Week 3: Identifying stressors and self-soothing habits
Welcome to Week 3. Take a deep breath.
This week, we’ll do some deep work. So it’s only fitting that we start with a deep breath…
Seriously – take a nice, deep inhale; then let that out with a strong exhale.
Let’s get to it.
This week, we’re dialed in on our stressors. Let me preface this with: I am constantly stressed. It’s my biggest personal pain point, and a part of my life I am actively working through.
I used to be in the camp of “Stress is BAD!” but as I’ve become much more aware of my stressors, I’ve actually come to sort of… love them? Maybe love is too strong of a word, but I definitely am not trying to completely eliminate my stress.
Stress is a natural response to… life. It’s a physical, mental, or emotional response to external stressors; by enacting your stress response, your body is literally just trying to protect you. It might seem counterintuitive, but when it’s activated appropriately, your stress response could save your life—or at least help you to meet that really tight end-of-day deadline for the massive project your boss just sent to you.
Acute stress is, for lack of a better term, completely normal. If you’re managing acute stress, that means your stress response (feeling uneasy, elevated heart rate, restlessness, etc.) dissipates quickly in the absence of your stressor. For example: once you’ve submitted that project by the deadline, you’re back to feeling cool, calm, and collected. Thanks for that adrenaline rush, Stress!
What we aim to avoid is chronic stress, which is persistent stress in the presence of an external stressor, and anxiety, which is a never-ending feeling of worry or overwhelm that doesn’t dissipate even in the absence of a stressor.
Why do we care about limiting chronic stress and anxiety? Because it SUCKS. And it can have compounding negative effects on our overall health and wellbeing; and even the health and wellbeing of those around us. And those effects don’t stop at just your body and mind’s response to stress, but carry over in your body and mind’s response to your coping mechanisms.
For anyone who needs to hear this (me): stress isn’t a personality type. In this week’s exercise, we’re getting familiar with our stressors, how we help ourselves to cope with them, and starting to identify what elements of our day-to-day life may need to change to help us feel better, more leveled, and less stressed.
Bringing awareness to your stressors and self-soothing habits:
Let’s consult our handy Daily Tracker spreadsheet (or journal, or notes in your Notes app, or however you chose to track your first week).
For the purpose of this exercise, we’re drawing a connection between the day’s highs and lows and your overall mood as a way to help us signal potential stressors. We’ll use the same range from last week to identify our average or elevated moods (3-5 on our scale) and low moods (1-2 on our scale).
For the days you had an average or elevated mood:
What were the day’s highs and lows?
Can you identify any trends in fueling (water and food intake) around experiencing that day’s high or low? What are they?
Can you identify any trends in your caffeine or alcohol intake around experiencing that day’s high or low? What are they?
For the days you had a low mood:
What were the day’s highs and lows?
Can you identify any trends in fueling (water and food intake) around experiencing that day’s high or low? What are they?
Can you identify any trends in your caffeine or alcohol intake around experiencing that day’s high or low? What are they?
Now that we have this information, let’s big-picture our highs and lows: are there trends here? If you were being specific with your highs and lows, you may not see trends on the surface of what you wrote – try categorizing them by a larger association. For example, perhaps a day’s high was receiving a great performance review: categorize this as Work. Perhaps a day’s low was getting stuck in traffic: categorize this as Time.
Continue categorizing until your highs and lows fit nicely in common buckets; but don’t force it. It’s important to note that some days, some things happen that you won’t find a common thread between. And that’s ok – make note that that day was a high or low completely of its own.
Now we have our baseline; our seemingly common stressors. Let’s dive deeper.
This week, we’re journaling. If you’re like me, you’ve tried and failed at this 20 times before. Journaling is just not for me, unless it’s going to help me figure out why I’m so stressed – then sign me the fuck up.
Your daily journal prompt will look like this:
What time is it?
On a scale from 1-5, how are you feeling?
Why did you pick that number?
Tell me about your day so far.
Four easy questions, three times a day: Morning. Afternoon. Evening.
I’m not suggesting you write a novel (unless you want to), but be thorough, and most importantly—honest. You can keep this journal however you prefer, but I’ve created this printable sheet to fill out daily, if you’d like to use it.
I’d urge you to keep a separate sheet tracking your exercise, food intake, and alcohol/caffeine intake. Our Daily Tracker is great for this. By staying mindful of these things, you’ll be better positioned to understand your coping mechanisms—and which of them may need extra attention.
At the end of this week, review your journal entries against your baseline findings.
Are you experiencing the same stressors through this week that you’ve identified from Week 1?
Are your habits pre- or post-stress-inducing-incident consistent, as well?
If you’re noticing any commonalities here, list them out. And once you’ve created this list of stressors, I want you to ask yourself this:
How many of these things can I change?
In a column next to that list, write a simple “Yes” or “No” across from each stressor to indicate whether or not it’s something you have control over changing.
If you responded “No” to any of those stressors, I want you to cross it out. Nothing you lack control over deserves your energy. If you can’t control it, it’s not yours to stress over.
If you responded “Yes” to any of those stressors, I want you to circle one you’re ready to change today.
I’ll leave you with this: in so many facets of life, you cannot continue doing the same things expecting different results. You cannot expect to become the best version of yourself if you’re not willing to allow it.
Change is scary, being honest with yourself about what stresses you out can be scary, but I’m here in your corner.
It’s your move next.