We can't control what happens, but we can choose how we respond. Response-ability (for our state and actions, as well as for what is happening in the world) is something we cultivate through understanding, awareness, and building skills through practice.
Emotions and the stress response range from subtle to intense. Chronic, ongoing stress and activated ("on") nervous systems have become normalized in modern culture, sometimes even glorified as a badge of success or our suffering.
Moreover, once your nervous system is activated in a way it cannot metabolize or fully process in the moment (perhaps because the stress is just too much right then and there, or it's not a safe or appropriate situation to process the stress), we carry it onward through our day.
If we do not later allow ourselves to process and complete that stress response, it continues to fill up our buckets until we overflow, crash and burn out, get sick, or develop chronic physical manifestations of that stress in the form of pain, fatigue, eleveated blood pressure, heart rate, hypervigilance, anxiety, etc.
Chronic stress is the leading correlative for disease today. We must understand what stress is, how it works, and how to help our bodies and minds move the energy of stress. We can't control most of the stressors in our lives, but we can respond to the stress we experience. We can learn how to let it move all the way through so it doesn't pile up and lead to disease, pain, and dysfunction in our bodies, minds, relationships, and world.
In this article we will cover:
- What is stress? Stress vs. Stressors
- The main reasons we get stuck in the stress/emotion tunnel instead of completing stress cycles and being able to relax
- 8 ways to complete stress cycles, recognize and release emotions, and down-regulate your nervous system
What is Stress?
Stress is one type of emotion. I like the simple definition of emotion as "energy-in-motion" in the body—an input (which can come from outside or inside ourselves) that affects us biochemically, hormonally, and thus physically. For example, someone blasts their car horn at you, and your heartrate immediately increases, maybe you get warm or sweaty, maybe you get goosebumps or the hairs on your arms or legs prickle, a little burst of adrenaline and energy surges in you. Your nervous system jumps "on" to defend or protect you.
We often also have a mental response - thoughts and beliefs about situations and our body's physical responses and sensations. To follow our example: "Why did they do that? Did I do something wrong? Am I in danger?" Confusion, self-doubt, fear.
It can help to think of any emotion and the stress response as a tunnel or a garden hose. If you go all the way through them, you get to the light at the end. Your nervous system activation peaks (autonomic sympathetic stress response), you follow your physical and mental burst of energy to resolve, re-orient, or respond to the situation, and once complete, your nervous system down-regulates again into calm (parasympathetic stress response).
Exhaustion, burnout, overwhelm, outbursts, and many chronic pain/tension patterns emerge when we get stuck in the garden hose of nervous system activation too often or for too long. We may get stuck simply because we’re constantly being exposed to situations that activate stress/emotions and there becomes a backlog. Or growing up, perhaps we learned that feeling or expressing emotions was not safe, so we don't allow ourselves to feel and move through.
When we unkink our emotional/stress response garden hoses to flow more freely, we get:
- More energy (It takes a lot of effort to hold things in and manage the flow of emotions when they are backed up and pressurized.)
- More emotional intelligence and clarity (Being in a stresed/activated state, backlogged with stresses makes us tired, muddy, and easily overwhelmed.)
- More resilience to stress and capacity to be with what is (If your bucket isn't at the brink of overflowing, you have more bandwidth to take in, work with and process new stress, rather than be a spoonful away from being pushed over the edge and totally overwhelmed. Instead you grow the capacity to feel stress, and feel your okayness.)
Stressors vs. Stress
Stressors are things that activate our stress response. Many stressors are external, coming from outside of ourselves, and are not necessarily "negative"—this can be anything from a job, driving, kids, finances, caffeine, watching an exciting movie, listening to the news, going to a dance party, rushing through errands, etc.
Other stressors are internal, such as self-criticism, perfectionism, coping strategies and beliefs leftover from trauma history—people pleasing, hypervigilance, etc.
Stress is the response in your body when the "on"/activated sympathetic nervous system state get activated, evolved to help us survive things like being chased by a tiger. It's a chemical stew that helps boost your ability to think and move fast—your heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension increases, and processes like digestion slow down.
A lot of us are taught that if we fix the stressor—problem that caused the stress or emotion—then we will have dealt with the stress/emotion itself.
But that's not how it works.
For example: You're out for dinner with a big group of friends before a concert. Dinner took a long time and you're in a time crunch to make it to the show on time. The bill comes and everyone is trying to figure out how much they owe and you're the one trying to count the cash, tell people how much and who to venmo, and to make sure you're leaving enough tip. When you walk out of the restaurant, do you instantly feel peaceful and relaxed? No, you likely feel amped, anxious, and fried.
We aren't taught that it's necessary to actively move and release the stress through our bodies. It takes inner awareness and emotional work, which we don't always have the capacity for, whether for reasons external (such as not having enough time, or the stress just keeps piling on) or internal (such as shame, or fear of losing control/getting overwhelmed).
The Main Reasons We Get Stuck in the Stress/Emotion Tunnel instead of Completing Stress Cycles:
1. Chronic stress: We are so activated so much of the time without getting or giving ourselves the space and time to process emotions/complete stress cycles and wind down into parasympathetic states.
2. Social appropriateness: For one, we have a lot of cultural judgments about emotions being weak and disruptive. Additionally, the general context for when, where, and with whom we express and move stress/emotional energy matters—venting at work with colleagues can be very different than venting at home with a partner.
3. Safety: This overlaps with #2 above, but it's not always emotionally or physically safe to express and move stress/emotion, it is vulnerable, and potentially activating to others. It's safer to put your head down and keep walking when someone on the street is yelling at you.
One challenge is that emotions in our culture are largely seen as disruptive, as weakness, inppropriate, etc.
We swallow a lot of emotions throughout the day, saying to ourselves something like, “I must behave/control myself so that I do not interfere with anyone else’s day, and so I am now officially not feeling my feelings.” You might smile and shove it down, where it goes to live in the body, whether in muscular tension or some organ. And then unless you revisit that emotion later and let it move through you, it stays there.
Obviously, in some moments, smiling, being polite, walking away, containing and shoving it all down and hiding it is safer, can help you keep your job, or get through the task you need to complete without unpacking an emotion with your partner, etc. It is a skill to be able to go partway through an emotional tunnel and then bottle it away for later. We just so often forget, or aren't taught, or don't have/make the space and time to reopen the bottle and let the pressure out.
It's important to remember: Removing the stressors does not mean the stress cycle is complete.
AND:
That means two things:
1. You don’t have to wait for all your stressors to go away before you can start to feel better
2. When the stressors do go away, you do have to deal with the stress itself separately.
All emotions have a beginning, a middle and an end. If you stop in the middle, there is an internal holding that keeps it there until you circle back. Here are some ways to help stress move through to the end.
8 Ways to Complete Stress Cycles, Recognize and Release Emotions, and Down-Regulate Your Nervous System:
1. Physical Activity: move your body! Walk, run, pump your arms, dance, squeeze and release your shoulders, shake out your hands, hug and rock yourself, make sounds - this is extra effective if engaging with an emotion or experience with your mind. (see #7)
2. Breathing: Huberman's physiological sigh is one of the quickest, best practices. The key to using breath is to practice a long, slow exhale.
3. Positive Social Interaction: Anything from getting a hug, to telling your barista “Hey, I like your earrings," to being taken into a safe place to shelter.
4. Laughter: It has to be the slightly embarrassing, mouth hanging open, belly jiggling, snorting, uncontrolled, ridiculous laughter that really takes over your body, you can’t stop laughing. Laughing so hard you cry. One of the great gifts of the internet is an abundance of hilarious material, find what gets you going (farting dogs, sisters jump-scaring their brothers, contagious laughter...)
5. Nurturing physical touch: Bodywork and massage! Cuddling, 20-second hugs (hugging until relaxed), placing your own hands on your heart and rubbing in small circles.
6. A Big 'Ole Cry: Usually just takes a few minutes! People are afraid that if they let themselves cry it will last forever. But if you don’t continue feeding it thoughts about the cause of the stress. I often imagine taking my inner child into my arms and letting her have a moment to fall apart.
7. Creative Expression w/ Imagination. You don’t necessarily have to take your feelings and put them into a thing that you make or do, you can also just think/imagine your way through a story. For example: Get on the elliptical machine and imagine yourself as Godzilla tromping _____ (Washington DC? Your boss's house and gardens? Fill in your blank). You might find you get to the end of a workout and feel elated, powerful, and ready for anything - not because you did anything differently with your body, but because your mind got to complete the cycle of your feelings.
8. Knowing your emotional parts: Journaling or speaking out loud so that you can feel and move through your emotions. This is where 1-1 somatic therapy can play a crucial role for some folks to practice and develop skill around feeling emotions. Nicole Sach's JournalSpeak is a targeted journaling practice designed for completing stress cycles too.
Am I doing it right?
The best thing you can do is give yourself a break, be gentle, have some compassion. If accessing emotions is challenging for you, or brings up scary or overwhelming memories and/or feelings, reach out to a professional for support. A little psychotherapy and coaching can do wonders!
Don’t worry if you’re not sure you can recognize when you’ve completed the cycle, especially if you’ve spent a lot of years, maybe your whole life, worrying or stuffing down certain feelings. You might have a whole lot of accumulated stress response cycles spinning their engines, waiting for their turn. So it can take a while before you get through the backlog.
DO pause to recognize that you feel incrementally better than you felt before you started. You can notice that something in your body has changed, shifted in the direction of peace or relieft. If you were an 8 on the stress scale when you started and now you're a 4, look at yourself and say, ‘Good job, me!’”
You can trust that you'll feel a little better each time, and that eventually, you will be able to feel that the mountain under the rug is no longer there. Your bucket will have more space.
*Credit!* This information in this article largely comes from a Brene Brown podcast interviewing sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski about burnout and how to complete the stress cycle. You can listen to the podcast here.