5 Ways To Reduce Your Stress
Aaaaaah, stress. Such a wonderful creation for our evolution, and yet, something that has the potential to kill us - love that for us. But for those of us that are creative entrepreneurs, stress is not only a constant companion, it can actually become our addiction - or maybe we become entrepreneurs because we are already addicted to stress : the chicken and egg situation. Stress is something that doesn’t just affect us, however, it also affects our moods which ultimately affect the people that we surround ourselves with and overtime, it can affect our physical and mental health which WILL impact your business - it’s not a question of IF, it’s a question of WHEN.
As someone who has been diagnosed with chronic stress and has had their body quite literally start shutting down as a result of it, I’ve had to learn how to control it before it controls me. Now, obviously I am not a doctor, but here are 5 of my favorite techniques for how I reduce stress DAILY and then give you some resources that have helped me learn more about the impact stress pays.
BREATHING
Sounds simple, right? Like, we do this every day so why would it be a tool? Because we don’t THINK about breathing, but it truly is the easiest method for stress reduction. The pace and frequency and depth that we breath at will either increase or decrease our stress, so it’s imperative that we learn how to control our breathing. My favorite breathing technique is Box breathing - essentially, you are drawing a square with your breath: 4 counts in, hold for 4, 4 counts out, hold for 4 - repeat as needed. Another one is the 5, 7, 8 count to REEEEEALLY decrease that stress: 5 counts in through the nose, hold for 7 counts, exhale for 8 through the mouth (this brings the heart rate down significantly). When I am facing an immediate stressor I recognize what it feels like: heart starts racing, my body gets hot all over, tunnel vision happens, blood rushes in my ears - it’s alot, but this is the sign to practice my breathing. This helps bring down the physiological reactions to stress which can keep the pre-frontal cortex online (your critical thinking - think of it like the brake to your gas pedal). Stop what you are doing right now and try either one of these breathing techniques: how does it feel in your body? how does it feel in your mind?
2. Tense Up
I know this sounds counter-intuitive to stress since stress causes us to feel so tense, but it has been proven to assist in reducing our blood pressure. Essentially, it mimics the effects of running, dancing, or shaking to get rid of excess adrenaline in the body. When we stress, our body increases our adrenaline because it thinks we are under attack/in danger and it prepares us to run away. However, once we’ve removed the stressor from our lives our heart rate can still be quite high and cause our breathing to increase which makes the cortisol (stress hormone) and adrenaline keep pumping - it’s a vicious cycle. So, tensing the whole body up for 30 seconds alerts your body to the end of the stress and allows your body to calm down - which allows your breathing to calm down - which allows your mind to calm down. I am someone who experiences panic attacks as they are falling asleep and gets really stressed from someone attacking my character - I remove myself from the situation (waking up or going for a walk outside) and then I tense my body up and let go to start the process of calming myself down. Next time you are stressed out as you are driving or dealing with someone on the internet or in real life, take a quick 30 seconds to regulate your body through tensing and see if this approach works for you.
3. Ask For A Hug (or similar physical touch)
Feeling safe alerts our brains and bodies to the fact that the stress has no place here - it tells us that we are okay and reminds our subconscious that we are continuing on. We can feel safe when we let someone we love and trust hold us - hugging us or if you aren’t keen on that type of physical contact, back rubs or eyebrow rubs (seriously, if you’ve never had someone rub softly between your eyebrows, I encourage you to give it a go). As your body collapses into or onto theirs, your heart rates sync up and it helps remove the stress from the body. Now, as someone who is an extreme independent who is physical touch avoidant, part of WHY my stress got so bad was because I would pull away (my brain convinced me it was safer - If you’re gonna die, you aren’t taking others with you!) and my instinct was to fix things myself, curl up in the fetal position and let myself stew in my adrenaline and cortisol. After learning how hard this is on the human heart, I opened myself up and explored versions of touch that not only connect me with other humans but also go above and beyond in feeling safe. I can literally have my hair played with and my back and eyebrows rubbed forever - it calms me right down.
4. Say “I am safe” over and over
After I’ve calmed my body down and sometimes while I am doing that, I will repeat the phrase “I am safe” and sometimes add in “I am supported” for good measure. This is the act of parenting the younger version of me that is feeling fearful in that moment because a lot of times, the stress that we experience as adults is actually perpetuated by experiences we had in our past. As I mentioned above, I get really stressed when my character is called into question - this isn’t an adult Teri situation, this is a younger Teri situation where when I was younger I believed my survival and the love from my caretakers depended on me being the “good girl” and anytime I would do something “bad” I experienced what I interpreted as abandonment. Knowing this as an adult, I am able to keep myself in the present, letting adult Teri know she is safe & supported & present and not in the scary, unpredictable situation I experienced as a child. If you think about the main things in your business that stress you out (cause your heart to race, your stomach to plummet, your mind to spin, your body to get hot, etc) look back into your past and see if you can find a situation you had back then with the people closest to you that made you fearful for your survival - this can give you clues as to why certain things stress you out more than others and then you can come up with a phrase to parent past you, while managing present you’s stress.
5. Brain dump
If you are a creative, entrepreneur, or general overthinker, your mind is always racing. It’s either focused on what went wrong in the past, what’s happening in the present, and worrying about the future. This can cause stress for things that are completely out of your control. This is where I encourage people to do a “brain dump” daily or weekly - essentially, grab a piece of paper and set a timer for 10 minutes and free write everything that is stressing you out. Simply getting out of your head and onto paper is going to be a game changer, but once you have it written out now you can also manage what you are looking at! I recommend sorting your thoughts into 2 categories : CAN CONTROL / CAN’T CONTROL . Once you have those separated its time to let go of the things you cannot control OR look at what you can control within those things. For example, you cannot control the fact that there is a war going on right now BUT you might feel more in control if you arrange a fundraiser, host people fleeing the war, or buy products from individuals in that country. For the things you CAN control, then you can start asking yourself: “What is one teeny tiny step I can take towards this?” and then start taking action. The important thing here, however, is that no one is going to make time for you to do this - YOU have to decide that your life and lack of stress is worth it.
So, there you have it folks, 5 tips on reducing stress that I use daily, weekly and monthly or whenever unexpected stressors pop up. While we can’t control what is happening to us, we can do our best to maintain control of our faculties during the experience. Reducing stress is not only integral to your long term health (imagine if every shot of cortisol/adrenaline took a few minutes off your life!) it is a requirement and because we are in professions that can bring about more stress than the average person we need to learn how to manage ourselves. There’s one thing I want to make you aware of that will start to happen when you start to reduce stressors in your life - the thing is, you have been teaching your body to release cortisol and adrenaline at certain times of the day based on your life: whether its driving, looking at instagram, or asking people for money your body gets used to this cycle - so when you make shifts in your schedule and start to reduce your time spent at work, looking at instagram, or driving while listening to Ludacris, your body is still going to release that cortisol/adrenaline because it becomes a habit and because you no longer have the distraction of: looking at instagram to distract, working more to release dopamine, or screaming angry music in your car you are going to be MORE aware of the adrenaline coursing through your veins and it is going to make you VERY uncomfortable and you are going to: feel guilty for not working, feel that you should be keeping busy, feel that you should eat for the dopamine to offset the guilt, feel that you should drink/smoke/shop because you are “bored”. It is IMPERATIVE that you understand that you have always been feeling that uncomfortable, you just covered it up with more work, shopping, drinking, smoking, eating, movement, etc. I encourage you to sit in that discomfort and apply any of the above 5 techniques in lieu of your traditional coping mechanisms and over time your body will learn how to regulate itself - it takes time, but it is worth it.
Here are some great resources to continue learning about stress: Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week by Tiffany Shlain, When The Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Mate, and The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk.
