If you have landed here on this page, I am going to assume that your stress levels are most likely out of balance.
Do you feel stressed?
Do you feel like you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole with all the things that stress you out – once you have dealt with one thing, something else pops up?
Do you feel like you’re constantly on auto-pilot or living in survival mode?
Do you feel overwhelmed any time you go to lower your stress levels?
Are you stressed to the point of feeling burnt out or unwell?
*SPOILER ALERT* Stress is not actually the problem or issue here. The problem is that we have not been given the adequate inner resources to manage stress effectively by allowing time for Stress Resolution and Stress Recovery. Nobody has and it isn’t anybodies fault. Now that we are figuring this out, it’s time to take action!
The first step to Stress Recovery is acknowledging to yourself that your stress levels are out of balance. Next step is that you’re not sure how to manage this imbalance and that is totally ok, I have yet to meet anyone who has been actively taught from a young age how to manage, let alone actually recover from stress. I’ve only learned how to do it myself in the last couple of years and if I can recover from a whole life riddled in chronic stress, anyone can! The next step in Stress Recovery is to build your self-awareness around what is causing your stress imbalance and then to build up a structure of inner resources that will help you to actively and effectively manage your stress levels, take you out of survival mode and help you to thrive.
By nature of being a human on this earth it is stressful. We don’t have to look far to find a real or perceived threat to our safety.
People often ask me “Why is there so much stress nowadays compared to 20 years ago?” and there are so many answers to that question. We have far more stressors than we did back then. We now live in a globalised society as opposed to a localised one. 20 years ago we saw global wars and natural disasters on the RTE news, radio and newspaper, and it felt far enough away from Ireland to still feel relatively safe. Mental and emotional health was yet to become an important and valued topic of discussion. Google and Bebo were the height of internet activity. The economic boom was in full swing. Life in general seemed to be more easygoing and simple.
Today we are absolutely bombarded with bad news and impending doom through the use of our smartphones and social media and it feels like all is happening on our doorsteps. Safety is gone out the window!
Mixed with our lack of safety is the notion that most other people we see or follow on social media, are living a much happier, richer and fulfilled life than we are, leading us to feel that nothing we do or achieve is enough.
Life is very dualistic and contradicting – huge mental health crisis, inflation, genocides, wars and pandemics, yet according to what you see on social media, your neighbours down the road are living their best lives – loved up family, secure jobs, big house, nice car and 2 or 3 holidays a year!
The reason we cannot cope with an increasingly stressful life experience is because we are not given the skills or the time to reduce our stress, worries and anxieties.
We all know what survival mode is like, it doesn’t feel good, there are only brief glimpses of enjoyment (if any). Survival mode is chaotic and messy, there is no ease to it. It is like swimming against a current, you feel like you’re not getting very far and eventually you realise there has to be more to this life than just existing.
Reaching a point of thriving in life is not as complicated as you might think. Yes it does take effort and time but the end results are so worth it! Can you imagine what it would be like to feel safe, content and at ease most of the time? What would you be doing if you had much more energy and motivation to enjoy life? What would it be like to move with the natural flow of life instead of against it? Who would you be and what would life look like if you were thriving instead of just surviving?