3 Things That Happen When Your Stress Coping Strategies Don’t Meet the Demands Being Placed on Them.

Stress is an inevitable part of our daily lives, and surprisingly, it can be a positive force.
Yes, you read that correctly stress is a good thing.

But.

The issues come when our coping strategies do not meet the demands being placed on us, and the stress begins to compound.

When seemingly unrelated stressors such as a traffic jam, tight deadline or a tough training session compound without any deliberate and intentional release.

We start to run into trouble.

Here are 3 things that happen when our coping strategies can’t cope.

1.     You creep towards burnout.

Burnout is a creep and not a bang. We don’t get burnt out in a day, week or maybe even a month. But repetitive, compounded exposure to high stress environments will push you towards burning out, and I really hope you never experience the bang 💥 which often accompanies burn out.

2.     You become apathetic.

To your job, home life, relationships and worryingly the activities which help refill your cup become a chore and additional burden. What really sucks is that it becomes difficult to be present and engaged with those you love, switching off because very difficult and getting quality rest and recharge becomes a real challenge.

3.     You’ll lean on a crutch.

Something that you can control, which we often end up overdoing and using as a self-soothing strategy to deal with the pressure of work. Alcohol, food, scrolling, TV, snacking, sugar, exercise (smashing ourselves), drugs, working even harder/longer hours or a combination of all the above.

Unfortunately, these don’t alter the stress, only make it worse as they all impact our recovery and create issues elsewhere.

So what to do about it?

Remove the pressure of self-care and well-being.

Start small and build your own basic well-being protocol which works for you. A series of mini habits which you can do anytime during the day, which don’t take hours and don’t cost you an arm and a leg.

There are hundreds of things and my posts this week are going to focus on what you CAN do.

What are you doing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to recharge?