Stress Cycle
I am an educator… there hasn’t been an awful lot of opportunity for in person educating since March 2020. So I consider myself hugely lucky that the organization I work for have allowed me and my fellow educators to diversify a little and use the time around the teaching that we are doing to learn and read around our topic base. And I have relished it… I have learnt more about drugs than I ever imagined. I have learnt more about mental health for teens than I ever did as a teacher or Senior Leader in a Secondary School in the UK. I have watched some amazing films and documentaries, have attended some fantastic webinars and struggled through some real duds!
Relatively recently I stumbled upon a great one! I shared it to my own personal facebook page at the time and know that several friends have watched it and listened to some of the podcasts that it mentions. It had the grand title of Attend to your Well Being: How Educators Can Avoid Mental, Physical and Emotional Exhaustion, and do you know what? It is as relevant to non educators as it is to educators… but I digress.
What it did was prompt me to read a little and listen a little with specific emphasis on something called The Stress Cycle and that, my friends, is what I am going to share with you today because it fair blew my mind!
The idea comes from a two sisters; I shall reference their book at the end of this piece.
Essentially, they say, we have the idea of stress wrong. There are actually two parts to the problem… there are stressors, these are things that you see or maybe hear, smell, touch, taste or even imagine that you believe could do you harm. There are external stressors, the obvious ones like money, family, work etc and less obvious ones like self criticism, body image, The Future to name but a few. The stressors are what your body believes is putting you in danger.
Then there is stress, this is the neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you come across one of these threats, these stressors. But what causes us the problem is that when we deal with the stressor, and we move ourselves away from the problem, we no longer deal with the stress our body is under caused by that stressor.
Let’s think back to before we lived in houses and visited the grocery store, albeit wearing masks… suppose we were in the wild and we were being chased by a lion. There were 2 possible outcomes; either we got eaten and then the stress is pretty irrelevant OR we managed, with our tribe maybe, to kill the lion and take it back to our Village. Cue a huge party and feast… this celebration was a message to our body that it was safe, no longer under threat. The feasting with family and friends told us we were loved, the deep breathing you could do because you were no longer in harm’s way was what your body needed to Complete The Stress Cycle.
Flash forward thousands of years and our stressors are probably not lions anymore. But imagine you hear scary news, something for instance like a huge snow storm is approaching. That’s the stressor, that is what releases adrenaline and cortisol into our bodies… but, we don’t do anything with that information. We might watch the weather forecast a little closer, run out to the grocery store and panic buy milk, we might post about it on facebook or take pictures of it when the snow falls. But when the snow stops falling we don’t do anything that signals to our body it is safe and that the threat is gone. We don’t do anything to Complete the Stress Cycle and so, our medieval body doesn’t know it is safe and remains in “chronic activation”. Now actually maybe the snow example wasn’t such a good choice because I suspect after a little shoveling or a lot of shoveling our body gets the message, but I’m sure you understand the point I am making here.
There are 7 strategies to help us Complete the Stress Cycle and because our lives are so stressful, particularly right now, we have a new stressor in our lives pretty much every day, it is vital on so many health levels that every day you do something to Complete The Stress Cycle. Here is your menu of options:
Physical Activity: the is the single most efficient strategy to tell your brain you have survived the threat and that your body is safe. You should take between 20 and 60 minutes of activity a day to effectively convey this message of safety to your body.
Breathing: deep and slow breaths. Try breathing in for the count of 5, holding for the count of 5 and exhaling for the count of 10, do this 3 times at the end of your stressful day. In the car on your way home, if you are going out to work or as you switch off your computer at the end of your working from home day. This should be enough to signal to your brain that you body is safe.
Social Interactions: even right now, even socially distanced it is vital to connect with others to increase our sense of belonging. This replicates the feasting time with loved ones and indicates to your body that the world is a safe place again.
Laughter: real proper belly laughs!
Affection: spending time or connecting with loved ones, a step closer than the social interactions with friends. Try a 6 second kiss with a loved one, or a 20 second hug with someone you love and trust, even petting a dog or cat helps. Speak to loved ones, keep them in mind daily.
A Big Ol’ Cry: whether you watch a movie to bring those tears, or are so frustrated already that they flow easily you need to feel into the emotion, rather than avoiding it. Crying may not change the stressors, but it does complete the cycle.
Creative Expression: 30 minutes a day, some for of creative output; dancing, singing, painting, writing… ha! Looks like I have completed my Stress Cycle today!
The best bit of all of this is that you begin to learn to listen to your body and the signals it gives you. It knows when you have Completed the Stress Cycle; when you have walked long enough, cried hard enough, spent enough time painting, drawing or simply being creative, just please don’t ever listen to it, if it suggests you have kissed long enough!
You will know when you have Completed the Cycle and you need to build this into your every day!
Be kind, be gentle,
Denise xoxo
To understand this in far more depth you should read ‘Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle’, by Emily and Amelia Nagoski
