Stress may feel like a routine part of everyday life, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are ways to conceptualize your stressors so you have more command over them.
Yes, it may feel like the sky is falling…but which part exactly?
Stress can be insidious. At times we may think that nothing particularly stressful is occurring in our lives, yet for some reason we feel bogged down, uninspired, or anxious. Alternatively, stress can be so all-consuming that it feels almost generic. We may feel so entirely overwhelmed that we cannot quite pinpoint a specific cause.
Getting to know your own personal stress triggers can help to dissolve stress over time and make it much more manageable. Stress is especially common for healthcare professionals, who often spend long hours in the throes of other people’s stress. Therapy sessions can help.
Here are three strategies for identifying your own personal stress triggers, as well as some suggestions for stress relief:
1. Familiarize yourself with the difference between stress and anxiety.
Both stress and anxiety can cause similar feelings of uneasiness. They can interfere with performance at work, relationship harmony, and your overall sense of contentment. However, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, stress and anxiety differ in important ways: Stress is generally defined as the mental or emotional strain one feels when they lack the resources to address a specific external challenge.
Anxiety describes an internal phenomenon of worry, apprehension, or even dread, for a possible circumstance in the future, often undefined. Anxiety can often become a reaction to stress or stressful situations.
By understanding the difference between stress and anxiety, you may begin to address the challenges of each. When it comes to stress, being able to name and isolate the unique trigger or stressor is a great first step in easing tension.
Working with a therapist can help you to differentiate between stress and anxiety; by naming your experiences as such, you can begin to develop targeted coping strategies. You may even notice that you have particular strengths in addressing one or the other. (People who experience high levels of anxiety, for example, may be quite equipped to identify daily stressors and vigilantly work to address them).
Stress-Relieving Strategy: Chart Your Life
Sometimes we can better name stress in hindsight. Consider drawing a timeline of your life, or a certain era of your life, and make notches at specific stressful moments along the timeline. These could be acute moments of stress, aka “horizontal stressors” (i.e. death of a loved one, change of career, illness diagnosis) or long-term “vertical stressors” (i.e. years of night shifts; changes in overall work due to COVID-19; ongoing financial, social, racial, or identity-based pressures) (source).
Finally, circle or shade in eras in which you remember feeling anxiety.
Reflecting on stressful occurrences in your life as well as underlying anxiety can be helpful in deconstructing the two. You may start to understand what external events are stressful to you vs. what is a common feedback loop of anxiety for you.
2. Sort your current stressors by type: acute, episodic, and long-term.
The American Psychological Association categorizes stress under three rainy umbrellas—acute, episodic, and long-term. Each usually comes with unique symptomatology even though we may experience all three as “stress.”
Acute Stress When a specific challenge pops up in your life that you do not feel you have adequate resources to address, you are likely experiencing acute stress. Acute stress is often the easiest to name because of its recency and front-of-mindness, (i.e. “I am stressed because I just found out I’m being evaluated at work tomorrow, so I do not have time to prepare). Acute stress may coincide with an increased heart rate and a feeling of panic. You can think of acute stress as a challenging prompt in your life that is happening live—and something you hope will pass soon.
Episodic Stress Compared to acute stress, episodic stress is less overt and circumscribed. Rather, episodic stress describes underlying, ongoing tension, often caused by workplace demands, relationship dynamics, or environmental problems (i.e. “My home is going through repairs, and I’m struggling to get adequate sleep with all the commotion.”) Episodic stress may lead to persistent feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, or irritability. You may feel physical tension in your body, but not quite know why.
Long-term Stress Long-term stress, or chronic stress, describes an ongoing or perpetual challenge in your life—and likely one over which you have no control. Long-term stress can be brought on by factors like previous trauma, systemic racism, or poverty. It can be so pervasive that it travels with you throughout your life, often going under-acknowledged or not properly addressed. Long-term stress can lead to internalized feelings of guilt, self-blame, or hopelessness. Long-term stress can shape your entire psychosocial experience, leading to maladaptive coping mechanisms, relationship ruptures, or workplace discord.
Stress-Relieving Strategy: Sort Your Stressors
Make a list of 10 stressors you know that are currently causing you worry, sadness, frustration, or other upsetting feelings. Then, identify each as an acute stressor, an episodic stressor, or a long-term stressor. Finally, choose one stressor from each category about which to journal. Write down how you know that the stressor is causing you stress. What do you notice in your body first? Where do you tend to be when you think about the stressor? What do you do once you feel the stress?
By sorting your stressors into categories, you can help to demystify the big feeling of “stress”, and begin to notice your unique triggers, symptoms, and coping strategies.
3. Talk it out with a therapist.
Oftentimes we know something is amok, but we can’t quite put our finger on the problem. We may find that we are sleeping worse, acting more irritable or moody, or finding ourselves in more fights with partners and coworkers. In those times, it is likely that stress is inching deeper and deeper into our everyday experience.
Working with a therapist has been shown to be an effective way of decreasing stress, especially for healthcare professionals. Given chaotic schedules and increased demands at work, healthcare professionals have been shown to benefit from telehealth (i.e. video call sessions with a therapist). In sessions, therapists may utilize classic psychotherapeutic models like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to identify stressors, or combine an eclectic mix of strategies that emphasize mindfulness, compassion, and mind–body skill building. With the personalized support of a licensed professional, you can begin to pinpoint unique stressors. Then, you can develop strategies to cope and thrive in the face of stress.
Stress-Relieving Strategy: Make an Appointment
Did you know that many clients notice a decrease in stress merely by making an appointment for therapy? Call it placebo or call it intervention, but taking the first step toward easing stress can begin to bolster resilience skills and illuminate your inner-strengths.
At Marvin, we make therapy accessible and impactful for healthcare professionals all over the country. To learn more about how we work with hospital systems, contact us here. To make your first appointment as a Marvin client, click here.
