Have you recently been feeling stressed and are noticing that it is taking a toll on your body? Are your workouts declining, is your sleep disrupted, or are you having difficulty recovering? If so stress could be the culprit.
There are 4 instinctive responses to stress:
1)Fight
2) Flight
3) Freeze/faint or disassociate
4) Fawn (aka trying to please)
The past few months I have been going nonstop. I have been working more than usual, trying to balance, family, friends, hobbies, and trying to make time for selfcare. Working 12-13 hours a day made it almost impossible to find time to rest. Maybe you can relate? If I was honest with myself, I would have to say my stress response is either to fight or freeze. When I feel like I have too much going on, I can be the biggest grouch, trying to fight my way out, or I disconnect from what is going on and disassociate.
I realized I was under a lot of stress when I went to practice a driving course that I have done a million times. I am a driving instructor and love teaching people how to drive smooth and fast. Every time a course is up with cones, I practice, to keep up on my skills. This week in particular, I did awful. The more I drove the more frustrated I got. Then it hit me, being fatigued, and stressed for long periods of time causes us to worsen in activities. The more fatigued we become the less likely we are able to maintain the same level of performance.
The patterns of stress:
1) Homeostasis- This is our comfort level, this gives stability and predictability.
2) We encounter a stressor- For example, hitting an intense work out
3) Alarm phase- we get temporarily worse as we respond to the new demands
4) We recover and rebuild- we do this by sleep, good nutrition, lowering stress
5) We enter a new homeostasis or baseline- this is where we get 1% better and more resilient for future stressors.
We can’t avoid getting stressed, but we can recognize what our stress responses are and the predictable patterns they follow. The key is to focus on recovery so that our baseline continually improves.
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