Stress Management: Practical Techniques for Everyday Calm

We often read snappy articles that instruct us to "manage our stress". Hmm, that can be irritating to read as a highly educated smart adult human who needs to earn money and care for small humans (or big ones). What does it actually mean? How do we do that in a busy life? 

As a burnout prevention and leadership coach I spend a lot of time working with people around managing their stress and I wanted to share the 3 point framework that I work in to support you to deconstruct your stress and think about tangible ways of creating change.

I discuss:

- separating stress management into 3 different sections so you can identify ways to actually create change (that in itself can be hugely calming)

- ideas and tools for each different area

- the key to supporting yourself in periods of "higher" stress

Prefer to listen? Click here for the podcast Deconstructing Stress Management

Welcome lovely listeners to the SOTO episode, all about stress management. How TF do we actually manage stress? What does that look like? Feel like? In the episode today, we are going to dive into stress management as a theory, and then what are the three practical components you can actually do to create change in your life and your stress levels?

So what do we mean by this? And what are some takeaways that you could go away and implement in your busy life. So thank you for being here. I am excited to dive into this with you because it is what I spend most of my days talking about as a burnout prevention coach. So let's go.

Hi lovelies, this is Maude. Women's burnout and leadership coach. You're listening to the work, family, me podcast. A series of conversations with women from different cultures and industries around the world about the behind the scenes of earning money, parenting, being in a relationship and adulting all at the same time.

Here, we will discuss the challenges ideas and support structures that show up in co-earning, dual-parenting situations and talk through some helpful strategies and mindsets. Why? So that you as a busy working woman can learn from others, implement what could make your life a little bit easier and share these with your family, friends, and colleagues.

We are at the forefront of working, parenting and relating in a totally different way to previous generations. And there can be so much value in validating this and learning with each other. I'm so happy that you're here. Let's dive into the conversation for today.

One thing that I struggle within popular culture and articles we read about being well or being healthy or career transitions or confidence or whatever it is, every single article out there in psychology magazines, lifestyle magazines, online, often have a bullet point that say, manage your stress. So whatever change you're trying to create, one little bullet point is manage your stress.

And I always laugh because managing stress is such a huge thing. And it is when it's listed as one little bullet point of like, don't forget to go away and do this. It almost diminishes the amount of energy or effort or habit or change that that might involve. And it makes it seem like a really easy thing to go away and do, right?

“Oh, I'll just go away and manage my stress.” If it was that easy, we would all be walking around in totally different states of minds and states of health as humans. So, today, I wanted to take some time to break down what that might actually mean. The humans that I work with in the world as a burnout prevention coach and a leadership coach are highly skilled, highly educated people.

A lot of them manage projects, budgets, teams, companies, businesses. And so managing things is not unusual for them. And being told to “manage stress” or quote unquote, knowing that they should be managing their stress differently, almost becomes stressful in and of itself, because what does that actually mean?

What should I be doing differently? And what I see a lot of my clients do is put pressure on themselves to. You know, be getting up at five o'clock to do a yoga class or to be adding something in to their already busy schedule to quote unquote, “manage stress.” And then using that as another way to criticize themselves.

I would be different if I was just managing my stress, or this is my problem because I'm just not managing my stress well enough, so pausing to break down what that actually means and what some concrete things are that you can go away and change and feel confident in “this is me managing stress” is something that I want to give to you in this conversation today.

So if you are somebody who likes to take notes or draw little diagrams, if you want to get yourself a piece of paper and a pen, I am going to invite you to jot down some notes or draw a diagram for yourself. And if not, maybe just think about this. You can always come back to it in future if you'd like to.

I will also create a little diagram or a little table for you to print out, in one of the links so you've got something handy to refer back to as a resource.

Okay. So let's talk stress management. When we think about managing our stress, for me, it's really helpful to break that down into three pillars. So if you're somebody who's got a piece of paper and a pen and wants to follow along with me, almost drawing three circles or creating a table with three columns, there are three different pieces that we can think about when we think about managing stress.

The first one is external stresses

So a stressor, S-T-R-E-S-S-O-R is something that causes stress. So when we think about external, we're thinking about something coming at us from the 3D world around us that is causing us some stress. So a bill that needs to get paid, or a deadline for a client, or a difficult conversation we might have or need to have with a team member, or traffic that we're sitting in, or a doctor's appointment for our parent that we're taking them to.

This is something that exists in the external world that I need to do. It may or may not be causing me stress depending on who I am. So we have, different capacity, different perceptions of things. What I perceive as stressful may be different to what you perceive as stressful. We may not have the same external stresses.

So when we're thinking about what's coming at me from the 3D world, it can be really useful to jot that down in that column or in that circle as external stresses. These are the things that I'm thinking about that exist in the 3D world that are making me feel anxious or making me feel stressed or causing some tension in my body.

Do that, reflect on that, write it down. What I see over and over again is women almost forgetting all the things that are coming at them and questioning why they feel stressed and they are forgetting, “Oh, actually, I'm organizing this huge event and I also have this deadline and also my child's in a school play and also I need to run around and fetch that thing, and also, oh, we're moving house. I forgot about all of these things and I was making myself wrong for being stressed. And now that I can see that there are actually quite a lot of things coming at me, I can deal with that in a different way.”

The second column that I'm going to invite you to think about are the thoughts inside your head that may be causing you stress. So we've got the external stresses coming at us from the 3d world. We may have a voice inside our head that is telling us things about ourselves that are unpleasant, critical, demeaning, and are causing us stress inside our brain. So let me give you an example.

Maybe I do have a client deadline and my brain is telling me '“any work that I do is not going to be good enough, the client is unhappy with me, I always leave things to the last moment, I should have started this ages ago, I'm never going to get it done on time, nobody's ever going to like it, if we lose this, we're going to not have any more money, we might end up on the streets”, right? These are all thoughts that I'm having inside my brain. So having the client deadline is something that's coming to me from the external world. And if I had different thoughts, I might feel less stressed about it. If I was thinking, “I'm so excited, I've worked so well for this client, I've got great feedback on the last presentation that I did for them, I'm really curious about what they're going to think about the idea that I have for this one or the information that I've put together.” I might have a different experience of that presentation depending on what my brain is telling me.

Right. We also call that mindset or psychological state, in different language. So internal stresses are the thoughts that I'm noticing that are causing me stress. What is my brain telling me that is stressing me out? So becoming aware of the thoughts in our head or the voices in our head as part of what may be contributing to our experience of stress.

This might not be easy to spot straight away. It may be a process of inquiry and reflection. Obviously, if you are coaching or in therapy, it's maybe something you're more aware of. If you're somebody who has reflected before, it may be more accessible to see your thoughts, or notice your thoughts. And if it's something that you're just starting, maybe noticing what you repeat to yourself in your head.

Writing that down can be a useful way to become more aware of it. This is what I'm telling myself. Is it helpful? Is it unhelpful? When it's unhelpful, it may be causing me stress.

That's the second pillar of stress management.

Noticing my thoughts, noticing what's going on in my brain.

The third pillar is around digesting stress.

So what am I doing with the stress hormones that are being produced in my body, the adrenaline, the cortisol. How am I digesting stress every day? Part of the human experience here on earth is to have stress, right? To have heightened, hormonal secretions that allow us to act quickly or move differently or prepare something or, overcome a challenge.

So every day we're going to have fluctuating levels of stress hormones coming in and going out depending on what we're doing on that day. There's nothing wrong with that, that is a normal animal way of being what we want to be conscious of is, “am I digesting the hormones, the underlying body substances that are being produced as part of stress?”

And here we're thinking about things that activate our vagal nerve, that calm our body, that let our body know in its language that it is safe, that use up the stress hormones. So movement, creative expression, spending time with people that we love. Laughing, all of these activities, singing, meditation, activate our neural networks and let us know it's okay, we're safe and down regulate the stress hormones.

So are we building in time to do that? What might those activities be for us? So then when we think about managing stress, we think about that as the third pillar of what am I doing to digest stress? So, what's coming at me from the 3D world, what's happening in my brain, and what am I doing to digest stress?

These are the three tangible pieces of stress management. Once we have gathered information about what those actually are in our lives, We can go back and start creating change or “managing those various aspects”. So if we come back to that first pillow, that first circle of external stresses, things that are coming at us in the world, we can think of solutions for that.

What options do we have? Can we delegate anything? Can we hire in support? Can we ask for help? Can we push out deadlines? Can we automate or systematize anything? Can we batch something? Can we say no and set boundaries? Can we push something back? Those are options for things coming at us. What can we change?

What can we get support with? What can we leave off our plate for now. Then going away and setting those boundaries or having those conversations.

What a lot of my hardworking professional human clients tell me is that they may not be able to change that much in their external stresses. They maybe need to sit in traffic or they need to travel. They need to attend those meetings or, you know, they want to care for their parents or show up for whoever it is. Maybe there's not change that they're able to create there.

That's also useful information because in a way it allows us to consciously choose those stresses rather than them just coming at us, here's another thing to do and another thing to do.

We're pausing to look at them and say, all of these things are important to me, and I want to do them. And maybe they're important for different reasons, but they feel necessary to me. I'm consciously choosing to engage in these activities. And that can shift in and of itself, the way that we're relating to those things coming at us.

So what can you create change in, in the things coming at you that may be stressful?

The second piece, what's happening in my brain? What's happening in my mind? How am I thinking about myself or the things that I have to do? What does change creation or management look like here?

Number one, it can be useful to separate ourselves from our thoughts, to notice, “ah, this is a thought, it's not me, it's not everything about me, it's not my entire identity, it is a thought that I'm having, that is based on a belief system that I have been given or have a, subscribed to, that comes from a culture and a society in this point in time.”

That allows us to remove ourselves a little bit from our thinking. “I'm like, Oh, okay. This is one thought. Is it possible to have a different way of thinking? Might it be possible to see the situation or to see myself differently? Could I think about myself differently? What might be a more helpful or supportive or neutral thought in this situation?”

So when we think about a thought that, or a thinking pattern that often happens in the people that I'm working with, it is a, a critical thinking pattern, it's not good enough. What you're doing isn't enough, that work is not enough. And so pausing to notice that and think, “Hmm, what might be a more neutral way of seeing this? Is there a different way of thinking about myself?” and then looking at what evidence you have around you as feedback, as past performance reviews. As growth, as client feedback, what are you basing those thoughts on? Are they TRUE? Is that based on evidence and feedback, those critical thoughts or not?

So here we have things like imposter syndrome emerging. People are telling me that. It's all good, or hiring me for a job and then me thinking I'm not good enough, is a mismatch between the evidence I'm getting and the things I'm thinking about myself.

Sometimes there maybe is work to do. We can criticize ourselves and that can be justified. And sometimes we are criticizing ourselves without evidence, without a basis in the feedback that we're getting from the external world.

So noticing for yourself, are your thoughts based in a dynamic and relationship and feedback data that you have, or is this a pattern of thinking that is causing you stress that actually feels unrelated or feels, incongruent with what people are telling you, what the data is showing you, what the numbers are showing you.

And then looking at how do I soften or shift or change my mindset? Obviously this is big work. I say, obviously it may not be obvious, but changing the way we're thinking about ourselves after decades of thinking about ourselves in certain ways. That can take time. We've often built up our ways of thinking from very early on and have been running those same patterns and pathways in our brain for a long time.

So starting to shift the way we think isn't as easy as repeating a mantra or an affirmation to ourselves. There might be a process here of looking for data, unpacking our thoughts, noticing what we're thinking, understanding maybe where that comes from, accepting, starting to build thoughts that feel more neutral or more helpful or more supportive.

So when we think about that mindset work, awareness of what our brains are telling us is the first step.

And then engaging with that and creating change is the “management piece of it”. What would the version of you that's not stressed, what would they be thinking?

What would the relaxed version of you be telling herself in her brain? What might she believe? What might she be thinking about herself?

Reflecting on those thoughts, inquiring into that, getting curious about that.

If it's useful to go away and journal on those reflection pieces, I'll put the questions down below as prompts for you who love writing, maybe thinking about that as you go about your day to day.

What would a relaxed version of me be thinking right now?

What thoughts would help me relax?

So that's the internal stressor management idea direction. And obviously this is the work that I do, working with, with people around their thoughts, surfacing those and creating change. And so when I say to you, it's not easy, but I can also say to you, it's possible and it changes everything because we're with ourselves all the time.

We're thinking about ourselves all the time. And so when we are doing that in ways that are stressful, we're having a pretty stressful experience of life. When we're doing that in ways that feel neutral or friendly towards ourselves, it changes everything.

The last column or aspect of stress management that I raised is time to digest our stress or practices that digest our stress. So how are we using up the stress hormones? And here I mentioned those things that we all know are good for us, but we may not be prioritizing, or we may not be scheduling regularly, or we may feel are unnecessary when things get really stressful.

It's when things get really stressful that we need to double down on regulating our stress.

Easy to say, hard to practice, I know, but when we think about that first column of there are things coming at me and maybe there's a process of: What can I manage there? What am I choosing? If we know that there are more things coming at us than ever before, or maybe we're going through a phase of more questioning or more deadlines or more demand for our time, then we also need to be providing for time to digest our stress.

So how do we protect that? How do we see that as important and valuable for us and our community and our health and put that in our calendars and make that something that we are honouring, digesting our stress. That is what stress management looks like for that last piece. So thinking about the activities that help you soften, that help you be present, that help you be grounded.

Movement is such a key piece here, the moving, using up, digesting those fight or flight stress hormones, letting your body know it's okay, we're done, we've used that up. And this doesn't have to look long. This doesn't have to look like, an hour's walk in the forest, it can be standing up and dancing to one song.

Put on your favorite song after this podcast. Three minutes. Shake your booty. That's you using up your stress hormones. Right now, rolling out your shoulders and taking a big, deep, long, slow breath. That's you using up your stress hormones. That's you letting your body know it's okay. It's safe. We can drop our shoulders.

That's you we can take a big breath and see you activating your vagus nerve.

So coming away from this pressure that we often put on ourselves for all or nothing long yoga marathons or HIIT workouts or whatever it is and into “Can I make use of micro moments in my day to come back to a state of safety and relaxation and softening in my body.”

Stress digestion, digesting stress, put that in your calendar now, think about where those moments can fit in.

So when we think about managing stress, We have these three areas in our mind's eye of, “Is this about managing my external stress?” So the things coming at me, the things I'm doing in the real world. “Is it about what's going on in my brain and my sense of self and the way I'm thinking about myself”, or “Is it about regulating my body and using up my stress hormones?”

“Which aspect am I going to create change in? Which aspect will I focus on now to “manage my stress”?

Maybe there's one that feels more pressing to you, or maybe there's a little bit of change that you can create in all of those aspects. Hopefully, that is helpful for you to have a little bit more of a foundation, a pillar to draw on around stress management.

What can you actually go away and do versus reading it as a snappy little bullet point and then feeling a bit lost around, okay, I want to manage it, but tell me how, tell me what.

So some invitations for you to think about. Get curious about and create change in your life. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. It was a pleasure as always.

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Stress Management Table Resource