Do you know what stresses you?

Hopefully by now we’re starting to get a bit of a clearer picture of what stress actually is, and one of the most important aspects of understanding stress, is knowing where it comes from.

The short answer is that it comes from the brain.

Internal or external events (stressors) are put through our personal filters, which then produce thoughts, emotions, and feelings (the order in which these occur is a hotly debated topic, and one that will be discussed at length in future articles), which then determine our actions, which in turn cause an internal or external event, and around and around we go.

This whole process is incredibly complex and I can’t explain it in 600 words or less (which means I don’t understand it well enough), but as soon as I can, you’ll hear about it!

So, for today let’s focus on the internal and external events.

They’re not the actual cause of your stress, they’re the things you’re reacting to, they’re your stressors, and many of us don’t really know what ours are.

Are you stressed the whole day at work?  Or might it be that you’ve got a major project on and not enough people to do it?

Does your stress begin the minute you walk in the door?  Or is it only when you start talking to a troublesome colleague?

Knowing the source of our stress is key to knowing how to fix it.

So, this is why we need a stress diary.

This doesn’t have to be a tome with all of your thoughts and feelings in it, it can be as simple as a couple of words on a piece of paper.

Here’s an example of one that I’ve found to be extremely simple and effective.

Time: Try and note the rough time it happened.  It’s best to do this immediately after the event so you’re not relying too heavily on memory and you’re also not recalling the event unnecessarily, which may lead to more stress.

What happened:  This can be a few words or an essay, whatever you feel like, just make sure you’re as accurate and unbiased as possible.

Who was involved:  Was anyone else there? Even if they didn’t directly cause the event, note their presence anyway.

How do you feel:  What were your physical and emotional symptoms? E.g. Racing heart, sweating, anger, disappointment etc.

What caused it:  What do you think the underlying cause was? What lead up to the event? Was it really that you spilled water on your desk or did something happen before that?

How did you handle it: Give yourself a rating on how you handled the situation. If nothing else, this can be hilarious and informative to look back on once you’ve calmed down a bit!

In addition to helping us single out our stressors, keeping a diary of stressful events can also help in other ways.

The main one being that, like anything we write down throughout the day, it helps to get things in order.

A groundbreaking study by Kitty Klein of North Carolina State University suggests that writing about a stressful event can reduce our physical reaction to it, and improve our cognition and working memory by reducing intrusive thoughts about the event.

Essentially, this means that writing about these events can help to get them out of our heads, where they might continue to swirl around and create negative emotions, and contain them on paper so they can be examined later and not fixated upon now.

Writing things down, whether it be a to-do list, a workout program or a list of things that piss you off, is incredibly useful and not to be underestimated.

So, for the next week, get it out of your head, get it down on paper and see what comes up for you.

Is it the same things over and over? Is it more on Monday’s than it is on Friday’s?

Are the things you’ve written down different than what you thought?

Look for patterns in your week and try to figure out the things you tend to react to more often.

Once you know what’s pushing your buttons, you can start to change the effect those buttons have.

Do you know what really stresses you?

Get started and let’s find out.

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Almeida, D, 2005, ‘Resilience and Vulnerability to Daily Stressors Assessed via Diary Methods’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol 14, Issue 2, page 64–68.

Klein, K, Boals, A, 2001, ‘Expressive writing can increase working memory capacity’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 130, Issue 3, page 520-33.