Simple Tips To Manage Stress in The Moment

Stress has become a catch-all term to explain away many of our modern day ills. It can be frustrating to hear that the reason for your headaches, fatigue, dizziness, depression, insomnia to name just a few, is due to stress. But what is stress? How does it affect your brain and body and what are some practical steps you can take to prevent it from becoming overwhelming?

What is Stress?

Stress causes your body to switch into a mode where it’s using up lots of energy rather than conserving it. It can be compared to pushing down on a car’s accelerator pedal. The more you push, the harder the engine works and the greater the fuel consumption. The more stress you are under, the harder your body is working and the more energy you are using up. In reality, your stress response is no more unhealthy than an accelerator pedal. We need it to be able to function normally and to provide the spurt of energy the moment demands. However, sometimes we can become overly stressed or anxious in situations where we’d prefer to have a clearer, calmer head.

What Happens In Our Bodies During Stress?

The stress response, sometimes referred to as the fight or flight response, is designed to help us overcome a challenge in our environment. In ancient times this would have been something like unexpectedly coming face-to-face with a lion. This is a matter of life or death so the body activates a few crucial switches designed to survive; either preparing to attack back or running away fast. Both require a huge amount of physical activity, so within moments your heart rate increases, blood pressure goes up and breathing rate rises. This enables the body to get lots of blood, oxygen and fuel to the muscles. Furthermore, it uses up a lot more energy than if the body were at rest. It’s the difference between cruising along in fifth gear at 50mph compared to frantically shifting into second  gear and accelerating to 100mph. Which one is more sustainable? Just think of the difference in fuel consumption between the two. It’s the same for your body when it’s at rest or in a stressed state.

A more relatable example would be public speaking. For many of us, this is an almost paralysing source of fear. Even just thinking about it can cause a pounding chest, shallow breathing and sweaty palms. The body is literally ‘revved up’. While most of us don’t love this sensation, it does give us the burst of energy necessary to deliver a high-performance. Sprinters activate it before a race and actors harness it to deliver something special when the stage lights go up.

Just as our ancestors needed the stress response to help them deal with, or escape from, dangerous situations, we also need it to overcome obstacles in our lives. Without it, we would stay in passive cruise control and lack the energy required to run for the bus, stay up late prepping for an important meeting, or stand up for ourselves in an unfair confrontation. The problem arises when it switches on too much for the given situation. It would be like driving around town at 30mph in first gear. We’re overly revved up and this can end up impairing performance rather than improving it.

Breathing - Your Remote Control to Stress

The stress response is triggered and maintained by a part of our nervous system outside of our voluntary control. You’ll know how true this is if you’ve ever mentally told yourself to ‘calm down’ if you’re hyped up. It just doesn’t work. Unfortunately, we can’t simply instruct our stress system to turn itself down or shut off. Most of our body’s miraculous life-sustaining functions occur completely outside of our consciousness and for the vast majority of the time this is a very good thing.

Your breathing is different though. Respiration can occur automatically or voluntarily. Most of the time it’s happening in the background without any awareness or direction from you. However, if you think about it you can become conscious of, and voluntarily change, how fast or deep you breathe.

How can you make this practical? If you can become aware of your breath and slow it down when you recognise you’re getting worked-up, you can, at the very least, stop your stress response from spiralling out of control. If you slow your breathing and make it deeper, this will in turn slow your heart rate and lower your blood pressure. In the midst of the drama, you’re signalling to your body that everything’s OK, that you’re in control and that things aren’t as bad as you first assumed. It’s like taking your foot off the accelerator pedal, or at least reducing how hard you’re pushing it down.

For some people it really helps to count, and an ideal rhythm is six breaths per minute. So this would be six full inhales and exhales over sixty seconds, with each inhale taking five seconds and each exhale lasting five seconds too. It often helps to practice this when you’re calm so that it’s easier to replicate should you get triggered. A great practice is setting an alarm for two minutes or more and using an app that can cue your breathing to the above ratio.

The Eyes Never Lie

There’s another two-way path between your voluntary and involuntary stress mechanisms that you can take advantage of. It involves your eyes and how they focus depending on whether you’re calm or anxious.

It makes sense that if you’re under attack or running away from something threatening, focussing all your attention on whatever it is so that you can confront or escape it is going to increase your chance of survival. And that’s exactly what your eyes do. During stress, the muscles around your eyes contract and cause your focus to narrow.You see less of the world around you so that you can concentrate on whatever the pressing problem is. The opposite occurs when you’re at ease. Your gaze opens and you take in a more panoramic view of the surroundings. Think of how good it feels to watch a stunning sunset. Part of that is the beauty of the scene but an element of that positive feeling comes from the way the muscles in your eyes relax, opening up your field of vision and promoting relaxation.

You can use this phenomenon to induce calmness if you’re feeling wound-up. Simply seeing more of the space around you, especially at the edges of your vision, will relax the muscles around your eyes and signal to your brain and nervous system that all is well. Don’t stress yourself out by trying really hard to see objects in your periphery though, just becoming loosely aware of them is enough.

Putting It All Together

It’s no wonder that our modern lifestyles can cause stress if we simply take into consideration the amount of time we spend sat down looking at a screen. Screen gazing is a narrow focus activity and can therefore contribute to overall stress levels. Compound that with sitting, which squashes the muscles needed to take deep, healthy breaths and it’s no surprise that a long day of desk-work rarely makes us feel peaceful or invigorated.

The great news is that there’s a very simple solution. Leaving your desk or couch for a short walk during which you practice opening your gaze to notice more of your environment and taking a few deep, slow breaths can have a profound impact on your wellbeing.

You can use either technique if you find yourself in a stressful situation. Slowing down your breath or opening out your focus will help your body calm down so you can navigate whatever is taking place with greater ease. For example, before an important meeting you could prepare by taking a few slow, deep breaths and opening your gaze to see more of whatever is in the edges of your vision. You can even practice this this during the meeting itself.

There’s no such thing as a cure-all, and remember, the stress response is there to help you deal with life’s challenges. But having the ability to approach life’s obstacles with more poise and less pressure is certainly a worthwhile skill to learn.