April is Stress Awareness Month
(I'm sending this out as I don't think it sent a couple of weeks ago, sorry readers, apparently I failed at scheduling emails)
The hashtag for this year's Stress Awareness Month is Little By Little, which is pretty much the only reason I’m doing anything with it. While awareness days can be a bit shite, mostly just offering shallow tips and tricks, or things that are functionally useless, I think the idea of focusing on self care and wellbeing as ‘what can I do to make the now better?’ or ‘what small thing can I do to make future me’s life easier?’ are valid questions, and can be a good way to break down the overarching task of looking after yourself into a small, easily conquerable tasks.
When you’re stressed you’re most likely in one of the following states:
Thinking about approximately 500 different things, with your attention needed on another 500 things. Any decisions to be made outside of this will make you spontaneously combust
There is A Thing. This Thing is all consuming. It’s a situation that impacts your every waking second and any thought or action that is not about Thing seems impossible.
You’ve stopped. You’ve got to a point where you’ve shut down. Maybe this is part of either or both of the two above situations, maybe it’s something different. No thoughts are possible, because your neural pathways seem to be awol.
Other states are available, but I feel that these are the ones people will be most familiar with.
Thinking about making your now better, or doing self care, or any of the self help CBT stuff the NHS prescribes for stress will seem entirely out of the question. May as well empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
This is why I talk about planning for your bad days on your good days, and I have some exercises on making your self care super visible.
Last year I broke down my self care along the lines of whether my physical or mental health was having a flare up, and what energy I have available.
When you’re feeling like shit, not having to think about what self care activity you can do is one less hurdle to clamber over. You can just look at a picture or a graph or a list or whatever ands go ‘yes, I’ll go for a walk/have a read/tell someone I love them/talk to a friend/go splash my face with water/ etc’ means you can go straight to the good stuff.
This is similar to my idea of little by little. You might not be able ot do anything right now about your stress. But can you do something to make you feel a little better right now? How about making the next 5 mins a bit better for you?
This still counts as making a decision, but it’s a smaller one, so you may find it easier. If not, the general go to for me is a check list of:
Have I, recently or in the past day:
eaten
hydrated
moved
spoken to someone
Slept or lay down
taken my meds
showered or washed myself in some way
It’s a basic list, but these are the foundations of self care for a reason. Feeling less like a lil gremlin is a good first step on feeling better.
Spending time doing this can be helpful in multiple ways.
In the immediate, you’ll feel a little better, which is good. You might be able to relax your muscles for a second or two, allowing them to rest in a more neutral space, which may reduce any pain or tension you feel physically.
It gives you a chance to check in with yourself, which will bring you back to the present. Sometimes the present is the stressful thing, sometimes the stress is coming from us thinking about the future or past, so visiting the present for a second can be helpful as well.
You might be able to turn the volume down on your thoughts temporarily. Maybe focusing on something else will replenish you a little bit, and make you feel a bit more in control of your surroundings. This can be a helpful reminder if you’re feeling entirely out of control.
This may also be a helpful point to consider asking for help, or evaluating your response to your situation. Sometimes we react or respond unhelpfully to a stressful situation. I’ve written before about how, when I was full of shame and stress at work, I didn’t ask for help and my boss pointed out I’d never asked him to even work with me on a project, never mind help. I realised then that I should’ve and could’ve reached out, and I didn’t because of my oen thought processes, and maybe if I’d taken a bit more time to be kinder to myself, I would’ve asked for help.
Finally, this is practicing being kind to yourself, on a small level. The simple act of looking after yourself, even when you’re stressed and don’t have time is an act of prioritisation that you deserve. Practicing and building a habit of kindness is really important and it builds up over time and can help change your self talk to be kinder and more realistic.
This stuff is a marathon, not a sprint, and it feels so easy to let this stuff slip when you’re struggling and time and energy is thin on the ground. By breaking looking after yourself down to the smallest possible segment, and by carving out even a minute of time, just to breathe and take a swig of water, can be a foundation you can build upon.
Self care can’t solve all your problems, and some of your stresses will be entirely out of your control, that’s how life works sometimes, but having a practice of little acts of kindness and care towards yourself can have real meaningful effects on your day to day mental health. And you deserve that.
Thank you so much for reading, and supporting the SCB newsletter