Clearly Noticing Your Stress Triggers Will Actually Help You Relax

Life frequently pulls you in multiple ways at once, which can trigger stress. You may think about how to finish a project for work, what to make for dinner, or when to pick up the kids, all at the same time. This stress can cause your emotions to overwhelm you, overburden your thinking, and cause you to react negatively or simply shut down. It’s critical to stand back in these stressful situations and consider how you got here.

Although stress is a natural response of your body to any demand or threat, prolonged stress without a break in between pressures can harm your physical and mental health. Fortunately, it's possible to stop stress in its tracks. The goal is to recognize your stress triggers and implement effective coping mechanisms.

So, how can you identify the sources of your stress? While you're in the thick of it, how do you become conscious of what drains you, hinders your productivity, and harms your health? Stop, remain still, and direct your focus to your breathing and the feelings throughout your body. Then, return to the present moment. You may overcome life's obstacles by establishing a separation between the egoic mind and your conscious reaction.

It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it. ~ Hans Selye

What Is Stress?

When you’re under stress, your body releases adrenaline and cortisol in reaction to a threat or significant difficulty. Everyone reacts to stress in different ways, but in most cases, your fight-or-flight response raises your heart rate. People get anxious about themselves, their environment, and the course of action they should follow.

Every area of your life might cause stress. There’s always a chance of experiencing stress at any time. Therefore, it's crucial to have effective stress management skills. It's a typical, everyday occurrence that everyone encounters. So rather than allowing it to rule your life, why not learn how to confront it head-on?

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. ~ Natalie Goldberg

What Are Stress Triggers?

Although it may feel like stress might strike out of the blue, your stress triggers are intentional. They’re made to protect your body from many dangers. However, they do more than merely keep you safe. Any form of trigger reveals the difficulties you experience, the things that are important to you, and how your way of life affects your wellness.

They offer a glimpse into your true authentic self rather than merely what you portray to the outside world as you wear your masks and armor. Knowing what stresses you enables you to become more self-aware and reveals what you must do to lead a healthy life.

Because there are various types of stress, including acute and chronic stress, stress triggers are found everywhere. It's important to emphasize the distinction between good and negative stress.

Eustress is a type of healthy stress that helps you experience excitement and anticipation. Athletes experience it before a game, much as you do before beginning your ideal job or moving into a new residence.

Although it may seem like you must avoid stressors at all times, life doesn't have to be shocking or overwhelming. Understanding your stress reactions enables you to create coping mechanisms to manage them.

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one. ~ Hans Selye

Three Types Of Stress Triggers

It’s frightening to realize that stress can have a variety of sources. But it might be useful to recognize each stressor and comprehend its causes.

The National Institute of Mental Health identified three stressors that can lead to either short-term or long-term stress. Think about your level of tension and whether any of the following situations apply to you:

1.   Routine stress: These events serve as triggers since they occur regularly. Things like severe workloads bring routine stress as well as, dealing with your children, or household chores.

2.   Disruptive change: Although changes are a constant part of life, occasionally they raise stress levels. These triggers may appear after a move, a job change, or the birth of a child. This could be brought on by anything that alters how you typically conduct your life.

3.   Extreme trauma, such as being involved in an accident, suffering violent abuse, or having to deal with the death of a loved one, causes these triggers. It's challenging to learn how to manage PTS triggers, which is why it's crucial to have social support or take part in support groups.

Find an individual who can assist you in identifying your stressors and developing coping mechanisms. A coach, like me, can help you as you develop your self-awareness and identify the aspects of your life that are stressing you out the most.

If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. ~ Amit Ray

Understanding Your Stress Triggers

If you don't know what's generating your stress, it's difficult to manage it. Finding the source of your stress is the first step in managing it. Once you know what your stress triggers are, you can be proactive to avoid them or develop a coping mechanism for when stress overwhelms you. Most people's main stressors include:

1.   Health: The stress that comes with a disease can make chronic health conditions or a serious diagnosis (whether it's you or a loved one) much worse.

2.   Money: For many, major sources of stress include unpaid bills, medical debt, worries about the economy, and worries about supporting your family and living comfortably.

3.   Family: You may be the primary caretaker for an elderly family member or you may juggle work-from-home obligations with parenting young children. Regardless of your family's circumstances, taking care of others can be a significant cause of stress, particularly when routines and support systems have been thrown off. Daily obligations appear to multiply as self-care is neglected.

4.   Relationship problems: While many people believe important, stressful decisions like where to raise your family or what values you want to instill in your children cause relationship stress. Many times it's the little things that cause the most stress with another, such as who's doing the laundry, who forgot to take out the trash, and who's next on diaper duty.

5.   Work: For many people, their jobs are a significant source of stress. Unrealistic deadlines or demands can bring workplace stress, a never-ending to-do list, a demanding supervisor, or drama-filled coworkers. Additionally, modern technology keeps us constantly connected to our jobs, which is a method to guarantee high levels of stress.

6.   Important life changes a significant birthday, a divorce, the passing of a loved one, being pregnant, or a move. Big life transitions can be extremely stressful.

Try journaling for a week if you're unsure of what stresses you out. You can determine when you were most stressed and the circumstances of it by looking back on the entire week.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. ~  William James

Healthy Coping Techniques

What is the most effective method for doing this for you? Consider a time in your past when you were carefree and stress-free: your childhood. What pastimes or interests did you enjoy? Perhaps you adored swimming and would spend all of your free time in the pool. Perhaps you were coloring, dancing, riding your bike, or playing with Legos. A good sign of how you should manage stress is your former interests. Those pastimes are the ones that naturally make you happy, free from social obligations or the demands of your never-ending to-do list.

Stress is a regrettable feature of life. The good news is that there are many techniques to reduce stress. The trick is figuring out how you can ease your stress most effectively. Here are ten coping techniques to reduce the stress in your life.

1.   Meditate. Stress can be successfully treated with meditation. It helps rid your mind of stressful ideas and fosters a serene state of mind that persists long after a meditation session. It can also be done anywhere, anytime. Better still? It only requires five minutes.

2.   Breathe. The act of breathing itself may be a very instructive tool for understanding how you respond to an unpleasant situation and can also serve as a technique for overcoming it. When faced with a choice, focusing on your breath might help you come to a wiser and more healthy conclusion. The next time life makes you uncomfortable, pause and pay attention to your breathing. Give your mind some time to relax by taking a few deep breaths for a few seconds or minutes. You'll be able to manage the situation coolly as a result.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths. ~ Etty Hillesum

3.   Move. Your body communicates with you about your health. Your physical tightness may be a sign of how tightly you hold your emotions. Tightening your muscles in challenging circumstances can cause pain or soreness. Stress-related muscle and joint tension and strain can be reduced by moving and stretching throughout the day. It's crucial to keep in mind to get up and move; pause for a bit to stretch or take a stroll. Exercise lowers levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, and releases potent endorphins into the brain, which improve mood, promote relaxation, and serve as natural painkillers.

4.   Create. A great way to decompress is through the arts. Any form of creative expression, including painting, knitting, carpentry, coloring, sculpture, and photography, can lower stress. In fact, studies have shown that after 45 minutes of creative engagement, people's cortisol levels are significantly lower.

When we commit to action, to actually doing something rather than feeling trapped by events, the stress in our life becomes manageable. ~ Greg Anderson

5.   Connect. Call a buddy or be of service to someone. Humans are social beings with a built-in need to interact with others. An excellent method to relieve stress is to get together with a friend, join a virtual group, or lend a hand to a neighbor. It increases the oxytocin hormone through social interaction, which also lowers anxiety and may help you handle stressful situations better.

6.   Nature. Spend some time outside. Studies have shown immersing yourself in nature provides a variety of health advantages, including lowering blood pressure, reducing anxiety, and elevating mood. The good news is that spending just two hours outside each week can significantly improve your mental health.

In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers. ~ Fred Rogers

7.   Imagine. You can get away from your troubles and daily anxieties by losing yourself in a good book or a favorite playlist. Creative escapism in this way diverts the intellect and activates the imagination.

8.   Reframe. Brains can be retrained to stop damaging stress reactions. Try using the following phrases aloud while feeling worried or look for more specific ones to use.

·        It's not personal.

·        I don't have to be perfect.

·        I don't have to have all the answers.

·        I can handle this—one step at a time.

Stress reactions can be beneficial—they’re alerts to pay attention to something.

For fast-acting relief try slowing down. ~ Lily Tomlin

9.   Problem-solve. Become solution-focused. Making excuses for oneself or complaining doesn't help much. The time to act is now. Understand that the issue and your response to it are different things. Prepare some suggestions for a resolution to the stressful issue or give some wise counsel to yourself as if you were another person. It may be possible to facilitate the flow of solutions by removing oneself just a bit from the problem.

10. Forgive. Reduce self-blame and forgive your missteps. Everyone errs and harbors regrets. Simply move forward, pay attention to the solutions, and take pride in being proactive. It's never too late to make a difference. Use personal declarations spoken aloud to combat the propensity for self-criticism.

Stress is the trash of modern life–we all generate it, but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life. ~ Danzae Pace

Moving Forward

Discovering what causes you to feel stressed and anxious can help you learn to stop those feelings from taking control of your emotions, thoughts, and well-being. You will also gain the ability to return to the present moment.

Now that you can specify your stress triggers you can start to recognize the types that affect you the most. With recognition comes the ability to implement tactics and strategies to help overcome the tension that you encounter during your day so that you can learn to prevent stress before it occurs. Thus you can learn to love the life you have.

Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there.’ ~ Eckhart Tolle

Do you need help identifying your stress triggers? Are you looking for support to empower yourself to overcome the tension and relax? Do you want a strategy to help you create an extraordinary life? Consider using my coaching services by contacting me at TerriKozlowski.com if you feel you cannot move forward alone. Together, we can create an action plan for you to identify your stress triggers and implement coping mechanisms for you to overcome stress.

To discover how I learned to deal with the stress of everyday life, you can do so by reading Raven Transcending Fear, a book I wrote, which is available on Amazon, or by visiting RavenTranscendingFear.com for further details.