July & August's Notable Words

I want to apologize to those of you who look forward to my notable words posts, I somehow missed last month yet I hope the few extra ones below help make up for it. As always enjoy and Be Well!

And

Have a great September!

Until Next Time ~ Be Well

Our Stress Tolerance Point

To read the first post in this Stress Series click here!

Just as the way we perceive stress is highly individualized, so is our Stress Tolerance Point. Our Stress Tolerance Point is that specific point at which stress begins to have a negative impact on us, it’s the point at which our performance declines, when we begin to lose focus on the task, and when we recognize the symptoms of being stressed. It’s the point at which we go from what we can handle, the level of demand still being manageable to one step further where the demands exceed our capacity and we tip over the edge. Remember that even though not all change is bad, all change still creates stress on our bodies (stress simply equals a change). We all experience a number of positive and negative events that create stress. Whether we perceive an event as positive or negative we must cope with it all the same. Often times we use the same maladaptive coping skills to manage positive stress/change as we do with negative stress/change, unfortunately what we don’t realize is that negative coping skills only exacerbate the negative impact of stress; doing more harm than good.

Before we get further into active coping strategies, let’s first look at identifying our Stress Profile by accurately identifying the stress we’ve been under. By analyzing our needs and current abilities, we can take a look at the things that trigger us to feel stress. Triggers are all those things that cause us “to stress”, it’s based on our perceptions and on our individual tolerance point. Triggers can fall into 4 distinct categories: environmental, personal, physiological, and social; each impacting us slightly differently. Journaling is a powerful tool to understand what our triggers are and how each trigger impacts us differently. If you’re not a journal-er, no problem, just spend some time thinking about your own stressors. It shouldn’t be too difficult to identify when demands go from manageable to you feeling overloaded and unproductive. We usually know what we can handle but lets not forget about “the when”.  Timing is everything. Its no surprise that holidays are a stressful time. Regardless of demands, they are stressful! The” what” is only half the equation, the “when” being the other half.

As we begin to get a deeper understanding of our stress triggers (the what when, and how much), we begin to see that stressors don’t occur in a vacuum and we need to be careful of not creating a simple ranking system. Change needs to be understood in context to what else we are facing at any given time. It’s important we understand the impact of compound stress; one event may not usually lead to unmanageable stress however adding it on top of other “small” events and we are now experiencing compound stress. Nothing puts us over our threshold quicker than compound stress. One stressor (even a seemingly big one) seems more manageable because we’re better equipped at handling 1 thing, we get frazzled when things begin piling on top of each other. We lose focus simply because there are too many things that need attending to, too many things demand our time. Contrary to popular opinion, we are not very good at multitasking; we are far more successful at managing 1 demand, one change, at a time. 

A common example of this is moving away from loved ones to begin a new job. Maybe you’re very accustomed to beginning new jobs, typically feel very comfortable as the new employee or jumping right into an unknown task, maybe you usually find this type of change exciting, however add the changes that come with settling into a new place 500 miles from your stable support system, and your quickly burdened with compound stress. All the positive change may leave you feeling overwhelmed and anxious. On the surface, these may all appear to be positive steps, you may have even voluntarily moved and sought out a new job, however change = stress regardless if the change is positive or negative. You may notice changes in your mood, sleep habits, appetite and energy level all as a result of experiencing so many significant changes at one time.  

If you’re still having a hard time identifying triggers there are a number of stress rating scales available, one of my favorites is the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (also known as the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory); developed by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967. After noticing a link between stressful life events and illness, Holmes and Rahe created a 43-item checklist of various life events to help make a connection between experienced stress and risk of future illness.  The Homes-Rahe Stress Inventory captured a way to assess a person’s life within the past year and apply a weighted amount to each event – creating an overall stress score categorizing our overall stress level.

Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory

Now that we’ve identified our stress tolerance point, the next step is to begin understanding how we respond to stress; what are the healthy and maladaptive strategies we rely on? Where can we make changes and develop a better action plan? While my follow up post will focus on coping skills, it’s essential to differentiate between what we can control and what we can’t. In order to successfully manage our environment we need to pick an element that is controllable and work on that one thing. It’s important to identify those things we can and cannot change. It’s a waste of our time trying to change what we have no control over, we need to instead spend our energy developing positive coping strategies and change those things that are within our control. For everything else, we need to practice acceptance as a coping skill.

Until Next Time ~ Be Well

Stress... Is It All Bad???

When is the last time you felt stressed? This morning, last night, last week, last month, or maybe even right now?  Most of us experience enough stress that we can easily identify our own symptoms as well as usually what triggers us. With everyday hassles, demands, and headaches over the mountain of responsibilities, its no wonder stress is on the rise. The APA reported that in 2013 42% of adults polled reported an increase in their stress level during the past year.

For some, stress may feel like an unwelcome houseguest, it’s a commonplace way to describe our day, our work, our to-dos, and how we’re feeling. We tend to forget though the biological nature of stress, we forget that stress serves a function and if utilized properly it can actually help us. Stress tends to be advertised as a bad thing– a negative response to a situation or even more commonly, an overload of demands. So often, feeling stress is discussed as a symptom and creating balance is defined as the solution. While I’m not disagreeing, I’ll instead offer an alternative that stress may not be all-bad, in fact the ability to recognize stress is rooted in our physiology as a survival mechanism. Up until a certain point, stress serves to help us perform a variety of demands.

In 1936 Hans Selye identified & defined stress as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”.  Translated, Selye states that stress is our body’s normal response to a perceived threat. In the case of stress perception is reality. Stress is the body’s way of responding to a challenge. What I perceive as a threatening environment and thus find stressful you may not, thus experiencing less stress than I would in the same environment. This is exactly why no two people feel the exact same stress levels while facing the same situation (demands).

The perception (feeling) of stress is highly individualized yet the impact of stress is far more global. Historically perceived threats referred to life threatening situations where the body had a physiological response (also known as adrenaline). Fortunately in today’s world, our stress levels rarely if ever are a response to a life-threatening environment yet the interesting thing is that our body is unable to tell the difference, we still react with the same release of adrenaline regardless of the perceived threat. Our body has the same physiological response to physical danger as to an important deadline. Stress is the body’s way of protecting us, biologically we are programmed to respond to stress (a threatening event) in 1 or 3 ways, also know as the fight-flight-freeze response. Remember that stress is how the body responses to a challenge. These responses are directly tied into the inner workings of our central nervous system and are bedded in our survival. Our ancestors benefited from each response in order to fend off attackers, out maneuver enemies, and also conserve energy for hunting, While we don’t have to worry about hunting our food and outsmarting attackers, the adaptations of our stress response continue to be an important skill for surviving and thriving. 

In order to thrive we have to learn to utilize stress in ways that help instead of harm us. We often associate stress with being overloaded yet in small doses stress helps us perform better, focus more, and achieve short term goals, however with prolonged or chronic stress our body can emotionally shut down (implode), explode or experience negative physical consequences. The point at which stress turns from helpful and adaptive to harmful and maladaptive is known as our stress threshold or tipping point. Up until this point, stress helps us perform better, be more focused, have better concentration, and perform for a longer period of time; however once stress exceeds this point, there is an immediate and significant drop in performance. A simple example is the fact that most of us perform our best when under a deadline, most of us cannot work weeks in advance – we will often procrastinate due to lack of focus, direction, or ideas, yet as the deadline approaches, we’re able to minimize distractions to be more productive and successful. It’s important to note that while many of us have similar behavioral tendencies, we each have a different tipping point, some may be able to work successfully up until a deadline however others may exceed their point an hour or a day before the deadline.

Interested in learning more about identifying your individual threshold? Watch for my follow up post on not only identifying your tipping point but also on the numerous factors that directly and indirectly influence our individual stress threshold.

Until Next Time ~ Be Well