Behavioral Science - How to Stop Dwelling on Your Stress - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN

 Behavioral Science - 

How to Stop Dwelling on Your Stress - Sun and Planets Spirituality AYINRIN

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Summary.   

People are feeling more stressed than ever, and it’s affecting our well-being. Many of us dwell on stressful situations, which only serves to compound the uncomfortable feelings that stress brings. The good news is that you can exit the headspace of stress. By improving your ability to stay present, you can set aside stressful issues that you can’t immediately solve, whether that’s a nagging problem at work or a personal conflict. This article covers four behavioral-science-backed techniques to help you take a break from stress.

In a time when more than 76% of Americans report that stress is affecting their wellbeing, wouldn’t it be nice if we could learn to put our stressors aside from time to time, at least temporarily? I’m not talking about meditating or simply calming down, the latter of which isn’t even possible sometimes, given the world we live in now. I’m talking about changing our thinking and breaking the stress cycle, which is possible.

As a clinical psychologist who specializes in mindfulness-based behavioral therapies, I’ve found that many of my clients engage in what stress researchers call perseverative cognition, which is a fancy phrase for overthinking, ruminating, and worrying. And while it’s easy to imagine that this kind of thinking can better prepare us to handle stress, science suggests that it actually turns acute stress (the way we respond to a single, discrete event or situation) into prolonged stress, since we’re taking something fleeting and prolonging it unnecessarily.

When people are asked to think about something that incensed them, even if it occurred decades ago, the body re-experiences the full impact of the event, which spikes blood pressure in real time, according to research done at Penn State University. Another way we keep stressors top of mind is when we endlessly vent our frustrations. Since perseverative cognition recreates all the tension that went along with past woes, it’s no wonder the habit links distressing events with the tolls of chronic stress.

The good news is that improving your ability to stay present can allow you to set aside stressful issues that you can’t immediately solve, whether it’s a nagging problem at work or a personal conflict. “You can have chronic stressors that don’t have a lifelong impact, and you can have acute stressors that do have a lifelong impact,” explains psychologist George Slavich, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, who leads the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research.

To inspire my clients to address an overthinking habit, I often share a story I heard from Sharon Salzberg, a New York Times bestselling author and meditation teacher. A man who was trekking in Nepal had a blister on his foot. As he hiked, instead of taking in his surroundings, he anticipated the blister before he took a step, experienced the twinge as he placed his foot on the ground, and then replayed the pain between steps, making the experience exponentially more unpleasant. In our own lives, we similarly can experience our stressors once or many times, instead of focusing on the peace of the current moment. To begin to work on overthinking, and to learn to take more frequent breaks from stress, I recommend the following four strategies:

4 Strategies to Help You Take a Break from Stress

1. Anchor yourself.

The next time your thinking is spinning you in the wrong direction, take a moment to feel the weight of your feet on the floor, then consider: What am I thinking? What am I feeling in my body right now? What am I doing right now? Then, ask yourself: Are my thoughts helping me at this moment?

For example, if you’re running through tomorrow’s agenda and the crazy day ahead as you get ready for bed, anchoring can help you catch what you’re doing so that you don’t work yourself up into an insomnia-inducing headspace. After all, missing sleep will make it that much tougher to perform in the morning. This anchoring technique, taught in a research-based program known as the Unified Protocol, developed by Dr. David Barlow, a professor emeritus at Boston University, and his colleagues, treats conditions that can be fueled by overthinking, including depression and anxiety. Of course, anchoring takes effort and willingness, but it’s a nice way to bring awareness to where you are, and it’s so quick, you can do it multiple times a day.

2. Take your thoughts less seriously.

At a conference I attended years ago, a leading academic whom I respected approached me and asked me if I would be giving any talks. Without any hesitation, I quickly said, “Public speaking has never been my forté.” To which he replied, “Did you thank your mind for that thought?” His answer made me smile and it’s also a good example of this next technique.

Too often, most of what we think about ourselves isn’t helpful or empowering. So rather than allowing those thoughts to feel like dictators in our lives, we can use cognitive defusion — taking thoughts less literally — to consciously create some distance and perspective from those thoughts, while taking them less seriously.

Because, after all, what are thoughts? They’re merely patterns of ideas, not hard-and-fast truths. When I shared this story with a client, he brilliantly decided to sing, “What are thoughts? Thoughts can’t hurt me… can’t hurt me no more…” to the tune of the Haddaway song “What Is Love?” It’s hard to get stuck ruminating if you treat your thoughts less like cement and more like Play-Doh.

3. Sit with uncertainty.

One of the reasons why it can feel compelling to ruminate is the illusion that by running through all the disastrous possibilities in life, you’ll be able to anticipate and avoid them, and ultimately be less stressed. But ironically, not being able to tolerate uncertainty actually predicts struggling with anxiety and other psychological problems.

As an alternative, I love the skill of wholeheartedly accepting whatever is right now, including the unknown. To try this, notice if you’re thinking along the lines of “I need to know!” or “The worst is going to happen.” If you are, try turning to the present moment with openness and curiosity, and stop running through endless permutations as you relax your jaw, face, and hands — physical actions that make it a little easier to foster openness.

It’s futile to use so much of our free time playing draining guessing games. “There are an infinite number of bad things that could possibly happen (although most are unlikely), and there is just no way a person can anticipate them all,” according to Dr. Michel Dugas, a psychology professor at the University of Quebec.

Accepting uncertainty may mean sitting with some amount of fear, but the alternative is trying to micromanage reality, which simply isn’t possible. Accepting your emotions also makes it clear that unlike ruminating, which can keep us in its grip for hours, feelings are actually quite transient when we stay present in the moment.

4. Self-validate.

Unresolved issues with the people we come across daily can easily fuel overthinking. Maybe a customer says something offensive to you, or a prospective employer ghosts you after multiple rounds of interviews, and you can’t confront them directly. You might be inclined to replay the event in your head — complete with your own angry responses — as a way to have the conversation you wish you could have had. I do this myself, and so do many of my clients.

Replaying an unfair situation again and again can feel like a way of justifying our distress and having a say in the matter. The problem is, those in-your-head conversations that you’ll never actually have will just prolong your discomfort. Instead, try a strategy that’s often used in Dialectical Behavior Therapy known as self-validation, an approach developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, a professor emeritus at University of Washington, in which you legitimize your emotions and move past replaying the hurtful loop. For example, you might think something like: “This isn’t what I expected. Of course I feel angry and sad,” which can ease the pain a bit, rather than rehashing the injustice it of it all and keeping your distress at peak intensity.

Practice these four techniques and you’ll improve your psychological flexibility, a term coined by Dr. Steven Hayes, who developed acceptance and commitment therapy. Research has shown that having psychological flexibility is a key ingredient in being able to adapt to life and all its complexities. All it takes is allowing yourself to be aware of your thoughts and open to your emotions, as you persist in moving toward what you value.

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