The Realities of Managing Stress…

The beautiful work within ‘Burn Out’- By Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski; They speak to the realities of stress within our lives and the impacts that it has on our overall well-being. Their research focused on a new vantage point of stress and didn’t focus on the specifics of the situations that create our stress points. They highlight that —of course in circumstances that we have control over preventing a stressful situation from occurring we should do that, otherwise they provided insight to how can we adapt and learn to productively survive stress when we must go through it. — That is where their ‘completing the stress cycle’ approach becomes a fundamental requirement for us to positively care for our overall well-being.

Completing the Stress Cycle can occur in so many ways:

1. Physical Movement: Focus on moving your body (dancing it out, shaking your body, fast-paced walking, etc).
2. Creativity: Making something new (craft, art, music, writing, humming, etc).
3. Laughing: Moves the mindset (even when forced to start), provides a release and can be even more beneficial when sharing laughter with someone.
4. Crying: Expressing the emotion, sitting with it, and releasing it.
5. Physical affection: Hugging (for a prolonged period—ie: 2 minutes or longer), holding hands, sitting close to those that are a safe connection for you.
6. Deep breathing: Trying a variety of different breathing techniques—Box breathing, 4-4 breathing, etc. Having the focus being on the breath.