The stress awareness mess
Is ignorance sometimes bliss?
Next week is Stress Awareness Week, which begs the question: how helpful is it to be quite so aware of our stress?
The week’s highlight is the 5th Global Online Stress & Wellbeing Summit next Wednesday, featuring sessions with stress experts, and the announcement of the inaugural Stress Management Awards.
But we have never had so much advice on how to manage stress, from breathwork and yoga to mindfulness and visualisation, and we are all still extremely stressed.
Dr Pooja Lakshmin (who has an excellent Substack) calls some of these strategies “faux self-care” because they’re often implemented without addressing the underlying causes of stress.
In a New York Times article from last year: “She describes a patient whose ostensible self-care practice was yoga, but practicing it wasn’t making her feel less stressed. Going to class became just another thing she needed to do and win at; she was obsessing over her progress on headstands and posting selfies in workout gear... seeking self-worth without doing the work to figure out what activity would add more meaning to her life.”
Look, as health concerns go, stress is clearly important. It can cause chronic inflammation, impacting your immunity and putting you at higher risk of many ailments. Most of us are aware of this connection since, when we’re stressed, we get mouth ulcers, cold sores or digestive issues. The long term health implications can be scary, too.
But I’m here to bring solutions, not problems, so first up I’m recommending the latest edition of The Liz Moody Podcast. I know some British readers have an aversion to perky American podcasts, but this episode with psychotherapist Dr Jenny Taitz is packed with so many tips for pulling you out of a stress loop, from the obvious (relax your face) to the TikTok-trending (dip your face in a bowl of iced water).
I also love Anna Maltby’s How to Move, which this week has shared a brilliant list of ideas for getting stress out of your body. Way more practical than simply: “Do some exercise.”
And I love that she headlined it “non-self-destructive ideas to deal with stress” because so many of the things that we do to manage our stress constitute indirect self-harm: drinking, smoking, binge-eating, under-eating, over-spending, doom-scrolling, etc.
One thing that I’ve found really helpful if your stress response leads you to food 🙋♀️ is to have whatever it is that you want, but add something to make it a bit healthier. This works because depriving yourself can simply make you want it more.
Craving chocolate? Have it with nuts. A bag of crisps? Dip them in hummus. Desperate for Supernoodles? Add a ball of spinach from the freezer.
I also do this with my kids; adding veg to their favourite comfort foods, such as roasted butternut squash into their macaroni cheese. Or, as I did this week, adding pumpkin and cooking it in an actual pumpkin (the kids loved this so much, it’s potentially my best parenting moment).
Of course, some people will find roasting pumpkin to enrich their kids’ mac and cheese to be a soothing and nourishing endeavour. Others, who don’t love cooking, will find it actually pretty stressful in itself, because it’s just another thing that they could (or may even feel should) be doing.
This is where awareness becomes actually very important, because one person’s stress reset could be another’s stressy mess. It’s about finding what works for you.
A recent New Scientist article described “the brain’s master switch” (or locus coeruleus, if you insist on using proper words for things) as a gearbox. “When it’s in the right gear, we feel pleasantly engaged in the task at hand,” explained the article. “Often, however, it can get stuck in the wrong one, leading either to dreamy procrastination or frenzied frustration.”
That middle gear - pleasant engagement - is the holy grail. It’s often described as “flow”.
The article argues that awareness is vital. “The key is self awareness: noting when your brain is under- or overstimulated and adapting your behaviour appropriately.”
Perhaps the answer is “gentle awareness”, without obsessing or overthinking.
Even just writing the word “overthinking” has got my overthinking about how much I overthink, which is a whole other edition of Well Well Well. For now, I’ll recommend Dr Julia F. Christensen’s book, The Pathway to Flow, which has lots of ideas and strategies for reaching this state.
So I’m going to stop being snippy about Stress Awareness Week, which is clearly a needed and (hopefully) helpful initiative.
Meanwhile, see what sources of stress you can delete from your life right now:
⚡️ Stressed out by the news? Switch off your notifications (trust me, you’ll hear about the key events when they happen).
⚡️ Work stress? Sit down with a cup of tea, make a list of what you need to do (ideally on paper, it clears your mind), and take the next necessary step - no multitasking!
⚡️ Email overwhelm? Take Oliver Burkeman’s tip: replying to everything will only lead to more emails. Prioritise and delete.
⚡️ Are there Instagram accounts that stress you out when they pop up in your feed? Unfollow them.
And remember: comparison is a lie. After sharing the video of our roast pumpkin mac and cheese on Instagram, I got DMs from people saying it made them feel inadequate, and one who said she had ‘failed’ at Halloween because she hadn’t taken the kids to a pumpkin patch.
First, I’ve never been to a pumpkin patch in my life. Our pumpkin is from Sainsbury’s.
Second, I only cooked the whole pumpkin in that elaborate way because we had people coming over, who cancelled at the last minute, leaving us with a LOT of food to eat. I don’t regularly hollow out a massive pumpkin for a casual family meal, and nor should you, unless you truly have both the time and inclination - in which case, can I come over for dinner?
Anyway, if you love cooking (or going to a pumpkin patch) then do it and enjoy it. But also let’s normalise making very little effort as a joyful way to spend this time of year.
I love the Japanese trend of ‘Mundane Halloween’ whereby people dress up as ‘tourist looking for a bin’ or ‘person juggling their shopping rather than buy a plastic bag’.
It makes life a lot less stressful.
This week I’m…
Recovering from the lurgy that’s been going around. Please send Netflix recommendations that are warm, funny and romantic, thank you.
Loving #awehunting on Instagram, from Self-Care for Winter author Suzy Reading…
I loved those photos of you having pumpkin yummies! People are very weird - sorry you got that strange comment. I have never taken my kids to a pumpkin patch (they are 17 and 19 … not too late, right? 🤭) and I certainly haven’t cooked anything for them made from a pumpkin. I made my husband do that of course. After I made him grow them in the garden. NOT EVEN LYING.
Hope you feel better soon.
That lurgy is a lingerer! My Netflix recommendation is Nobody Wants This, it’s romantic and funny and fab.