Stress Compounding

Posted on January 04, 2021 by Charlotte Stebbing-Mills, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Imagine waking up at the last minute…you grab a coffee…and head out to work only to be met with traffic making you late for work…

You arrive knowing you’ve missed a deadline and your boss is unhappy so you decide to work through lunch because you’re behind.

Problem is there is still work pending to you work late…. finally, you finish but you struggle though evening traffic to arrive home late.

Now your spouse upset because you missed dinner which leads to arguments and you eventually get to bed relieved the day is over.

Now imagine doing this day in day out 5 days a week, living for the weekend to try and relax.

But the problem is – being like this 70% of the week doesn’t outweigh the 30% respite you get on the weekends.

It’s too common and repeated over and over again, for months and even years.

This is what we call STRESS COMPOUNDING.

One thing after the other stacking up on top of each other causing us to be stressed long-term and live in a reactive state most of the time.

Of course, not everyone’s day is exactly like the one above.

But EVERYONE encounters daily stressors and if we don’t address them and it adds up over time.

Unless you learned to deal with stress and emotions well as a child (which most don’t) it’s highly likely you’ve been compounding stress since you were a baby.

Imagine for every time you felt stress or negative emotions in your life, you collected a small rock and put it in a backpack and you had to carry it around forever – adding to it every time the next stressor occurred.

The backpack would start getting REALLY heavy over time – this is what’s happening in stress compounding – we are carrying these metaphorical rocks of stress in our bodies.

More often than not, clients come to us when they have compounded so much stress that its causing them a problem.

For example, feeling so overwhelmed with life they lose ability to enjoy it, leaving them feeling anxious, depressed or even in physical pain because of it.

They’ve compounded so much stress they feel paralyzed and don’t know what to do. It’s affecting their relationships with loved ones and stopping them from achieving their goals.

This has happened to me too – almost all humans go through this.

I used to live my life like the story at the beginning. Plus I would add even more stress to my system by drinking countless energy drinks all day. I would try to let off steam in the gym by working out crazy hard but that just made me more stressed and tired.

This lifestyle and relationship with stress was causing me to feel tense and frustrated all the time.

It was exhausting and i’d got to the point where I was feeling physical pain 24/7.

All these feelings led to insecurities and had me questioning if I was good enough to even be doing what I was at the time,

Imagine all those emotions, thoughts and states in one big melting pot, stirring them up together.

It was a recipe for disaster.

What was happening here is these individual thoughts and feeling are getting tangled up….

The anger turned to sarcasm and tiredness which worsened the effects of stress even more.

Before long I started to behave differently and start to attach meanings about ourselves and others as a result.

I didn’t like who I was becoming. I felt my identity shifting felt like I couldn’t stop it.

Until I got to his tipping point.

A tipping point for anyone isn’t sure is (in this context) is when you’ve just enough of something, tired of feeling a certain way and somethings HAS to change.

Most people have reached this point before or are on their way to it – basically we wait until we literally have NO OTHER CHOICE but to change.

I was questioning what I was doing, thinking there must be another way. “Surely things should not be this hard?!”

I started being honest with myself and realised this wasn’t who I wanted to be.

This is where my journey of self-discovery begun. I surrounded myself with people I wanted to be like, realigned my life and started to do the deeper work.

Before we talk about how to stop stress compounding its important to know what happens if we don’t.

See, we all have a capacity for stress but when it gets full these are some of the negative effects take place:

- Ability to deal with stress becomes hindered
- Stop thinking and acting resourcefully
- Behave in ways we wouldn’t otherwise choose
- Intelligent part of the brain switches off
- Its literally kills brain cells and reduces the size if the brain
- Chronic stress has a shrinking effect on the prefrontal cortex which is the area responsible for memory and learning
- It can lead to health issues like: headaches, high blood pressure, poor sex drive, fertility issues, tense muscles, insomnia to name a few.

American institute of Stress show that:

This doesn’t have to be you.

If you can relate to anything we’ve talked about in todays episodes there are 2 actions you need to take now:

Short-term action which will help you deal with stress on a daily basis and stop you compounding even more stress:

This is your daily go-to tool for stress-relief, like yoga, breathing, journaling etc

(You can check out The Wellness Theory Podcast for episodes we’ve done on this which are full of in depth examples: #42 Stress Busting, #44 How to deal with overwhelm, #46 Is stress really a choice.)

Long term action which will help you get rid of unnecessary stress for good.

And that is to let go of ALL past stress which has compounded until now.

Remember the backpack full of metaphorical rocks from earlier? This is where we get to let go of all this heaviness which we don’t need to carry around.

Because remember when we do, it all gets tangled up and worsens the effects of stress.

I specialise in doing this with my clients which is why I can guarantee lasting change and living a stress-free life when clients are done with our coaching.

I’ve used a combination of hybrid techniques to create a blueprint which makes this simple by breaking down how to do it in 4 phases…

We call it the 4 Phase Human Blueprint is where we guide clients through:

1. A Discovery phase where we uncover the root of their stress. So basically we identify the exact moment where they started compounding their stress.

2. A Reset phase where I help them to discharge this stress, let go of any patterns which aren’t serving them.

3. We then go through an Alignment phase where I ensure our clients are thinking, feeling and behaving in the way they want to.

4. And finally I ensure they have everything they need moving forward in the Future Proofing phase.

In order to let go of unnecessary stress for good you must do the deeper work and let go of the stress you’ve compounded until now.

O wish we could just reel off a step by step in how to do this but there are a few realities at play here:

Some people aren’t at the action taking stage – they’re just thinking about change (and not ready to do anything about it)

It’s a unique journey, it’s not a generic process you can just copy and paste.

For safe and effective results, it should be practiced with a qualified coach live.

If you are ready to eliminate stress once and for all then reach out to us so we can help you.

Before I go, I want to share with you the most common mistakes people make when it comes to stress:

1. Turning to Alcohol – problems are still there and may actually get worse

2. Working to Exhaustion – Being a work martyr actually compounds even more stress

3. Working Out to Exhaustion – Letting off steam through exercise can be good but not to such a high intensity. Research shows it takes twice as long for stressed people to recover from exercises versus non-stressed people.

4. Relying on Caffeine – Increases cortisol and adds more to your system that’s already struggling. It’s like adding more fuel to the fire.

5. Losing Sleep – Lack of sleep boosts stress hormones, makes you hungrier and prevents recovery.

If you’re at your tipping point and ready for long-term real change then click on this link and book a call with us so you can remove all of the compounding you’ve already stored up.

So you can start living a life free from stress, and full of all the good stuff I’m sure you’d like instead.

As always, any questions, thought or feedback you have for us – I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Much love and wellness,

Charlotte