One afternoon about 50,000 years ago, two human clans noticed an unfamiliar creature approaching. One clan watched the sun glinting off its teeth, the other seized their young and ran. Guess which clan we are descendants of.
Stress is an evolutionary advantage so finely tuned that uncertainty and imagined danger ignites it. While this heightened awareness might be a superb adaptation to ensure our species’ survival, today an email sets off the same stress reaction as a predator once might have. We are born Stone Age babies, but now live in a complex environment of endless pop-corning triggers, and a crucial consequence is that we are losing our ability to find the off-switch at huge cost to our physical, mental and emotional health. So what can we do about it?
As a leadership coach, I work with people who thrive on stress, but who can too often ignore the warning signs that it’s reaching toxic levels. We build self-leadership through a three-step process: awareness of your inner state, acceptance of yourself with compassion, and then conscious choice to respond rather than react.
Awareness
Even on a day without drama, we are reacting to countless small stressors: notifications, interruptions, deadlines, people wanting attention, or wanting something ourselves. Internal thoughts also run like triggering ticker tape. We can’t sleep for thinking about our work, our relationships, or the meaning of life itself.
All forms of stress are short-term survival strategies controlled by our autonomic nervous system. Ever stepped out onto a road and leapt back in an instant when a cyclist sped by? Your autonomic nervous system saved your life. Once triggered by external or internal stimuli, stress patterns become habitual. Most people have heard of fight or flight, but there are more. Which of these (there may be more than one) can you recognise in yourself?
Fight: confrontation, sometimes aggression.
Flight: escape, avoidance, and withdrawal of emotional connection, such as looking at your phone, cracking a joke, or changing the subject.
Freeze: locked-in, overwhelmed, and a rabbit-in-the-headlights sensation.
Fold: collapse, giving up, victimhood, and sense of absence of agency, with thoughts such as, ‘This always happens to me’.
Friend or fawn: often a secondary stress reaction. Trying to avoid confrontation by downplaying any boundary crossing by appeasing and people-pleasing. This is a reactive stress pattern, not to be confused with the healthier practice of keeping an emotional connection while also maintaining boundaries, even in conflict.
Like a good poker player can read the giveaway signs of stress or “tells” of another player, get familiar with your own tells – that adrenaline rush to the gut, a clenched jaw, negative thoughts.
When you notice that you are triggered, work through the mind-body connection by doing a centering practice. Our autonomic stress reaction causes a tightening contraction through your core, so unwind this by softening your belly and jaw – even 10% helps. Next, visualise that you are expanding space around you as if shining out like a lightbulb. When you are stressed, your perception narrows to focus on threat. Expanding your perception peripherally sends the message back to the brain that there is no danger. You’ll feel calmer in the moment, and with practice, you will find that you can dial down your reactivity.
A word of caution about expectations. Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of the martial art of aikido, used to take on all-comers seemingly without batting an eyelid. “Master, how is it that you are never triggered by whatever comes at you?” they marvelled. The master replied, “I get triggered all the time. But I regain my composure so quickly, you don’t even notice.” If a master like Ueshiba was triggered, then it is unrealistic for us to aim for a plateau of consistent calm. Which leads me onto the second part of the process.
Acceptance
We are so hard on ourselves, much harder than we need to be. There is nothing wrong with stress; it’s natural and normal, not shameful or a sign of weakness. In our modern, technologically-driven lives, it’s easy to forget that we are animals with smartphones. Self-compassion is accepting yourself as you are, noticing that you are suffering, and taking action to alleviate it. What would a compassionate friend say to you when you are stressed? Can you connect with this inner ally daily? Write yourself a letter, as if it came from them. Self-compassion activates those parts of your brain that can take a bigger perspective, empathise and be more creative.
Choice
Once you switch off automatic and apply self-compassion, ask yourself: “How do I want to be in this moment? What would be most useful right now?” We have more conscious choices, more possibilities available in each moment than we realise. With practice, we can take more leadership of our own lives by easing off the default survival pedal, enabling us to thrive.
Fiona Buckland will be leading our in-demand virtual workshop ‘Be the leader of your life’ in May and July. Fiona is a leadership coach, facilitator and author, who runs leadership workshops and programmes. Her book The Thoughtful Leader: A Guide to Leading with Mind, Body and Soul is out now.
