By Jamie Broadley
Whether it’s about work, family, money or time, stress never seems to be far away in our modern lives.
The good news is that with the increase in potential stressors there has been an increase in solutions too. In this article we are going to share the strategies that we use at Cafcass to support our social workers and other staff who face potentially stressful situations everyday through emotionally demanding cases and deadline based work. The aim is to help you to think about stress a little differently as well as giving you some tips and tricks that you can start applying today.
When we first consider stress the temptation is to look at it through a narrow lens, such as a difficult work project being the source, yet we need to consider a wider, more holistic, view. Our lifestyle plays a huge role in determining our capacity to deal with stress and if we aren’t sleeping well, eating the right foods or being active then the chances are we will be more susceptible to other stressors. Using our work example we could invest time trying to chunk up the project or delegate aspects and this may or may not work. If instead we zoom out and invest a little effort into sleeping better and having a more nutritious breakfast then we’ll probably find that the work project isn’t as stressful as we first thought. We haven’t reduced the stress it produces; we have increased our capacity to manage it. The take away here is to consider your lifestyle before your stressors, build capacity through simple improvements to sleep, diet and exercise and you’ll soon find your big stressors appearing a little more manageable.
Now that we have built our capacity we can look at our sources of stress and perform a simple categorisation by splitting them into acute and chronic stressors. We will deal with each differently. Acute stressors are short and sharp, they light up your fight and flight systems briefly and can often be overcome in a relatively short period of time. Examples include work deadlines or maybe a family event. Chronic stressors on the other hand are part of the daily grind, they change little day to day and are always there niggling away in the back of your head. Examples are job dissatisfaction, lack of sleep if you have young children or financial pressures. Take a piece of paper and create two columns, think through all your sources of stress, listing the acute ones in the left-hand column and the chronic sources in the right.
We’ll start by looking at our acute stressors. Traditionally we may view these sources of stress as negative. However, there is some fascinating science which shows that our attitude towards our stress effects our body’s reaction to it. Viewing our stress reaction as a positive, by recognising that it is our body lighting up our systems to help us perform at our best, completely protects us from any of the negative outcomes traditionally associated with stress and can actually improve our performance. So next time a deadline is looming and you can feel the butterflies rising remember that this is great news, your body is mobilising itself for action, to help you perform at your best. For more on the theory and the science behind it check out this excellent TED talk from Kelly McGonigal on the subject.
For chronic stress the tactic is a little different. Where we looked to harness acute stress we recognise that having our fight and flight system continually activated isn’t helpful and can suppress our immune system and leave us feeling fatigued. We therefore want to manage and reduce our chronic stressors. From the list identify which are the aspects that are within your control and which are the ones that are outside your control. Where a potential stressor is within your direct control, such as your personal finances, work on an action plan to manage the issue. Where the stress is beyond your direct control, such as changes at work, you’ll need to practice some acceptance and try to look for any opportunities in the situation rather than focusing on the negative. Again write these down.
Creating a simple plan like this may take 20 minutes of thinking time and can be hugely powerful in mapping out your sources of stress and actioning them, giving you a sense of control over the situation which will, in turn, actually reduce your sense of stress and dealing with stress. Once all that is done we can start looking at some simple tips, tricks and resources which can help reduce and manage our stress further whilst building our own resilience against them. My favourites in dealing with stress include the following:
- Mindfulness meditation: There is a wealth of evidence that this practice of presence can have positive effects on stress reduction as well as wider emotional wellbeing. If you’re a beginner try the free Headspace programme for 10 days.
- Positive posture: Whilst we all know that our mood effects how we carry ourselves few of us realise that this relationship works both ways – how we hold ourselves actually affects our mood and emotions. Standing up tall is one of the easiest stress busters we’ve come across, so start experimenting. This TED talk by Amy Cuddy has more on this intriguing area of research.
- Find a hobby: There is a fascinating theory of resilience that shows the more aspects we have in our lives the more resilient we are likely to be. If we only identify with a couple of areas, such as being a parent and going to work, and we have a bad day in both those areas it can seem that our entire world is under threat. If we have some additional interests and hobbies, and we can define ourselves in more ways, we have more worlds to turn to and troubles in one area seem less catastrophic. Taking up an active hobby also has benefits for building capacity through exercise and social support too.
- Understand yourself: As Shakespeare said ‘there is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so’. If we have greater control or understanding over our thoughts we are in a stronger position to navigate the stressful moments in our life without issue. There are several excellent books which can help you generate this awareness, including ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Steve Peters, ‘The Happiness Trap’ by Russ Harris, ‘The Obstacle is the Way’ by Ryan Holiday, ‘Antifragile’ by Nassim Taleb and ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Victor Frankl.
We hope you’ve found this article useful and now feel prepared to take control of your stress, harnessing it where appropriate and reducing it everywhere else. We really believe that this process will prove more powerful than you perhaps first think. After all, if you can take control of all your stress then imagine what else you can do!
# dealing with stress