Do you recognize the different sides of stress, and how do you deal with your stress?
Everyone experiences stress; otherwise, we wouldn’t survive. So, stress is a part of life, and you cannot get rid of it. Instead, you can develop your stress awareness and sensitivity to recognize different aspects of stress. Stress is often much more diverse and complex than we can think. In this blog post, let’s look at a few tips on how and why you could increase your stress awareness.
My perception of my stress has changed with age. I have also used the approaches I have learned for stress management: from body care and breathing exercises to strengthening presence, from biometric measurement to improving diet, and on the other hand, from lightening burdensome thinking patterns to a more positive way of thinking, or from a critical way of communication to a more flexible, listening and curious one. All of these have contributed to the fact that my stress awareness and management are now at a more sensitive level.
In retrospect, and gently reflecting on my own actions, I dare say that I could have become more aware of this earlier. However, your stress-relationship (if you can say it this way) needs empathy, not judgment. I am happy that as a coach, I can encourage the coachees to have self-compassion in this matter. Every lighter breath is a step towards better stress awareness.
Stress as a driver or a lighter grip?
As a coach, I deal not only with people who have become aware of their stress, but also with people who deny and downplay stress. It is quite natural. Often, stress has supported us for quite a long time, and it has become a part of our activities, if not our lifestyle. We have often survived difficult things and achieved with a lot of stress as a driver. However, if that is the goal, I dare to claim and hope that there is also a lighter, more flowing and more productive path that will take you even further.
Stress is diverse. The stereotypical stressed person “runs fast,” goes hard, takes care of everything, overperforms, and demands almost impossible things from himself and others. However, stress can also manifest itself as passivity, withdrawal, carelessness, underachievement, and dissatisfaction — not contentment.
When stress is at an appropriate level and properly channelled, it can help us, e.g. to focus on what is essential, to dare more, and to see more broadly. Even with a high-stress profile, you can do well if you find an equally intense and effective recovery as a counterpart. However, we often must practice recovery, relaxation, and letting go of the unimportant much more than speeding up. In coaching, stress awareness and stress management are often the most important topics. We often need a mirror and a dialogue to identify the behavioural patterns caused by our own stress.
Measured and perceived stress are different things
The physiological measurement of stress can have good effects on increasing your own stress awareness. As a coach, I look at the measurement results individually and with a deep narrative approach. Two identical stress and recovery curves may differ in their stories. Staring at the results of stress measurements as such can be startling, but often, a deeper look behind them is needed. Stress coaching must also offer the right tailored methods, tools, ideas, and different paths for progress – stress management cannot be developed with different stress profiles using the same formula.
We call our own stress coaching program as CLUES coaching. The name refers to the possibilities of different clues and seeing the whole story and solutions behind them. For one, the most important thing is to learn to breathe with better quality concretely; another can stop to listen to their way of communicating and find clues from it; for some, the clues in the story lie deeper in the learned defence mechanisms of thinking or mind, which by opening the action can also change from reactive to more flexible. So together, we study stress curves and the story behind them. Stress can be short-term, prolonged, situational or contextual, physical or psychological, related to self-knowledge and self-image, connected to social situations and communication. We can also take it quite long and well recover even from severe periods of stress. Still, when the hardest curve is prolonged, our entire system can go into a knot – we no longer recognize any cues adequately.
Let stress awareness renew you
A compassionate approach to stress has proven critical in successful stress coaching. The PQ, Positive Intelligence, coaching tool starts with identifying your stress profile – your Internal Sabotaging action patterns. The program continues with empathy work and the practice of response models that strengthen positivity. Training is both physical and related to thinking and action. It is possible to code one’s stress-recovery pattern again. In addition to insights, it requires practice in small steps, which creates new neuro connections. Yes, this modification in our brain is possible and never too late.
If you would like to increase your compassionate stress awareness and stress management, where would you most benefit from it:
- In your own well-being?
- At home and with close people?
- At work and succeeding at work?
- In achieving demanding goals?
I hope you are now interested in better stress awareness.
If you are available in participating in our stress awareness-themed open webinar, you are warmly welcome to register. Our next webinar on this topic is on 14.3. from 9 to 10:30 a.m.
The language for our March Online Webinar is Finnish – Feel free to ask for an English recording!
Register to our open webinar (in Finnish) on 14.3.2025 at 9.00
Tuuli Kirsikka Pirttiaho on Thewind Oy:n toimitusjohtaja ja Head Coach, PCC Professional Certified Coach ICF, CPCC Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, PCEC Professional Certified Executive Coach Henley, Stress and PQ Positive Intelligence Coach.