- saschajones
How Can We Break Our Stress Cycle?
Stress is normal and is how we react to changes that occur when situations arise. It can simply be put as a pressure. Our responses can be emotional, physical, intellectual and energetic. Certain stress is healthy – and temporary - it can keep us alert and increase performance. When adrenaline is produced it keeps us on our toes, like giving a speech or studying for an exam, and it can be positive - it helps get things done.
When chronic stress kicks in it is because our normal stress responses are constantly being triggered (our in-built fight or flight response), and are not being turned off or getting a chance to relax. Chronic stress can have serious implications for our health and wellbeing. By bringing self-awareness to how we are thinking or feeling or what our body is doing when we experience stress we can start to look at how we can retrain our responses and break or interrupt the cycle - like learning a new habit. Neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to rewire or restructure itself to adapt – comes into play. Rewiring takes work and practice over time. The key here is to listen to where we are at, and to be mindful not to judge or work against ourselves. Be kind to yourself through the process.
We can break the stress response pattern or circuit using simple approaches like the #stopprocess below. Documenting what is going on – thoughts, feelings, physical responses etc when you are feeling stressed is also a really effective way to tune-in and build positive habits around managing stress. Physiology and movement are the quickest ways to change our state or condition and shift attention from our inner dialogue loop. Ultimately we are looking to find a way that we can be self-aware, retrain our conditioned response, change our state and find calm more quickly and easily.
1. Recognise the pattern. 2. Stop. 3. Choose – do I want to keep doing this? 4. Shift attention. 5. Give yourself positive reinforcement.
Post from Sascha Jones - Master the Basics Series - For Health + for Life. Live in Flow, Uplevel + Thrive Reference STOP PROCESS @alexhowardtherapy
Learning from @thegiftedstoryteller