If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail .... Decrease your stress through increasing your self-awareness

We all know that too much stress is bad for us, yet we live in stressful times. Many of us are under intense pressure at work. Add to that the day-to-day stresses of high interest rates, lower wages, climate emergency, strikes and family difficulties and it might seem impossible to reduce your stress levels. I’m here to reassure you that it’s completely possible, and you can achieve it relatively simply through a process of increased self-awareness.

Let’s start by understanding what happens in our bodies when we feel stressed:

When we identify an event as a threat, our fight or flight response kicks in and our body releases cortisol. This switches our bodies on, our adrenaline increases, our muscles tense and our heart rate and blood pressure go up to prepare us for action. This is an extremely useful process in the face of mortal danger. However, if work or personal pressure regularly causes your body to switch into the stress response, this is not so useful. Prolonged exposure to cortisol can have long-term negative effects on the whole body.

Here's a story from my own experience.

In my training to becoming a coach, I engaged in 12 years of continuous weekly therapy and six years of fortnightly group therapy. I needed that amount of therapy a) because it was part of my training and b) because I had a lot of personal stuff to sort out. A fundamental principle of group therapy is that we grow through having new experiences.

In my early days of group therapy, I was often hostile to others. In those first sessions, someone would say something to me, and I would respond angrily or aggressively, as if I'd been attacked. The group leaders would immediately stop the conversation and ask me, what did you hear X say? My response would be that X was attacking me. The leaders then asked the other nine people in the group what they heard X say, and I was astonished when they unanimously said that X had made some innocent comments. The leaders then asked what had led me to make meaning that X was attacking me.

This started to challenge my perception that the world was hostile. I began to understand that it had been my way to protect myself. Over time, I saw other people in the group react similarly to group members when what had been said was completely innocent. I eventually learned to stop seeing everything as an attack, to slow down and accurately interpret what was happening.?

I had to update my Frame Of Reference; this is our unique and individual picture of the world shaped by our personal journey in life, childhood experiences, culture, environment, values, gender, relationships etc. Most of us naturally assume that our own frame of reference is the correct and only way to see the world. We become surprised or even angry when other people have a different view of the world linked to their unique Frame Of Reference.

So to come back to the question of managing stress, what’s the most crucial point at which to deal with it?

The answer is it’s the start of the process, our interpretation of the event as a threat triggering the whole stress process. The psychologist Abraham Maslow famously said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail”. I saw most comments or approaches towards me as a threat; hostility was my hammer. Through a process of increasing my self-awareness, I slowly gained a broader perspective and realised that not everything was a threat.?It was merely how I was making meaning from it. In updating my Frame Of Reference I could start to control my stress levels.

I strongly urge you to engage in the process of gaining greater self-awareness.?It will give you the tools to make more acurate meaning from your experiences and help you live a less stressful life.?You’ll achieve more clarity about situations, give yourself more choices and gain a sense of control. There’s a wealth of help out there to choose from: workshops, books, online content, videos, films, counselling, therapy and of course coaching. From my own experience, I know you will find the return on investment well worth the effort.