My quick habit to improve my stress response

In recent years I’ve found it increasingly difficult to manage my stress, and I sometimes respond irrationally. I can internally ‘spiral’ in stressful situations. This then consumes a great deal of my energy, leaving me drained, anxious, and perpetually distracted.

Why can’t I just objectively and rationally control my feelings? In short, it’s because I’m a human. My emotions are essentially a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses that react in their own way to change. While I can’t change those reactions, I can change my response to them.

Note that stress itself isn’t an inherently bad thing; it can be a fire inside that drives us to face up to change. However, in our increasingly changeable world, it’s important we manage that fire within so that it doesn’t burn us out.

I’ve built a rational response habit which has completely transformed how I deal with stress. Here are the steps that I take:

1. Identify

I identify that I’m heading towards a ‘spiralling’, stressed-out state. I’ve come to identify the signs for myself; these include increased anxiety and a disproportionately large focus on trying to solve the stressful situation, ie. complete distraction from everything else.

2. If/then

I invoke an if/then response. If I identify the ‘spiralling’, then I choose to follow this process and build the habit. This is the beginning of me taking control of how I react and bring about a rational outcome.

3. Write it down

I get a pencil and paper. Writing my thoughts down helps me to focus and analyse my reactions in the moment. This helps me rationalize what I’m feeling. I often use a single sticky note; it forces me to keep things succinct and leaves me with a visible reminder of what I’m working through. I then write super short notes on each of the steps below.

4. Feel it

I spend several minutes acknowledging and embracing how I’m feeling. I endeavour to ‘feel it’ as much as possible and consider the facts of the situation. This is based on acceptance and commitment therapy, a form of psychotherapy. It’s an approach which encourages opening up to feelings rather than closing them out. There is no evasion of the situation – I let my stress-related feelings wash over and through me. Even if the situation makes me feel ‘yuck’, then I embrace that ‘yuck’ and mindfully consider it.

5. Am I playing out a horror story?

If the “what if?” worst case scenario I’m stressing about actually happens, then how likely is the “to what end?” outcome? For example, if I’m stressed about how my team will take a challenging message from me, or about the impact of a mistake I’ve made — how truly likely is it that the thing that I ultimately fear (such as complete loss of respect from the team, or a damaged future career) will play out in the way I imagine? Once I step back and consider the situation objectively, am I in fact imagining an unlikely horror scenario?

6. Relativity

On a scale of 1-10, how bad is the situation really? Will we have a major production incident? Will my current project be cancelled? Will I lose my job? If so, then it must be pretty close to a 10/10 on the bad scale, right? However, if I balance that up against something like, say, one of my kids getting a terminal illness — how bad really is my current stressful situation?

7. Take control to resolve

What (and when) is my next step to address the source of my stress? If necessary I break down the problem into smaller parts to make it easier to identify what to do next. This helps me further rationalize my situation and take control of how I’m feeling and what I’ll do about it.

8. Reflect

What can I learn from this situation? What can I do differently next time to save me from getting into this situation again?

9. Summarise

I write one final sentence encapsulating how I am now feeling and what I’m going to do about it.

10. Park it

I stick my short written notes somewhere that I can see them; mentally parking my processing of the issue for now, with a clear next step to action.

I have been using and building this habit for most of 2020. It has completely transformed how I feel about stress. A couple of additional meta-benefits I’ve unexpectedly found:

• Simply knowing that I have a proven, effective response mechanism gives me confidence and helps me not to become unduly stressed in the first place.
• I’ve often found that even just a few days after writing out a sticky note, I can’t remember what it was about. In a short time, I’ve rationalized something that seemed world-changing and distressing, and I’ve converted it to constructive action.

While these steps may not work for everyone, I trust the next time you’re experiencing an unhealthy reaction to stress there will be something in the above that helps provide you with clarity and peace of mind.