Last week I was talking about stress and how it has really elevated over the last 12-18 months.
Whether it is physical or psychological stress, it all has an accumulative effect on our body and our mind.
We need stress, it is how we adapt and grow as human beings.
But too much with no way to vent it, can cause overwhelm and can leave us with no capacity to absorb more.
One of the key issues I have seen in clinic, is when someone has ‘A‘ strategy to vent their stress but that strategy is taken away from them.
This could be going to the gym, but the gym was closed by covid.
It could be through exercise, but you are restricted by injury.
It could be through a class, a group or social activity; but you’ve been restricted by the lockdown.
What we need to understand is the role that our choice of activity fulfils for us, not just in the obvious benefits, such as the physical benefits of exercise; but how it satisfies other social needs and allows us to vent our stresses.
When we understand this we can observe the feeling of easing our burdens and of achieving fulfilment, and then separate these feelings from the task that we are doing. We can then observe how we can find these feelings in other areas of our lives.
This allows us to have a ‘back up’ strategy that allows us to achieve these feelings if we are unable to access our usual form of exercise and activity.
This could be as simple as a regression of your activity, but if you can find that you can access these feelings of balance and release in a number of areas then you have much more chance of avoiding stresses escalating.
Keeping physiological stress low means we can keep our Adaptive Reserve high. This means we have a much better chance of beating many other health challenges, should they arise.