I think it’s important to say that what causes a stress response of any kind and grieving as a result of a stress response is our inability to adapt to a change of expectation that may show up in our daily life. We are creatures of habit and our brains are always searching for certainty and because of that we naturally begin to build expectations about how things are going to be and play out in our life.
The fact of the matter is, expectations sometimes are accurate, and sometimes they’re inaccurate. How many times have you heard yourself or someone else say…..”well I didn’t see that coming, or “it hit me like a bus and just came out of nowhere!”
Generally speaking, all change is a change of expectation, and in the end changes of expectation are the ultimate stressors.
Stress needs to be understood as not something the world does to you, but a reaction that you have when a change of expectation occurs.
Our adaptation ability is basically, when we are presented with a change of expectation, we may, at that moment, have sufficient adaptation ability to meet that demand easily and interactively and in the end feel some level of satisfaction or the demand is either too great and our adaptation ability is too low at that moment that we’re not able to interact with the change, so we end up reacting to it.
Life happens and more often than not changes of expectations are not things over which we have control in that moment, so it’s not like we can say “you know what, I’m going to respond adaptively not reactively to this” it’s more about whether we are in a place in time where we feel calm and peaceful enough to feel and see the change and be able to quickly adjust our expectations without losing our heads.
The world we live in right now has fundamentally changed post-COVID-19. The biggest change in expectations that we have seen in our lifetime for most Western Countries. The flow-on effect from that is that we are facing stress reactions one after another, as we continue to have a greater and greater change in our life. So, our body over a period of time starts to become a storehouse of stress triggers meaning we are basically becoming a bag full of reactivity ready and waiting for the next thing to happen so we can react stressfully to defend ourselves from something that we think we need to fight or to flee from, meaning that we are basically, almost continuously having mild stress reactions all day long.
What we need to do is learn how to increase our adaptation abilities, so that we can start to react less and respond more to the challenges life throws at us and whilst pressures of modern life will keep coming at us, even if we can take one layer of the stress reaction away at a time, it means rather than us carrying an overflowing bag of stress reactions, maybe it’s just almost full instead, meaning that if something does change and not meet our expectations, rather than scream or yell or fall apart, we can simply see what it is, think about it more calmly and make a better quality decision that reduces the stress impact not just immediately, but also for the long term.
For me, one of my favourite ways to ‘hack my stress‘ at those times when I feel on edge and about to lose it, is a good old SCREAM. I jump in the car with music on full and scream until I just can’t scream anymore. According to ancient Chinese wisdom, letting out a loud yell is good for your health!! So if a good loud yell can increase your chances of having better adaptation ability, then my suggestion is START SCREAMING.