STRESS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

ARE YOU STRESSED?

April is Stress Awareness Month, and even though we might be aware that we are stressed, perhaps we have become so used to living in chronic stress that we accept it as normal.

Our relationship with stress has changed over the years. Many thought of stress as a "badge of honor" because it meant we had responsibilities and with that status. I often heard people say how it was normal that someone was stressed because they had such a high position in the company.

Then there's the stress-judgment. How is that person so stressed, they have everything? Money, a nice home, great partner, cute kids. Assuming that "having it all" aligns with our version of success and what a good life looks like, thereby establishing a connection between ease, happiness and stress free.

However, lately, I also hear that people are hiding their stress, because they don't want to seem weak.

We really need to pause on this.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

I accepted that bad stress was part of work for a long time, to the point that I burned out, twice.

Instead of glamorizing or judging stress, let's learn to understand stress better and explore our relationship with it. When I say our relationship with it, I mean when and how stress is affecting us, what makes it work against us or for us, and what are the tools to navigate, cope and manage our stress.

For the month of April we will dive further into this topic.

For now, let's look at the three main areas of stress.

GOOD STRESS:

Anytime we stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone we will feel some level of stress. The good stress can mean we are thrilled and the Adrenalin is going, the dopamine is released and we feel the excitement of something new. This also happens when you go shopping and you feel the rush of urgency to buy the latest item before it's sold right in front of your nose (a feeling the fashion industry is banking on).

This good stress is also called tension, between what we have and what we want. In that tension is a choice. The choice can cause stress or excitement. Or a mix of both.

Working with the good stress is wonderful, because it's how we can embark on change and growth with a mindset of curiosity and learning.

BAD STRESS:

The "good stress" feeling in the body of excitement can turn to "bad stress" when we resist the unknown and uncertainty that comes from change. If we believe we can handle it, it becomes exciting. If we think that we cannot handle it, it becomes anxiety.

I want to add it's natural to resist change, which is why Power-Pausing is so important. Anything that's unfamiliar can become exciting or stress inducing; it's that moment where we can pause, listen to see if our thoughts are stuck in the stress-loop, notice how we feel, and then ask what we need so that we can move from reaction to response.

When we don't feel safe we will automatically react to protect ourselves and that's where the bad stress can turn to "ugly stress."

THE UGLY:

I have been in ugly stress mode several times in my life. When adversity turns into living and working in survival mode, we experience chronic stress. It becomes ugly stress and leads to burnout.

The chronic stress situation is a problem.

When going through COVID, we turned to resilience and empathy to get us through, focusing on the light at the end of the tunnel to give us hope that someday it would be over, but for now, we just had to keep going.

When we can see the end to a project, we can be on sprint mode for awhile without it turning into survival mode.

Survival mode happens when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, there might not even be a tunnel. Instead there is a big wide open landscape with no refuge in sight.

In survival mode we feel alone. We do not fight for something we care about; we fight against something we fear.

Survival mode is the ugly stress that gets us exhausted, demotivated and lost because we feel powerless.

I could go into far more detail and be more Neurosciency and Psyhological about it, but I will leave the three categories here for now, because we don't need to fix any of this. What we need is to know how to move between these stages of stress. We will explore that further as we go through this month, for now I ask you to please suspend any judgment of your stress or that of others and instead find your compassion for our shared human condition.