What if we could actively manage the effect stress has on us?
Stress is not all bad. Working towards something that matters to us is part of what makes life meaningful. But too much, for too long, wears our body down.
Staying regulated under stress is not a personality trait. It is a skill, and most of us were never taught it.
When stress spikes we tend to do one of two things. We flood: racing thoughts, tight jaw, acting on impulse. Or we shut down and go numb. They look like opposites. Both are dysregulation.
Where I found it
I discovered this skill a few years ago, on a treadmill. Once a week I would set a good pace and run for 90 minutes, watching my heart rate. My aim was to hold the pace at the lowest heart rate possible.
When I noticed tension in my body, I released it. When I noticed difficult feelings, fear, irritation, hurt, sadness, I soothed and comforted them. All the while holding the pace: achieving the goal and minimising the stress on my body.
I call it self-regulation under stress. It is fourth in the order I build these skills in: after recovering from stress, reading what our body is telling us, and managing our energy.
The aim is not to get rid of stress. It is to put some space between the trigger and what we do next.
The practice
The short version takes 2 minutes a day to train (and no running!). It starts in our body.
- Arrive. Let your shoulders drop by five per cent. Breathe in gently, and exhale longer than you inhale.
- Notice. Name one stress signal in simple words: “tight chest”, “buzzing jaw”, “shallow breath”.
- Ask. Ask your stress signal softly: “What are you trying to protect me from?”
- Need. Translate the answer you hear into a need: a slower pace, a boundary, reassurance.
- Choose. Choose one tiny action: a longer exhale, a pause before replying, stepping outside for a minute.
- Check. Notice what shifts, even by five per cent. That’s success.
Arrive. Notice. Ask. Need. Choose. Check.
We repeat it daily until our body does this for us, without us having to remember.
The full version has eleven steps and takes about 8 minutes a day. Still no running.
How strong is the research evidence?
No study has tested this practice as a complete cycle. PsycheVita is evidence-informed and not yet evidence-based: each step borrows from research on something related, and the combination is my clinical judgement. A related idea has been tested. Here it is, with its limits.
Treating stress as a signal, not a fault
Steps 3 and 4 ask us to treat stress as information: something our body is doing for us, not a sign that something is wrong with us.
In one laboratory experiment, 50 young adults were randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group was taught beforehand that the body’s arousal under stress is not harmful, that it evolved to help us meet a challenge, and that it aids performance. The other groups were told to look away from the source of stress, or were told nothing (Jamieson, Nock and Mendes, 2012).
Everyone then gave a five-minute speech, followed by five minutes of mental arithmetic, in front of two evaluators who frowned and crossed their arms throughout.
The group taught to see their arousal as useful showed a more efficient cardiovascular response: their hearts pumped more blood and their blood vessels offered less resistance. Afterwards they were also less distracted by threatening words in an attention test than the group told to look away.
They did not report feeling less stressed, and their mood was no different from the other groups. Their bodies handled the same stress better.
The limits: this is one small study of young adults in a laboratory, measuring what happened in the minutes around a single stressful task. It tested a short lesson about arousal, not the six steps above. It is not the whole skill.
But it is the same idea. We do not have to remove the stress to change what it does to us.
Practise it
The full practice is in 1.1 Self-Regulation Under Stress on PsycheVita. There are follow-along videos to practise with, and written guides if you prefer to work through it by journaling or with a support person.
To see where this skill sits in the order I would build them, start with VitaPath.
Which do you do under pressure: flood, or go quiet?
A note on scope
This is a developmental practice, not therapy or medical treatment. If stress or anger feels unmanageable, or is affecting your health, your work or your relationships, that is a reason to see your GP.
Reference
- Jamieson, J. P., Nock, M. K. and Mendes, W. B. (2012). Mind over matter: reappraising arousal improves cardiovascular and cognitive responses to stress. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 417 to 422. doi.org/10.1037/a0025719