Is stress taking over your life? If so, try some of these strategies from psychologist Dr Meg Arroll, who shares how to reduce stress in your everyday life…
Words: Angela Kennedy | Images: Shutterstock
The word “stress” is mostly used in psychological terms these days, but it comes from physics, and means to push a material beyond its tolerance level. When we think about this definition of stress, it starts to make sense. Take a paper clip for example – it’s possible to bend back the metal reasonably far and it will spring back into its original form. But if you push the clip beyond its tolerance, it will be overextended and cannot revert to how it once was. We often view stress in this way – when the straining and twisting we sometimes do in life leaves us feeling rather bent out of shape.
But before this shapeshifting happens, there is quite a lot of wiggle room in the paper clip – and in ourselves. Our bodies are well equipped to deal with difficult situations via our autonomic nervous system, which has two opposing, yet complementary arms: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is what controls how we respond to stress, often called the “stress response” or “fight, flight or freeze response”. But, just as the paper clip always wants to ping back into its original shape, physiologically our bodies and minds also instinctively want to return to a state of homeostasis – where everything is ticking along nicely. This is where the parasympathetic nervous system comes in, and acts like a counterweight to the stress response, essentially switching back from fight, flight or freeze to the state of “rest and digest”, in which we repair, restore and grow.
Overleaf are some of my top ways to deal with stress in the moment and over time, so you have strategies to call on when stress strikes, and which also help you create habits to maintain inner calm. The first four help you deal with a present threat, association or trigger of the stress response, whereas the last three are longer-term strategies, and get more effective the more you practise them.
Shortcut stress with senses
Our senses are our superpowers, and we can use them to override the stress response. This is an excellent type of distraction for a short-term fix, just before or after a stressful situation, to help you snap yourself out of the stress response and its unpleasant manifestations. The key is to shock your senses so your attention is moved from the stressor to one of the below sensations. But you can also think up your own.
- Touch: Plunge your hand into a bag of ice and hold it there for a few moments.
- Sound: Blast some loud music – using earphones is usually best so as not to annoy those around you!
- Smell: Put your nose in a paper bag of very strong blue cheese or another pungent food and quickly breathe in the powerful smell.
- Taste: Bite into a lemon and experience the extremely tart sensation of the fruit.
- Sight: The sense of sight won’t usually give such an immediate effect, but you can distract yourself cognitively by reading a paragraph backwards, doing mental arithmetic in your head, or making an alphabetical list of your favourite TV series/films.
Soften your vision
When we are within the holds of an acute stress response, our vision is razor sharp and narrows at the (perceived) danger to help us survive – this is often called tunnel vision. Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a stressful situation, you find it hard to recall the marginal details of the place or event? Perhaps after giving a presentation a colleague mentions some hoo-ha going on outside the meeting room, but you didn’t notice it at all? You were so consumed in the in-the-moment stress of giving your talk nothing else registered. However, we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system by softening our vision.
Try it: Close your eyes, then slowly open them to gain more awareness of the peripheral visual field. Keep looking ahead but gradually notice the broader environment. You may also want to gently massage the sides of your eyes to aid this process, but this isn’t necessary if you’re in a public place.
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Chew it out
Researchers in Northumbria found that chewing gum has been shown to reduce acute stress and cortisol levels. These scientists also found that gum chewing helped performance. This is a handy quick-fix if you’re out and about and can’t use the senses tips – you might not have a freezer full of ice on hand, after all!
Have a good yawn
Do you tend to yawn after a stressful day? It may not be just a reflection of tiredness, but rather a way for the body to cool down the brain. During the stress response, our brains heat up – yawning is a sort of physiological air conditioning. The reason we yawn near bedtime and on waking is that brain temperature is at its highest in the evening, cooler at night, then rises on waking. Although there is debate about whether yawning is contagious, many people can bring on a yawn by imitating the behaviour first – this will promote relaxation and allow our hot heads to cool down.
Breathe to calm your nervous system
Regulating breathing patterns is one of the best ways to engage the parasympathetic nervous system and combat the stress response. I like to think of the parasympathetic nervous system as our in-built “parachute”, that helps us to slow down during difficult times.
Consistency is what matters. If you practise this regularly, your brain will become so accustomed to engaging the parasympathetic nervous system that it will be conditioned when faced with stressors. You can use any technique you like but this is one of my favourites that can be practised anywhere, and is often used to help children manage stress as it is such an easy method. It also engages the sense of touch, which, again, will help mind and body to enter a rest-and- digest, rather than stressed, state:
- Stretch your hand out like a star. Then, breathe in deeply through your nose so you can feel your belly expand. At the same time, trace a line along the back of your outstretched little finger with a finger on your other hand, stopping when you reach its tip.
- Next, exhale through your mouth while you trace the inside of the finger.
- Move to your ring finger, and again breathe in while you trace its outer edge, and breathe out when moving down the inner edge.
- Again, inhale while tracing the outer side of your middle finger and exhale when you move back down to your palm.
- Continue with your index finger before moving onto your thumb.
- Repeat this process on your other hand and, if any intrusive thoughts start to interrupt, acknowledge them before gently shifting back to the exercise.
Use physical exercise
Many of the physiological outcomes of stress are the same as when we exercise – a racing heart, sweating, glucose pumping around the body – and one clever way to combat feeling stressed is to use exercise before a demanding situation. Aerobic exercise that gets your blood pumping, such as running, swimming, cycling and dance BodyPump classes, has been shown time and time again to moderate stress. Even 20 minutes will do, and the calming effects of exercise can last for many hours. So, next time you have a big presentation, have an awkward family reunion or any other type of stressful event, schedule an aerobic exercise session no longer than six hours beforehand and you may find that it doesn’t feel so overwhelming after all. If this isn’t possible, use all that adrenaline and glucose that your body has produced in its stress response by going for a run or brisk walk after the event. This will help your body and mind return to a state of homeostasis much more quickly and it will also ease muscle tension – yet another symptom of
being stressed.
Try exposure therapy
In the case where tiny traumas have conditioned a stress response with a particular environmental or situational cue, exposure therapy is the best way to override this association and replace it with something that leads to a neutral or positive reaction. If you have a very severe reaction to triggers, it really is best to find a therapist who can support you in the process – for instance, if you experience panic attacks – but otherwise the theory is quite straightforward. By putting yourself in the situation or environment that triggers the stress response, your brain will learn that you’re safe and it doesn’t need to activate the sympathetic nervous system into a fight-or-flight response – it just takes some time and patience.
There are two type of exposure therapy: systematic desensitisation and flooding. While there is research to support the effectiveness of both, I tend to err on the side of caution and suggest the former. Flooding, as you can imagine from the name, is jumping head-first into the triggering situation – for some it is quicker but, in my experience, this can backfire as it can feel overwhelming.
Systematic desensitisation allows you to build up the skills and mental muscle to manage and, in the end, nullify the acute stress response while increasing awareness and acceptance. For some people this may be looking at pictures of their feared environment in a preliminary baby-step. If public speaking or even being in large gatherings causes you stress, you might start by arranging dining-room chairs in a semi-circle with one chair positioned as a makeshift lectern at the front and sitting on it to see how that feels. Next, you could go to a small group talk in a café and gradually work up to attending a large lecture.
For more great advice on stress, anxiety and trauma, check out Tiny Traumas: When you don’t know what’s wrong, but nothing feels quite right, by Dr Meg Arroll (£16.99, Harper Collins), on sale now.
