

For those of you who have struggled with stress or have residual stress from anxiety or other psychological conditions, you may require additional support. This can be through your network, a support group, or from a trained psychologist. Psychologists have many tools that they can impart to those who suffer from excess stress and can teach them coping techniques as well as stress management skills. A cognitive behavioral therapist may be your best choice if you want to seek professional help. Research shows that people who receive cognitive behavioral therapy have a more significant reduction in mental health symptoms than with medication alone.

Though stress can come from several different places in our lives and is unavoidable to some extent, it’s important to make a conscious effort to understand and prevent it from overwhelming you. In evaluating our relationship with stress and using the tools we’ve discussed in this article or others you’ve learned in therapy, we can all impact the way it affects us day to day. Long and short, managing stress is good for our bodies and minds and allows us to expend less energy worrying and more time chasing our dreams.