How to handle stress

Stress has always been part of being human, it is, in its purest form, a normal response to an imminent danger, through which our nervous system activates to make us react and survive.

When we talk about stress today, though, it usually is for a very different reason, and has gone from a help to a disservice.

Let’s try to understand more about that emotion or feeling that we all know and deal with, sometimes on a daily basis, and come up with a few solutions to come back to a more harmonious and balanced state.

What is stress

Stress manifests as an information sent to your brain that a certain situation, person, place, being, puts you in danger.

It activates the ??sympathetic?? part of your nervous system, which role it is to address and respond to potentially dangerous situations, to keep us out of danger. The physical reaction to stress usually involves an increased heart rate, a warmer body temperature, an overall tensed body, some people get sweaty hands or turn red, etc.

On a mental level, this puts us in a ??survival mode?? which can often provoke reactions that seem inappropriate to the actual situation, but that the brain has identified as what will allow us to survive at that time.

Then, the parasympathetic part of the nervous system is activated to help the body recover after a stress peak. This part of the nervous system acts as a moderator.

Step one : calming at a physiological level

When we reach high levels of stress, it can alter our decision making skills, our memory and our overall mental and physical health if this occurs on a daily basis.

The important thing will be, at first, to make the body understand that we are safe and it can go back to a normal functioning state.

To achieve this, breathing exercises are very effective. One very simple exercise you can do whenever you feel like you are reaching high stress levels, is to take a few minutes where you will breathe very slowly, exhales being longer than your inhales.

When inhaling, you activate the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates everything (which is the opposite of what you need in this situation). When exhaling, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows everything down, and will help you calm yourself and your body nearly instantly.

You can do this practice whenever and wherever you are, as many times as you need during your day. This will center you back immediately and will allow you to decrease stress levels very effectively.

Step two : calming the mind

When our body and nervous system are back to a more relaxed state, we can then start going deeper and educate our brain towards that stress, making it understand that these situations might not be such a big danger.

These reactions usually are trauma responses to situations we lived before and absolutely do not want to live again. What might then seem like a disproportionate answer is usually proportionate to the trauma we had in this particular situation. The brain then thinks giving this answer will help and protect us, when in fact, it is usually making the situation worse.

It is very important here to work on these traumas, understand the, listen to them and free them to be able to really move forward. You can do it alone, but it will be much better and safer for you to work with a professional on this.

What you can do though, is to exercise yourself to understand and recognize when your stress levels are increasing, and take some time to breathe and sit with this feeling, observing which emotions and thoughts it brings up. No need to do anything else here.

If it helps you process, you can write down your thoughts and ideas at that moment.

If you are in a situation where you can not take that quiet time for yourself, either try to create it or just breathe deeply and reflect on it later, when you are more calm and in a quiet space.

The practice of meditation

During my own journey, I experienced chronic stress and anxiety. It was more an internal thing for me, which means people usually didn’t see it, but it was still quite present in my life.

The practice of meditation definitely became a game changer for me.

Meditation is the practice of focused concentration, in a different state of consciousness, allowing you to be fully in the present moment, with no other intention than the one of just being.

This practice can have many forms and aspects, looking different to each practitioner and will take you to different places depending on where you need to go at that time. The common thing though is the non judgmental observation of self and the world, the development of patience and kindness, and the overall balance and alignment it helps to provide.

On a more physiological level, the practice of meditation lowers heart rate and blood pressure, improves breathing and memory, and increases alpha waves, the brain waves responsible for relaxation (which makes it very effective for stress and anxiety).

When practiced regularly, meditation has been shown to actually change the structure of your brain, your neurological connections and patterns, which improves so many things from attention, learning abilities, memory, to overall wellbeing.

Conclusion

Stress is not a problem in itself, but it is more our reaction to it that causes us distraught, as well as the exceeding space it now takes up in our lives.

The goal here is not to eliminate stress completely from our lives but to go back to a more balanced and aligned way to living it.

Conscious practices such as breathing and meditation drastically help us improve our overall wellbeing and are accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Subscribe to my End of the Year Active meditation or take an appointment with me in English or in French for a FREE discovery call to start making positive changes in your life.

Until next time,

Love,

Elodie

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