Do you feel that your life is sometimes in chaos, and even though you try hard, finding calm is difficult? Many of my clients enter the room feeling stressed or even traumatised. Parenting Stress places a significant strain on families; Stress can damage relationships, save patience, and substantially impact our health. We all need a bit of calm in our lives, so read on, understand the stress response and my five top five hacks to manage it.
What is a Stress Response?:
It’s normal to respond to something in the environment, a job interview or a deadline. So our bodies will try to regulate this response. This is the Flight or Fight Response; the amygdala is triggered (a mindless reaction and reflexive, not reflective); this then triggers the hypothalamus, which is a bit like our command centre for the rest of the body and sends signals via the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system has two components, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system functions like a gas pedal in a car. It triggers the fight-or-flight response, giving the body energy to respond to perceived dangers. The parasympathetic nervous system acts like a brake. It promotes the “rest and digest” response that calms the body down after the threat has passed.
What Happens in our bodies:
Our hypothalamus is triggered and starts a series of reactions on the HPA axis. This means it involves our hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands. Sometimes we have so much stress (toxic stress) that this system can’t break our responses.
What happens if we are chronically stressed?
Research suggests that chronic stress contributes to high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits, and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression, and addiction. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more) or indirectly (decreasing sleep and exercise).
What can you do? My top five Hacks:
#Sleep
Most parents feel that this is something that can be put on the back burner. Sorry to say, folks, that adults need 7.5 hours of sleep, and you need to go into a deep sleep to enable recovery, memory processing and more.
Lack of sleep = no recovery, so everything else in your life will continue to be unbalanced.
So don’t be one of those parents who feel guilty about helping you or your child sleep. Sleep training is not selfish. You can prevent feeling in a bad mood, and as lack of sleep makes sure absence or zero patience, you will have better and more secure attachments. So seek help, book a Consultation or Sleep Workshop Ask your work for someone to give a talk.
# Move and Exercise
Deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange — the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, it can slow the heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure. Search shows that exercise can prevent and help outcomes in anxiety and depression.
Click on the link from the latest research from Kings College https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/news/records/2018/april/Engaging-in-physical-activity-decreases-people%27s-chance-of-developing-depression.aspx#.Wuq04E5RqS9.facebook I am a person who sits all day, and so it’s essential to keep moving throughout the day not just do intensive exercise at night.
# Retrain your Limbic System ( your feelings and emotions)
When we are stressed, eventually, we feel and have thoughts. The more worried we are, generally, the increase in negativity we think. We often ruminate on the past and future, so our nervous system is constantly switched on. If we can remain in the here and now and be present, this will help our system to put the brakes on and calm down. Practices incorporating deep breathing encourage full oxygen exchange — the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Not surprisingly, it can slow the heartbeat and lower or stabilize blood pressure. Try these, and this is just a slow progressive relaxation exercise:
- Yoga
- Mindfulness
- Gratitude
- Practise Meditation
# Give yourself a boost of Oxytocin.
This is the counterbalance chemical to cortisol and is our love/ social connection, and the hypothalamus regulates the. Click on my video for ideas to give yourself a boost!!
# Seek Help
Sometimes we can’t manage to do it all, and sometimes, our negative thoughts start to grow and expand, and we can stop them from intruding and creating stress. Get help from friends, and go to your GP or child’s school. Book a Consultation with me if you want to think about how to balance work and your family. With Love Catherine
Could I ask you to like my page on Facebook and share your ideas? I happily spend a lot of hours doing blogs and free resources. Thank you so much, and much gratitude. In the Autumn, I will be offering creative stress-buster workshops; if you want to be put on an email list (never permanent), contact me.
