How to handle stress with kindness

"Aren't you having some stressful times right now?" the doctor asks me first when consulting my health problem, and I realize that all doctors ask this question. I never know if he's asking it because he really wants to know, if he's having an ironic day or living on another planet. Because I honestly can't remember a time in my entire life that wasn't more or less stressful. And we all are more likely to answer "not really". Including the lady in the waiting room who couldn't get her ID out of her purse for 2 minutes with shaky hands when the nurse asked her for her insurance card.

We have learned to live with stress, not to see it, to consider it a normal part of our lives. It is also quite difficult to adopt a different attitude in lives filled with stress from morning to night. Stress has become the norm, and even saying out loud that we experience it at all may even make us feel like a failure. Modern man has to manage stress, otherwise, he has no chance of survival. That's why we usually answer "not really". Yet such overlooking and underestimating of stress is exactly what we do to cause burnt out, collapse, or some health problems.

What is the relationship between the brain and stress?

The human brain is not built for " accepting and overcoming" stress at all. As I very lightly hinted in my article on RTT therapy, the developmentally oldest parts of our brain have a big advantage over the younger ones. The responses triggered by the oldest parts are simply more deeply ingrained in our physical and mental functioning. What do we get then from the fact that the oldest parts are concerned with our survival and only the later developed parts allow us things like self-awareness, fine sense, mental growth, time perception? Well, in any stressful situation, first, a wave of life-saving stimuli (escape, attack, hide, muscle spasm, alarming hormones) passes through our body, and only then come to some rational thoughts - rational from the point of view of modern man, who needs not to succumb to stress, to keep calm and to figure out the best possible action to get through it, not to avoid it. In fact, that's how we are constantly fighting with ourselves, and the fight takes energy. Moreover, our brain never sleeps and the more we are physically tired, the less we control its processes. The less the brain is under control, the more it tends to negatively overestimate situations and release stress hormones into the body, which our body in turn has to balance.

But it does not mean that we are predestined to break down. It just means we need to accept it all, learn to consciously work with it, and acknowledge the stress. We have an incredible ability to learn and get used to things (a Saturday text from your boss will probably upset you less after 2 years than your first week at work), but we need to understand the fact that every stressful situation we handle, whether short or long term, costs us far more energy than we give ourselves credit for. This often puts us in situations where we are pushing ourselves to the edge of our mental and physical limits and are taking care of ourselves unnecessarily late.

When stress builds up, even a simple broken door can trigger a disproportional reaction.

What do we do wrong?

1. We don't plan our days with enough consideration for the stress demands of each task (we only consider time and energy). We demand a lot of tasks from ourselves and we get angry at ourselves when we feel exhausted by the middle of the day when we expect us to be able to handle it.

2. We try to "function " in long periods of time, which are not interrupted by breaks with relaxation. In addition to the fact that without small pauses (the ideal is the so-called Pomodoro ratio of 25/5 min) we absolutely exhaust our cognitive functions (memory, concentration, orientation in space, responsiveness, emotional self-regulation, speech, comprehension), we do not take advantage of longer given pauses, such as lunch. Instead of focusing on the food and having a bit of quiet, we try to do as many little things as possible on our mobile phones next to our plates, pay our bills and answer other emails. This keeps our brains under pressure, and then we reinforce our artificial stress with phrases like "I don't even have time to eat". Well, you do have that time, but you're not attentive to it or you're taking it away from yourself.

3. Unfortunately, we don't give ourselves a break even the moment we start to feel uncomfortable, forcing ourselves to "grit our teeth" and ignore all the warnings our body and brain give us. A 20-minute nap, a walk around the office and a glass of water work better than a headache pill. An overloaded brain won't allow you to sleep later or concentrate, and most importantly, it will take away your ability to handle situations in a standard way. One bad reaction, one loose emotion, and your tired brain can compete with Hitchcock for the next horror scenario.

4. We are even so cruel to ourselves that we don't even listen to our basic needs like hunger, thirst, and others. You wouldn't tell your child that he can go to the bathroom after he finishes his picture, would you? But we do this to ourselves on a regular basis and unnecessarily increase the overall discomfort in which we require ourselves to fully function. Unfortunately, I also know people who present this behavior to others as their advantage, their good willpower.

Stress and calm are about the tiny things

Sure, we are all "busy" and have tight schedules, but we all also have time to go to the bathroom, have 30 min for lunch, come somewhere with an excuse 10 min late because we needed to sit on a bench outside and stare at a tree for a while and calm down. This saves lives, business, and social interactions. In 99% of the cases, we are the only ones who would have blamed ourselves for those few minutes, who have such high expectations of us. We can all really afford those few minutes, we just have to admit it, put our mental wellbeing first, and not be ashamed of it. You won't regret it, it's a good investment in our "operability". And yes, indeed these little few-minute details have miraculous powers.

Because even stress is just the little details we allow to come to us. Stress isn't just the moments of dread before a test, before an interview, during a car accident, during a heated situation at work, during an argument with a partner. From the perspective of our body and mind, stress is any small discomfort that is being overcome. It's a phone call to authority we don't like ("hopefully I won't find out I'm still missing some validation"), it's forcing ourselves to go to a party when we don't feel like it, it's a conversation with someone we don't really like and just met at that party. For some, it's the stress of speaking in front of everyone in a meeting ("I hope I don't get stuck again"), for others it's traveling on crowded public transport. It can be driving down the motorway, going to the dentist, making an appointment at the bank, or forcing yourself to start doing research for something you need and know nothing about ("omg this is going to be 3 hours of Alice in Wonderland again, I'd rather go out"). Walking a dog you don't control yet, taking your car in for servicing ("my god how much is it going to cost again"). It's a thousand little things we do and have to do every day. The fact that we sometimes even want to do them ourselves doesn't take away from their stressfulness.

Be kind to yourself

Every little overcoming of ourselves costs us energy. Being kind to ourselves means we acknowledge that. You may be reading the info about brain development and things related to it for the first time. Use it consciously. Use it for yourself as an explanation for why some seemingly trivial things are hard and tiring for you, and as a reason to praise yourself for even the little things. Why to give yourself little rewards and breaks during the day. Do it preventively, not when it's too late. Taking a little break and switching off allows the body to flush out accumulated hormones and acids, loosens tight muscles, and reboots focus.

A few minutes of sunshine saves lives.

I still remember a few moments in my life when I consciously did something for myself for the first time. Because it had a huge impact. Like the time (note: I had finished therapy by then, otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to do it) when I was running to work in Prague in the morning and my stomach was already cramped from going to the dentist. So then I ran from work to the dentist, somehow survived there, and wanted to run to the tram to work again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that after a long winter they had started that nice fountain at Karlak, and the little Kačka in me wanted to go there to take a look. But the grown-up immediately refused, because every minute counts and she has to....it's stupid, there's no time....you'll be home early....cacan't I? I can't? Oh, man, I can! So I grabbed myself by the collar and spent 7 minutes looking at the running water in the sun in the middle of Charles Square. My day paused, my stressed shoulders slumped down and the corners of my mouth lifted towards the sun. Then I boarded the next tram, which went just in time, and was greeted with a smile and nice coffee at the office. And in my better mood, I was able to notice their smile, return it, and everything was different from that day on. I found that I could, indeed I had to because it helped.