Hey you,

Welcome Back to the Series: “No More Chronic Stress and Burnout”

If you have read my first blog of the series, on the neurobiology of stress: great, let’s get to it! If you haven’t, you can read it [here].

"But I am stressed and I don't have time to read the first blog!".

If you haven't read it, or it was a long time ago and you don't remember, no worries. I will summarize relevant stuff throughout this blog. Also. I write a lot about what you can do about your stress. This does not mean that all of your stress is your fault. Some environments simply have so many stressors that frankly, everyone would burn out. And therefore reducing the time we spend in such environment is always a good idea. Your employer and your government have a huge responsibility to make the environment you live and work in less stressful. However, that is not where the majority of your power lies. Your power lies in what you can control. So, lets get to that.

Stressors vs. Stress

There are several aspects of a stressful life that are relevant if you want to reduce stress and become happier and healthier: First, there is a difference between a stressor and stress.

A stressor is an event that may potentially induce a stress response. In prehistoric times, stressors were usually acute and a threat to our survival, such as predators, rivals, food scarcity, cold, and infection. In modern times, stressors are often less of an immediate threat, but there are more of them, and they are often anticipated in the future, such as deadlines, business plans, job changes, getting a diploma (or not), juggling care & work, living in cities, etc. The environment you live and work in plays a huge rol here. More stressors will always mean more stress. So reducing stressors is often a good idea. Particularly the type you really do not need. Notifications (yes, also when on silent mode), pop-up to do lists, cluttered spaces, overpacked schedules, late-night phone use, unnecessary obligations, even that podcast you listen to on your commute can be information overload. If you lock up your phone for just one day, you will feel that reducing these kinds of unecessary stressors will instantly bring more calm to your life.

Stress is your physiological, emotional, and mental response to a stressor. The same stressor (feedback from your boss) may elicit a very different physiological, emotional, and mental response in different people. Whereas Jane may feel confident and experience a comment from her boss as an opportunity for growth, feeling perhaps some tingling sensations, excitement with the new task, and having thoughts like: “I am looking forward to getting on top of something new…” George may experience an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, feel anxious about the next conversation with his boss, and may have thoughts like: “Oh no, I probably will not be able to sleep before the next presentation, and everyone will see that I am a failure.”

Stressors and stress are thus different, and the same stressor can lead to different stress responses in different people. Overall, the bigger the stressor is, the more stressors you experience, and the longer you are exposed to them, the more stress any person will experience. But there is one crucial aspect that gives you far more control over your stress than you might initially think you have: your ability to deal with your immediate stress responses.

Building Resilience: Improve your Ability to Regulate Stress

Beyond the difference between stressors and stress, there are ways you can enhance your ability to deal with stress. In the example I just gave, Jane has clearly learned how to deal with a specific type of stressor, namely feedback. Through experience and practice, she has learned how to take feedback at an informational level (what is it that is required of me), rather than on an evaluative level (I am being judged negatively). There may be several practices at play here:

1. First, Jane may have been exposed to feedback frequently, and therefore, her physiological response to this type of stressor will have been reduced. The more we expose ourselves to a certain stressor, the more our body will adapt. You can think of this like exercise: cardio or strength exercise is a physical stressor. If you run often enough, or lift weights often enough, your body will adapt and become faster and stronger. It’s the same with stressors: the more we are exposed to a specific stressor, the less stress we will experience in the face of it. This is one of the main reasons why doing nothing does not help you fully recover from chronic stress and burnout.
2. Second, Jane may have resources and tools that have increased her ability to deal with the physical, emotional, and mental responses to stress. She may have learned how to use her stress brakes (read my previous blog to learn about the stress brakes). This too requires engagement and experience, which is why doing nothing doesn’t cure chronic stress. When you get feedback from another person, for example, you can manage your physiological response by focusing on your breathing and keeping that steady, slow, and calm. You can manage your emotional response by taking notes while you receive the feedback. This allows you to focus on the information rather than on the emotional aspect of feeling criticized. Or Jane may have learned to reframe negative thoughts around feedback: telling herself that feedback is not a negative evaluation of her character, but that feedback is an opportunity for growth, and that she has the ability to learn and become better at this.

The Goal of Increasing your Ability: Reducing Impact, and Time Spent in Stress State

When we increase our ability to deal with stress, not only are we able to better manage the stressors themselves (because we can keep our mind calm and focus on the actual problem), we also spend less time in a stress state because we deal with the stress rather than letting it become chronic and spiral out of control. You may also remember from the previous blog that it is not stress that is the problem, but a long time spent in a stress state, or being stuck in a stress state, that is bad.

Breaking the Cycle: Steps to Avoid Getting Stuck in Stress

So how do we make sure we don’t get stuck in a stress state? Step 1 is gaining insight into how stress works in your body, which we covered in detail the previous blog. Following this first step, we also need insight into which practices may help you bring the stress response down so you don’t get stuck. After that (in the next blog), you’ll get an opportunity to experience some very specific practices and tools that will help bring this about.

This blog post is intended to upgrade your insight into dealing with stress; the next one is intended to enhance your ability to deal with different types of stress.

Why Taking a Vacation is NOT Improving Your Ability to Regulate Stress

Let’s Start by Getting Something VERY IMPORTANT Out of the Way:

"one of the biggest misconceptions about burnout and stress recovery

is that we cure it by doing nothing"

To destress, many of us think we need to go on a holiday, lay around and chill, with no goals, and voila: problem solved. And yes, part of this is true: if we temporarily remove stressors from our life, for that time, our body will feel more safe and more relaxed and will be allowed to recover. It’s also a good idea, if you are feeling stressed, to lower the number of stressors in your life, and limit the time you are exposed to them. However, this is only a temporary, and not the full solution.

Anyone who has come back from a holiday knows that although taking a break away from goals is a great way to relax, and taking time off work to recover from the first completely freezing experience of a burnout is necessary, it is only a small part of the puzzle; it is most certainly not the whole part. Within a few weeks, you'll be right back to old stress levels.

The Importance of Upgrading Your Ability to Deal

Removing all stressors from your life doesn’t allow you to practice dealing with stressors. And this practice, like exercise, is absolutely necessary to make sure you upgrade your ability to deal with stress in the future: because let’s face it. Stressors will happen. If you do not upgrade your ability to deal with the stress response, you will inevitably keep yo-yo-ing in and out of chronic stress and burnout your whole life.

Especially when you are in the beginning stages of recovery from burnout, you might notice that the tiniest little stressor can send you into a panic attack that holds you for hours, messes up your sleep, and gets you into a fight with a friend or partner. So the first tools in your toolbox, for now, are about dealing with the stress on the spot.

Yes, you will perhaps need to call in sick, take a break, take a holiday, or even a week away from your kids (or a day a week away). But you will also understand that you can do more than that; you can become a much calmer person than you are today, AND do work that you love. AND be a parent or caregiver. You don’t need to survive from holiday to holiday.

The Power of Using Your Breaks

What we need to learn is to find and use our breaks again. If you remember from my last blog post, there are two stress cycles: a fast stress cycle (the stress & progress branch of the autonomic nervous system) and a slow stress cycle (the HPA-axis). And there are two brakes we can use: activating our relax & digest system (the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system), and activating the two brain areas that are important for attention, thought and emotion regulation, learning, and memory (The Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and Hippocampus). We don't use these breaks by doing nothing. We learn to use them by engaging in very specific activities.

That’s a lot of technical information condensed in a tiny paragraph, but I promise, I will give you some examples where you will get a better idea of how these processes work in real life. You might be able to imagine how you effectively experience these brake systems and learn how to build your ability to use them.

No worries, the purpose is not for you to become a stress-free superhuman who floats through modern life in a cross legged position being completely unaffected by the insane amount of information coming your way on a daily basis. Thats simply unobtainable in the world we live in. The purpose is for you to believe that there are real, simple, short, and affordable techniques within your grasp, that will make your life just a lot more chill and a lot less on edge.

For the time being, there is no expectation to actually do these things, apart from understanding the process, and feeling empowered that you will learn how to do this with time. In order to understand how to tackly stress, we need to understand the stress cycle. You already learned about the slow and the fast stress cycles; now you’ll learn how you can use the breaks of those cycles so the stress cycle is complete.

Completing The Stress Cycle

According to Emily and Amelia Nagoski, who co-wrote the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, we need to ‘complete our stress cycle’ in order to get unstuck from being in a constant stress state. See how “time” and “chronic” come back here: time, and the time we spend in the experience of stress, is essential in keeping burnout at bay. We need to reduce the time spent in stress-mode, and we do that by completing the stress cycle. We complete the stress cycle by using our stress regulation skills and behaviors.

According to the Nagoski sisters: “Stress is a neurological and physiological shift that happens in your body when you encounter a threat (the stressor). It's an evolutionarily adaptive response that helps us to cope with severe threats like, for example, a lion or a rivaling tribe. Because we used to live in an environment where our stressors were much more acute, life-threatening, and would involve physical action, the stress hormones that are released in your blood when you encounter a stressor make you ready to move. A faster heartbeat, tense muscles, faster breathing: ready to fight or flee, your attention focus is narrow, on the here and now, everything feels urgent, you are alert and vigilant, and other systems in your body are deprioritized: digestion, meh, not important; immune function: aaaah, we can do that later."

So you see the stressor, and your whole body is ready to run a marathon if needed, turn back and fight the attacker, and after it’s all over, check back in with our family to tell the tale next to a warm fire, sigh in relief, relax your muscles after that intense effort, eat freshly cooked food, experience deep social connection, and perhaps perform a ritual to celebrate our return, expressing gratitude for being alive.

How we Fail at Completing our Cycles

But that's not what we do, is it? We sit still at our desks, we gaze at our screens for hours on end, we breathe shallow breaths as we hammer on our keyboards, we get home to our families where we try to get the kids to eat, or we crash on the couch with our meal, watch the news where mostly horrible things are reported, perhaps followed by a Netflix binge-watch or some online game.

There is no running, there is no talking the event through with our family, there are no hugs and kisses from people who are happy we are still alive, there is no celebration that you survived the endless list of emails, there is no deep sighing to counter the hyperventilation behind your desk, we don’t taste our food because we watch tv, and there is no ritual that marks your bravery and instills in you a sense of growth, pride, gratitude, and meaning: There is no completing the stress cycle.

The stress response naturally follows a cycle: a stressor occurs, the gas pedal of the fast and slow stress cycle is pressed, the brakes are pressed. End of cycle. The problem is, we never push the brakes; that is why we get stuck in stress mode.

The deadline, or the email, or the meeting may be gone, but the stress is still there in your body. It still affects breathing, blood pressure, tension in your muscles, vigilance, attention focus, emotional responses, digestion, and ability to sleep. Your body doesn’t know it’s safe, because the cues that signal: “it’s safe, we can relax,” that should follow a normal stress response, aren’t there. And so, the tense sensations, the anxious feelings, and the racing thoughts keep going.

So, How Then, Do We Complete the Cycle?

Let me tell you something outrageous: it’s not by sitting in meditation (yet). If you have no way to release your physical stress, sitting with your thoughts is bound to trigger anxiety. Anyone who has ever raced to a yoga class after work, then sat down cross-legged trying to ‘meditate,’ has experienced this firsthand. If you have sat down to meditate, and have felt like a failure, it's not you! You (and many meditations apps), have missed a step. Before we learn how to complete the cycle, first, it is important to distinguish between several forms of stress: physical stress, emotional stress, mental stress, and spiritual stress.

Different Types of Stress and How to Complete Each Cycle

Physical stress is experienced as sensations in the body. It’s a racing heart, sweaty palms, tense muscles, fast breathing, headaches. We need to understand and feel physical stress in order to make sure it does not become chronic. If we are chronically stuck in a physical stress cycle, this will manifest in chronic physical illness. Because physical stress is, well, physical, the physical stress cycle is best released in a physical way: by moving, breathing, and physical expressions such as laughter or crying. A run after work, a slow breathing exercise before bed, and just having a good cry will all help you release the stress and complete the cycle. Moreover, doing any of these physical stress releases is essential before doing practices like meditation.

Emotional stress is experienced when otherwise normal emotions stay “online” for a long time. Emotions usually come and go; they last about 90 seconds. They are signposts that tell you: attention needs to be directed here; we may want to change this situation. This is very useful. But when we are anxious all the time, or stay angry for a long time, we are stuck, and we experience emotional stress. Often, emotional stress is experienced in relation to a target: we are angry at someone, or sad about something or something someone has done. Quite often when we experience emotional stress, it is related to another human being, and almost always, it is our own thought processes that keep emotions online for way longer than necessary. One of the best ways to deal with emotional stress is by writing down how you feel, or talking to someone else about how you feel. Social connection to others helps us feel less alone and is an amazing aid in finding emotional release.

Mental stress comes in the form of thoughts (usually thoughts that aren’t true) that keep reappearing. These are thoughts and assumptions that have formed in your mind over time, and are most likely very (very very very) biased. Thoughts like: “I will never fall asleep, I just can’t deal with this, I will never get my energy back.” These kinds of thoughts will keep anxiety, sadness, and anger online for a really long time. The best way to deal with mental stress is to process your thoughts, either in the form of creative expression, by meditating, or by writing them down in a journal. We often don’t pay enough attention to our thoughts, which makes them resurface again and again until we bloody well listen. By that time, a thought has likely become a never-ending loop that feels really true and beyond your ability to control. Processing your thoughts helps to calm them down.

Spiritual stress is experienced when we lack a feeling of purpose, meaning, connectedness, belonging, and being part of something larger than just us. The way I use this word, it has nothing to do with religion, spirits, or the afterlife. It means simply, to feel part of something bigger than us, to feel like your life has purpose and meaning beyond satisfying your own pleasures. The best way to complete the spiritual stress cycle is to find or create a job (that includes caring for others) that has meaning, to reframe the work that you do in a meaningful way (for example, “my job puts food on my family’s table, which makes it meaningful for me”), or by engaging in another group ritual or activity that makes you feel like you are part of something larger. Spending time in nature, meditation, doing voluntary work: all of these help with being part of something larger than just you.

Summary: Complete the Cycle in 4 Different Ways

So, in summary, we complete a physical stress cycle through movement and breathing. Often, because our innate stress response is so physiological, this is necessary in order to be able to complete emotional and mental stress cycles. We complete an emotional stress cycle through expressing our emotions and having positive, open, and honest connection with others. We complete a mental stress cycle through creative expression, meditation, or journaling. And we complete our spiritual stress cycle through creating rituals and finding meaning in the work or daily actions we do. In order to thus increase your ability to deal with stress, it is first important to distinguish what type of stress you are experiencing most.

Reflect on Your Stress Cycle: Where Are You Stuck?

Your final action after reading this blog, for now, is to increase your ability to distinguish between the types of stress you feel, in order to be able to better pick practices that will help you complete the cycle. So, I ask you to reflect on the type of stress you are experiencing most. Where do you feel most stuck? Rank-order your stress types in order of importance. Which one is on top? Start your efforts there.

Knowing what kind of stress is bothering you will help to direct your efforts toward an adequate completion of your stress cycle, and it helps prioritize where to put your attention first. If you are currently quite stressed, it’s important to pick one stress tool, and not try out a million different things at once, so find focus by rank-ordering and prioritizing which stress type you will tackle first.

For now, think about this, and in my next blog, I will give you several options and tools to help complete your cycle.

Sources:

Burnout - The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle. By Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski.

Unstressable - A Practical Guide to Stress Free Living. By Mo Gawdat & Alice Law.

The Body Keeps the Score - Mind, Brain, and Body in Transformation of Trauma. By Bessel van der Kolk.

How Emotions Are Made - The Secret Life of the Brain, by Lisa Feldman Barret

Permission to Feel - The Power of Emotional Intelligence to achieve well being and success. By Marc Brackett.

The Breathing Cure - Habits for a Healthier, Happier, and Longer Life. By Parick MCKeown.