Completing the Stress Cycle: Practical Tips and Strategies

In this episode of Farm Life with Steph Schmidt, she explores the concept of completing the stress cycle and provides practical tips and strategies to do so.

 Stress is a natural part of life, but chronic and prolonged stress can have negative effects on our bodies and minds. Steph discusses the seven steps to complete the stress cycle, including physical activity, breathing exercises, positive social interaction, laughter, affection, crying, and creative expression. She encourages listeners to find what works best for them and to be intentional in incorporating these activities into their daily routine. By completing the stress cycle, we can better manage stress and avoid burnout. 

Tune in to learn more about how to complete the stress cycle and improve your overall well-being. 

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Transcript

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There was something and we all saw it and it was a little bit ridiculous, and we just laughed, and it was beautiful. I think when we're caught up in our heads, that's what we miss sometimes. I am a farmer, a psychologist, a farm wife, and a mum of three very vibrant beautiful boys. Today's episode follows along the theme which I've probably accidentally but intentionally found us in over the last few weeks of stress and how we can deal with it. And I dive into completing the stress cycle and some practical tips and strategies that we can do to complete and move our body through stress even when we can't get rid of the stress. I hope you enjoy it. So, following on from the stress theme that I seem to have accidentally found myself focusing on the last couple of weeks, probably because it's uh pretty forward in my mind, and I know is pretty relevant for most farmers at the moment. I wanted to spend some time today exploring an idea around the stress cycle and what we can do to complete the stress cycle when we can't get rid of the stress. And it comes from the work of two sisters, Amelia and Emily Nagoski, and they've got a great book called Burnout, which I highly recommend. And they through their research came on this idea that yes, the stresses that we face are often inevitable, but what we can do is give our body the message that we've completed stress. And if you remember in the last episode, we spoke about the difference between chronic and acute stress, and that our brains and our bodies are pretty good at managing acute stress, such as getting away from a dangerous tiger while we are gathering food for our family, or managing the threat of a snake in the paddock when we're trying to walk through the paddock. What we're not so good at managing is that chronic ongoing stress, or even the everyday little stresses that happen now in our modern world compared to our caveman world, that we're not giving our body the messages that the stress cycle has completed. And so, in looking at this situation, we look at that, yes, stress is a natural and normal part of everyday life. It's actually a physiological, biological response that happens in our body to perceived threats or challenges. But in cases of prolonged stress or chronic stress, what's happened is we're getting that perception of threat time and time again without ever getting to tell our bodies that hey, we're safe. And so what Amelia and Emily Nagoski discuss in their book Burnout is this idea of the stress cycle, which is our body's natural process to deal with stress. And they describe it like a cycle, but also this idea of the stress tunnel that you head into the tunnel and you have to get through to the other side to get your body through stress, to be able to complete that stress within your body, to avoid or manage and get rid of burnout and chronic stress. If we don't get through to the other side of the tunnel, we continue to be stuck in the middle of the tunnel where our body continues to experience all of those physiological symptoms of stress. So, whether it's increased heart rate, rapid breathing, our digestive system not working so well, lots of those physical reactions to stress. And so there are seven steps that we can take to complete the stress cycle, and it's not that you have to go through each of these, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, but rather choosing the ones that work for you and maybe making a really conscious, intentional choice to put them into practice. And it might be a little bit of trial and error, practice, experimentation to see which ones work best. Again, things might work best better for you in different situations. Sometimes some of these we may do accidentally as well or just naturally. The example that Amelia and Emily talk about in their book is again thinking about in evolutionary perspective. If you are out gathering food for your family and suddenly come across a lion, what do you do? You either fight it or you run away from it. Or in the total extreme, you may go into freeze and go into collapse mode. But after you have either fought the lion and got away, or run away from it, or survived it, what happens next? You either sprint back to your village where you're then surrounded by your friends and your family, and you hug and you kiss and you cry and you laugh and you tell the story again and again and again, and sometimes the lion gets bigger than it was the first time. But you tell those stories and you may dance or you might sing and you connect, and so all of those factors all play into completing that stress cycle. So I'm going to go through each of these individually. So there's physical activity, breathing, positive social interaction, laughter, affection, crying, and creative expression. So physical activity. We all know this exercise is one of the best things that we can do to look after ourselves, improve our well-being, and improve our physical and mental health. One of the best ways is finding that physical activity to complete the stress cycle. When we are physically active, when we go for a quick burst, a quick run, or dance, go for a walk, the more high intensity, I guess, the more benefit we get. But it helps us to metabolize and actually almost like our body to eat up the stress hormones that get released, like adrenaline and cortisol. So it brings our body back down to a state of calm. So what might this look like? Well, luckily for us, when we are working on the farm, there are lots of little ways that this happens both incidentally and on purpose. So this morning I was trying to get to the airport. I'm actually recording this from Canberra to run a workshop, and before I went, I thought I better check the feed lot, clean out the trough, and check the feeders, and the feeders were all getting pretty empty, and neither my husband nor I were going to be home for two days. So I thought, right, I better give them two bales of hay rather than just leaving it as is. So instead of just kind of walking, one, I was under time pressure, but two, I went, hey, let's just do this. So I ran from to the tractor and between the places that I need to go. So we've got those little things that we can do when we're going about our day-to-day jobs to move us around the farm. So yeah, bringing that physical exercise into your farm work, but also finding ways of bringing structured intentional exercise possibly away from the farm. So something that I do try and do when it's not blowing a gale is just going for a walk, getting outside, chucking on a jacket in the morning and going for a walk. And I think again, we're pretty lucky on if we live on farm that you can go for a walk around your house, you can do a couple of laps around the house without having to get too far from home, you can do it in my jamies with a jacket over the top and my boots chucked on. I probably wouldn't be able to do that in the city. I might get some interesting looks. But just going for a walk. The trick with this idea of completing the stress cycle is trying to do whatever you're doing until you do get that sense of relief. So I guess this is important to consider is that if you are probably at a period of high stress, just going for a five-minute walk isn't necessarily going to cut it. You may need something of higher intensity. So that might be where you need to do the more like a hit workout, the high intensities, then pauses, or just chuck your favorite music on from if you used to go clubbing in the day, put that music on and dance hard. Make yourself hot and sweaty. Or on the flip side, it doesn't necessarily have to be really high intensity. You might more benefit from stretching and moving your body if you are in the tractor a lot, if you're sitting and doing a full day of office work, getting up, stretching, moving your body, um, just getting some of those ways to move, stretch, shift your muscles. So then the next thing we can do is breathing exercises. And I don't know, for a long time, just breathe has been something that people are told during times of stress, and it doesn't usually help in that very intense time. But there are practices that we can do, especially if we practice them when we're not stressed. Like if you practice your breathing exercises when you are calm, it can cue your body into that state. It kind of tells your body, hey, I'm safe right now. And again, I think about this. If you were being chased by a lion, chances are you wouldn't start doing slow, deep, controlled breathing. So doing that slow, deep, controlled and focused breathing helps us to reduce those physiological symptoms of stress and cue our nervous system to really put the brakes on. And so two practices that you can use for your breathing. First is just a simple box breathing exercise. So it's almost like you're imagining a box, a four, a four-sided box, are all boxes four-sided, anyhow. Um, and it's just four by four by four by four, where you're inhaling for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and hold it for four seconds. And you can do this as many times as you like. If you're just uh bringing this in as a practice, you might like to just try and remember it by fours and do it for four breaths, which will literally take what is it, 16 seconds, do that four times, about a minute. So it's not going to take a huge amount of time. So let's walk through doing a box breathing exercise. So you just simply breathe in, two, three, four, hold it, two, three, four, breathe out, two, three, four, hold it, two, three, four. And when you first start doing this, it may feel uncomfortable, particularly on those times when you're holding it, which is why it's really important to practice this when things are already calm, not just to try it when you're already stressed out. The other reason why it's important to practice breathing and relaxation type exercises when you're calm already, is because our brain works by association. So if you only ever practice something when you're feeling stressed, what's your brain going to link with doing that practice? Like if you only practice doing this breathing exercise, when you're feeling stressed, what's your brain going to link it with? It's going to link it with feeling stressed. So if we practice it when we're calm, then our brain starts to link it with feeling calm, which then plays into how it can be beneficial if we do it when we're feeling stressed as well. The other breathing practice that we can simply do is just diaphragm breathing, where instead of breathing in your chest and your chest rising and falling more than your belly, we want to breathe in through your diaphragm and your abdomen. So your diaphragm kind of sits straight in that area, straight below your rib cage and above your belly button. So if you place one hand on your chest and the other hand on like your upper belly between your lower rib cage and your belly button, just take a couple of normal breaths and notice which naturally moves more. So if you just take a few normal breaths, notice if your chest is moving in and out more, or if your diaphragm and your belly is moving in and out more. So as you do this, you just want to take a few breaths, really breathing down into your belly so that that lower hand moves out. You can do this with kids and lie down on the ground and put a soft teddy something on their belly to train that belly breathing, breathing in and out. You can do that for yourself. Put a book or something so you can really start to see your belly breathing in and out rather than your chest breathing in and out. Okay, so then next we have positive social interactions. So connecting, having that positive face-to-face, preferably at times, connecting in with other people. When we connect, when we have this positive interaction, it releases oxytocin, which is like it's the love drug. It's what gets released in oodles straight after we have a baby, it gets released during breastfeeding. It does get released for men too. I'm not saying this is a female-only hormone, but it's the love drug, it gets released when you are having hugs, physical time interaction, but also just connecting and having that connection. So, what I would suggest with this is really finding ways, and look, I'm not actually sure of the research around this. I should look into this because I think it would be really interesting. I don't think we get the same benefit of positive interaction on social media or messaging, even, than we would off a phone call if we can't have a face-to-face chat with someone. And I think for all of us now, we're very much drawn to the tendency of just send someone a message or at the simplest level when we're feeling that draw for connection, we go on Instagram or we go on Facebook and we do that scroll, we'll try and tell ourselves that we've got that connection, but we're not getting that same release of oxytocin. So I think being conscious and intentional of what you're doing to get that social interaction. So whether it is when you're feeling that pull to go on social media at night, actually picking up the phone instead and giving someone a phone call. Or saying yes if a friend says, Hey, can we have a coffee this morning? So often we say no, too busy, too busy. Just see what happens if you say yes. I think between couples and partners during long and stressful times on the farm, it can get harder to get that connection because you might not be getting that time at home. So then it becomes even more important to have a check-in, ring each other, send a message, just find those ways of really getting that interaction in, and it's got a double benefit because you're going to be helping the other person you're connecting with as well. So then the next step that we can do, and it probably comes through positive social interaction as well, is laughter and not just that little giggle, real deep belly laughter. You know, I don't know about you, but when you were 13 and went to friend sleepovers or had friends over, and seriously, we would just lie with our backs on the ground, sometimes our feet up the wall, whatever we're doing, and just talking and laughing and laughing and talking and talking and laughing, not even knowing really what we were talking about. But that's the kind of laughter that we lose sometimes as adults. So finding ways to get that laughter back in. So it might be through having a great chat with a friend, but also you might, I don't know, listen to a funny podcast rather than the deep and meaningful ones you usually listen to. Watch a comedy, chat to your kids about the funniest things that you've seen or they've seen that day. And I think some of this comes back to really noticing and being present in what's happening. If we're in the moment, I can't even remember what it was now, but I was driving with my kids the other day. Well, usually every morning or every afternoon on the school drop-off, the funny thing that has my boys in hysterics or in groans, winding the windows down is someone farting. But there was just something, and we all saw it, and it was a little bit ridiculous, and we just laughed, and it was just beautiful. And I think when we're caught up in our heads, that's what we miss sometimes. So catching those funny moments. Okay, so then we have physical affection, and again, this is where our oxytocin, our love drug, comes in, and it's not just a quick pat on the back or a little hand hold with your partner or your kids, it's really again that intentional. I think with a hug, it's like a 20-second, that really deep hug where you're almost holding each other up, having a really intimate kiss like you probably did when you were dating, and you might not do now that you've been married for 15 years. If you don't have a partner, that's where our pets and animals can really bring in that affection, cuddling and patting your animals, your dogs, your horses, your cats, whatever you've got. And even just the little things with your kids, if they're still little enough to let you hold their hands while you're walking down the road. So finding just those simple acts, simple ways of bringing in affection. And something with this affection is that we can do it when we can't talk our way through the stress. So there are times for my husband and I where we're both tired, we're stressed, we're exhausted, we're grumpy at each other, but really we're more just grumpy at the situation of being tired and exhausted. And we just have that hug, and you just stand there and you hold each other up and you have that hug and you get that release because you've moved your body through the stress cycle. Okay, so then what we've got on the stress cycle is crying, and it is an absolutely natural human way to release that emotional stress to just like wash it away and complete that cycle. So obviously, allow yourself to cry. It is completely okay to cry, it's okay to cry in front of other people, it's okay to cry in front of your kids, whatever it might be. But also, you don't need to force yourself to cry just because you're feeling uncomfortable, and if it doesn't feel right, it's not going to happen. So allow yourself to create a safe space to cry. So it might be to get some space in your room, a quiet, private place, and just to really let it go. You might watch a sad movie or listen to some sad music to cue that release and cue that crying. And the only thing I guess I'd say with if you're cueing it with music is then just be mindful of it. You don't need that to last for hours. Let yourself have that cry, let yourself move through that cycle and let yourself keep moving as well. And now, one of the parts that I think we often don't do is creative expression. And when we engage in creative activities, it helps us to process and make sense of our feelings and emotions and make sense of those stories, and it helps us to again complete that stress cycle. So, like I was saying, with the idea of you run back from the lion attack and you get back to camp or to your village and have the fire and you tell the stories about what happened. So when When we tell stories, it helps us make sense. So that might be through traditional creative means of journaling, drawing, painting, colouring in music, listening to music that really resonates you, or playing music if that's something that you've done. We can think creatively about creativeness. And sometimes I think of things like just going out into the workshop and pottering or building, or the creativity that we need in fixing stuff as well. It's maybe not a full scientific creative thing, but I think sometimes that is where we can bring creativeness in. Even cooking, be creative in finding creativeness. So I think in these seven ways of creative expression, affection, laughter, crying, positive social interaction, breathing, and physical activity or exercise, are some really practical ways and steps that we can take to complete that stress cycle, even when we can't get rid of the stresses we face. And you might reflect on your week or your days and go, oh, hang on, when I did this was a way of completing a stress cycle, or hey, maybe this was an opportunity. And just with kind of curiosity and kindness, having a look at what you're doing already, giving yourself a pat on the back for the things that are working well, but then start to look at okay, what are some small steps? What are the smallest, most doable things that I can do to start to build them into my routine? Recognizing that it's not necessarily going to be doable to go for a one-hour run. Fine, start really small. Instead of needing to have all the exercise gear and everything ready, chuck your farm boots on, chuck a jacket over your jammies, and do a five-minute walk around the house. That probably is doable. Factor it into your day, write down a reminder, put it on a post-it note, put it on your phone, put it into your calendar, talk to your kids or your partner about what you're trying to do. And so you might then be able to incorporate some of this into your family routine as well, or even talking about it with your work colleagues. You might not have a 20-second hug with them, but maybe you could share funny stories over smoker. That is a wrap-up on some ideas of completing the stress cycle. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Farm Life Psych with me, Steph Schmidt. I really hope you have enjoyed it and found it beneficial. If you have, I would love it if you could do three things for me. One, share it with a friend or family member who might also benefit from it. Two, make sure that you subscribe and leave me a five-star review which helps to spread the word. And finally, share it on social media as the more people who can hear about this podcast, the more of us that can really learn the skills needed to survive and get through our time as well as the everyday times on the farm. Thank you again for listening and don't forget, you can also send me your own art of death question that I will cover on the podcast. Alright, until next time, take care of you.