What to do when you’re stressed about being stressed
What do you do each day to manage your stress?
Maybe your routine includes things like restorative yoga, meditation, long walks, or taking breaks. Maybe you’ve learned how to maintain boundaries around your work. To check in with your feelings. To communicate your needs.
When you have a routine and stay on top of it, it probably works pretty well for you most of the time.
But sometimes the system breaks down. Maybe you haven’t slept well for a few nights, or you’re confronting some significant problems at work that are outside of your control. Maybe you’ve simply let your self-care routine slide.
How do you feel when this happens?
Are you allowed to be stressed if you have pain?
In addition to the increased stress itself, you might find yourself getting stressed about that stress. Especially if you know that being stressed (or worried or anxious) makes your pain worse.
It’s easy to develop rules around not being allowed to feel stressed. Have you ever found yourself thinking things like:
“I need to keep my stress level low!”
“I can’t be worried about this right now!”
“I’m going to start feeling bad again if I’m not careful!”
“I need to CALM DOWN!”
Developing these fearful rules and rigid belief systems is very natural AND it can become a source of stress, worry, and fear itself.
If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our feelings exactly as they are, without adding to them or pushing them away, then we are essentially guaranteed to feel more of that feeling. That’s because we become hypervigilant to the feeling. We’re always looking out for it, so we notice it earlier and we start ringing the alarm bells as soon as it appears.
Strategies for managing stress, worry, and fear
So what should you do instead when you’re feeling stressed (or worried or anxious) about being stressed (or worried or anxious)?
Recognize the loop that you’re in. It’s easy for stress, worry, and fear to get out of hand really quickly. If you can recognize how you’re feeding these feelings as it’s happening, you’ve taken the first step toward interrupting the cycle.
Return to the strategies that already work for you, and choose wisely. Maybe you’re too mentally scattered to meditate, but you could take a long walk. While you’re out there, can you focus on feeling your feet on the ground and on how things look around you? Do what works for you, in the state you are currently in. Choose the easiest thing that will work. Set a boundary. Do a vigorous workout. Talk to someone. While you’re doing it, remind yourself that this works for you and that it feels good.
Reframe, to the extent that you can do this genuinely, this as an opportunity to practice responding to stress in the moment. This is a powerful mindset shift that you can hone over time. If you can authentically feel that this is an opportunity, rather than something to fear or avoid, you are now operating from a place of power and acceptance. You’re no longer afraid of what’s happening. You welcome it. You start to realize that you CAN, in fact, deal with what’s happening, and that feels great.
Cultivate a mindset of surrender, letting go, or loosening your grip. For the perfectionists and high-achievers out there, this will be the most advanced skill you can work on. Letting go of control is a fundamental challenge. But the thing is, you never had control of this situation to begin with and it’s likely that you won’t fully regain control later either. Trying to control the situation and trying to control your feelings is guaranteed to backfire. Cultivating an attitude of surrender, on the other hand, brings you into greater harmony with reality and allows you to operate from a place of freedom, not constriction.
This is challenging work, especially when you are used to pushing through your discomfort, rather than slowing down and creating space for it. But it is only through creating space for stress, worry, and anxiety that we can allow it to flow away from us.
If you’d like to let me know where you’re getting stuck, send me a message here.
Want to put this into practice by working with me directly? Check out my group coaching program for chronic pain and request to join today.
The content shared here is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Always seek advice from your physician or other qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health regimen.
