FIR Episode 15: Three questions to begin actively managing your stress.

“Everyone tells me to manage my stress as it’s affecting my health. Honestly, I don’t know where to start or what managing my stress even means?!”

In this Free and Inspired radio episode, Philip deconstructs stress and offers better questions to ask to start managing it.

Stress, by definition, occurs when the balance or stasis of the body is affected by something either internal or external.

“An important point you can draw immediately from the basic definitions of stress is the complete absence of it, in general, is not necessary. It’s more about harmony.”

There are some easy ways to look into your relationship with it.

For instance, how do you feel stress in your body?  

Connecting with your body is the first step in understanding how it’s affecting you.

For example, some features of the body’s reaction to stress are:

• Increased vigilance
• cognition
• focused attention and alertness
• high respiratory and heart rates
• sugar cravings
• digestive and immune suppression.

Digestive and immune suppression is vital here. Philip explores how it essentially switches off critical functions like immunity and digestion. All to maintain the stress response.

Identifying these signals can help you connect your digestive symptoms and how you experience your day, for instance.

Other ways include looking into your personality.

For example, do you have personality characteristics that make you more prone to experiencing stress?

Finally, Philip looks into how your personality might be contributing to your experience and evidence behind what to do about it.

For example, particular personality traits might make you prone to responding in a stressful fashion. If this is you then seeking help via a counselor might be the best step to take.

“Sometimes, encountering elements of your personality with a sense of curiosity, often for the first time, maybe what “managing stress” is for you.”

All this and more in episode 15 of Free and Inspired Radio!

*There is a trigger warning in this episode as there are some references to torture and detainment.