What are your warning signs?
April is Stress Awareness Month in the UK, are you aware of your stress?
I don’t think I know many people who aren’t fully aware of their stress given gestures to the world at large.
This is my big issue with this kind of month or day, awareness is really the first step, and it feels like we’ve got to awareness and stopped. (It also feels like all the advice is really indiviualised, as in, how to manage your stress by yourself, by changing your actions/mindset, which also feels short sighted).
But on the other hand, when you are stressed, you don’t always notice that stress building up, so maybe this is a good time to do a little check in. The seasons are changing, we’ve at the end of the first quarter of 2025(!), so now is as good a time as any to take a moment to think about what your warning signs are, and how to manage them.
You can find my slides on what are your warning signs here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Nuzf0SoABMw3zSV7hvIoaVvsuFSsx_zreR2oAHHlDGk/edit?usp=sharing
I think sometimes we get used to some level of stress - sleeping weirdly, being pre-occupied with work outside of work, mood swings/being snappy, etc - that we don’t notice when these symptoms become more than occasional and more worrying.
I think about my warning signs as ‘internal’ or ‘external’, which largely means ones that I’m more likely to see than anyone else, and ones that other people might notice.
This is because, for me, the internal ones tend to pop up first, and so can be a really early warning sign that I need to do soem self care. The slides in the google doc link have some of my internal and external warning signs and how I can counteract them.
So I might look fine, but I know that I’m spending way more time on social media than I would normally, and ideally I’d take some action to combat that. Normally, that looks like adding time limits to the apps I’m spending a lot of time on without getting anything out of it, and then doing something else with that time. It doesn’t need to be productive, it just needs to be somethat that isn’t fully dissociating and not spending time well. That might be reading, or going for a walk, playing a video game, crafting, watching a film or tv show. Just something that requires a bit of active engagement.
One of the things I talk about a lot is lowering the hurdle for self care. Take going to the gym. You’re never just going to the gym. You’ve got to get gym clothes (do you have clean gym clothes?), get your water bottle and fill it (when was the last time you cleaned that?), get to the gym, then get changed if you’ve not gone to the gym in your gym clothes, then do your actual work out. then you’ve got to shower and change (or change then shower at home because taking a shower towel as well as a workout towel is another layer of faff).
When I talk to people who struggle with exercising regularly, a lot of them don’t mind exercising, it’s all the other stuff that makes it feel like a huge deal.
Another thing I see is the urge to change something big in your life to elevate your stress. Sometimes this is absolutely needed, like getting a new job or a career change, a change in relationships etc, but that’s not always needed or feasible. It’s also a lot more stress. if you’re not really engaging in self care because of your stress levels, you’re not going to easily be able to make a huge change, and that will leave you feeling more overwhelmed (and also powerless, and maybe hopeless).
What I’d like to invite you to do is to think about your warning signs, and small, low energy things to help you in this moment. What can make your next 5 minutes better?