Stress — what’s really behind it?
How to understand your stress so you can better manage it.
You probably already know that stress wreaks havoc on our physical and mental health. But stress is a part of life, so the goal is not eliminating stress or ignoring it, but managing it.
The problem? You need to understand your stress to manage it, and we often struggle to do this. Stress has become a catch-all term. What you’re experiencing may be stress, pressure, or another feeling entirely.
The concept of labeling what you’re feeling isn’t new. In Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett, Ph.D., talks about how important it is to label what you are feeling correctly. By recognizing, understanding, and labeling your emotions, you can better manage them.
Stress
Let’s start by defining stress.
“Stress is a response to too many demands and not enough resources — managing both family/work responsibilities and financial burdens — to meet them.”
Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett
It’s the classic: my to-do list is longer than there are hours in the day. Creating a stressful environment means setting yourself up so that it’s physically impossible to do everything on your list.
Managing Stress
Since stress is caused by the imbalance between demands and resources, managing stress requires decreasing your demands and/or increasing your resources.
Decreasing demands may mean saying no to specific tasks or deleting things from your to-do list.
If you’re balking at that, saying, “everything on my list is important.” Then you need to increase your resources. No, not less sleep. Instead, delegate tasks to partners, employees, co-workers, or hire somebody.
Pressure
So, we know what stress is, but what if our demands and resources are balanced and we still feel stressed? In this case, what you’re feeling may not be stress; it may be pressure.
“Pressure is the force from the outside that tells us something important is at stake, and whether we succeed or fail will depend on how we perform.”
Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett
The pressure to be a good employee, spouse, parent, friend, or care-taker; it comes from all directions. Sometimes this pressure works to our benefit. It creates the drive and motivation to show up and get stuff done. But when the pressure is too much, it’s a problem.
Managing Pressure
If pressure is what you’re feeling, how do you handle it?
In the short term, find something that relieves the pressure. This could be meditation, dancing to your favorite song, going for a walk, or baking some bread. Anything that releases tension and puts a smile on your face.
Long-term management requires curiosity. Ask yourself:
What expectations are you facing? Are they internal or external?
What are you resisting?
What is the story you’re telling yourself?
Get curious and challenge your narrative to reframe and reduce the pressure.
Other emotions
What if neither of those sounds like your stress? It might not be stress or pressure, but something else.
You might be feeling a different emotion. Are you nervous? Scared? Jealous? Anxious? Hurt? Often we push away the discomfort of big feelings. As Carl Jung said, “what you resist, persists.”
Instead of burying or numbing our emotions, be proactive in managing them.
Managing emotions
If your stress is another emotion, how do you manage it? Similar to the other management strategies, get curious.
“If we don’t understand emotions and find strategies to deal with them, they will take over our lives.”
Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett
If you need, reach out to a friend, family member, coach, or therapist and talk about what you are feeling. The better you understand your emotions, the better you can manage them.
Permission to Feel
Stress and other negative emotions affect our health. But they are uncomfortable and scary so, often, we avoid dealing with them. Give yourself both the permission and the space to get curious about your feelings. The more you know about them, the better you can manage them.
