What is stressful?

Stress and overwhelm in common experience

In my early 30s I worked at a busy, high-end restaurant. The work was fast-paced, intense, and physically demanding. I had never worked a food industry job like this before. I was thrown into it with little experience but with the desire to succeed and ability to move strongly and with coordination. 

Like any restaurant job, there were slow days. But then there were the rush times when we had to serve an entire restaurant of dinner guests between 5 and 7p so they could get to a show at the nearby auditorium by 7:30p.

In those situations you pump out the adrenaline, work on rote memory, your well-honed customer service skills and you get things done.

What a thrill!

How incredibly stressful!

Coming down from those evenings usually involved sitting around and drinking with co-workers for a few hours.

When I left that job, I had stress dreams for years afterward.

A table had been sat with guests I didn’t know about until half an hour later.

I lost my ticket book.

I couldn’t remember the specials.

I was working without pants, just my server apron and my naked butt hanging out the back. 

Twenty years later in a conversation about the restaurant industry, someone stated how it is unrelenting stress, it doesn’t let up, it’s hard.

And a light went off in my trauma-informed head!

All those stress dreams, that lasted for nearly twice as long as my tenure at the restaurant, were my body processing the intensity of that work.

Which made me wonder about post-school stress dreams. Those were also most likely my body processing the unacknowledged stress of high school and college.

If those relatively non-life-threatening experiences led to these intense processing dreams, how much more intense is it for emergency services providers—EMTs, doctors, nurses, first-responders?

In our culture we absolutely recognize the stress that occurs for people consistently working in arenas that put them in close proximity to extreme injury and death. There are programs geared to provide support for them. They are studied extensively for their responses, levels of trauma, and modes and practices that support integration.

What I’m bringing together here is that we are all processing levels of experience and information that challenge our body/minds. And that even if it’s a regular work-day at a high-end restaurant, your body is pumping out a lot of stress hormones and that affects all of you…your mind, body, being.

We need to acknowledge that life, work, and news are stressful. 

We need to respond to the signs of excessive anything—be that zoning out, drinking or other distractors—that are keeping us from processing and integrating these stressors. 

We need regular practices that acknowledge and support this truth of daily life.

So what can we do? 

Here are three ideas for how to integrate stress on a daily basis:

1. Expressive writing. Expressive writing is the process of writing for a short, defined amount of time each day about your experiences, deep feelings, and thoughts. The amount of time can be 10 minutes, 5 minutes, or whatever length of time works for you. James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth have years of research to back up the utility of expressive writing in improving health outcomes and relieving stress symptoms.

• How to write expressively from James Pennebaker: This short video explains the basic process of expressive writing. You can adapt it from there.

2. Mindful body movement. This can be yoga, tai chi, or pandiculation, for example. Any slow, attentive movement of the body provides the invitation to get your mind to move at the speed of your body. Mind in time with the body creates all kinds of healthful responses. Be here, now. It really is helpful. 

• Standing Somatics Pandiculation Sequence from Eric Cooper: Learn a basic pandiculation practice to release out of the stress body stance.

3. Meditation. If silence and stillness appeal to you most, mindfulness meditation is another practice that brings in body/mind harmony. 

• Mindfulness meditation from The Honest Guys: This is a gentle, guided practice using cues of sensation and presence, my favorites.

Each of these practices initiates the connection of our body with our mind.  It’s that harmony that helps end the cycle of activation from daily life stressors. These are proven ways to integrate and process life, whether our stressors are minimally overwhelming or deeply traumatic.

Invitation

If your personal practices aren’t cutting it right now…
If you find yourself far from that sense of centered…
If you’re feeling untethered…

It’s possible that you need the support of another human. 

Co-regulatory somatic support for integration is my contribution to this community.

My practice provides a container of relative safety that guides your body/mind back to its inherent regulation. 

This means you have:

• more capacity for daily stressors
• expanded ability to move out of held trauma responses
• more flow in the systems of  your body

When you have these, your body has the ability to rest, respond and regenerate. 

Click below to schedule an appointment or a free consult to learn more about how somatic support eases stress responses.