Reducing the overwhelm of modern day life

April is Stress Awareness Month here in the UK, marked every year since 1992. Despite this, stress seems to have become an increasingly problematic feature of our society.

So let’s talk about it.

Stress is a physical response from our bodies when our nervous system perceives us to be under threat. Our ancestors relied on this early warning system to keep them alive.

And we rely on it today, just as they did thousands of years ago. We still pretty much have the same wiring as our hunter-gatherer forebears had when it comes to the autonomic nervous system (the nifty pieces of neurology that operate our stress response), but we no longer live in the same environment. And that is an important key to understanding why stress is so prevalent in our modern lives and what might need to happen to tackle it.

Now, there’s a lot of talk on social media about the nervous system and how it needs regulating, like it’s some sort of unruly part of our human biology that, on a whim, rolls out challenging and unwanted behaviour which needs to be controlled, lest it cause a nuisance to you and those around you.  But in reality, the autonomic nervous system is the overseer and coordinator of most of our automated bodily functions and responds to changes in our environment and relationships to keep us alive. It’s a really good thing to have, and what most people don’t realise is that it is always working to keep us safe, not to undermine us.

So why are we always being told to keep it in check?

Well, you see, what seems to have happened over the millennia is that the things our nervous system perceives as threatening have changed. Humans in ancient history were mainly concerned with predators, serious injury, and other threats to life (fires, earthquakes, floods, starvation, etc.), alongside maintaining our position as members of a tribe (remember, we were prey animals once upon a time, and there was safety in numbers).

Our environments have changed significantly in modern life, and here in the UK most of us face little threat from the things our ancestors were concerned about, but other things have taken their place.  Where once we were worried about finding food and keeping ourselves from being eaten at the same time, we now worry about making enough money to pay the bills and anything that could threaten that, such as not meeting the expectations of those who pay us (regardless of whether those expectations are realistic or fair), or rising costs of living as world events send the prices of every day living soaring. We are also still hardwired to find safety in maintaining a position within a tribe. In ancient times, this would have meant collaborating with a group of 50 to 150 people and adhering to the tribe’s agreed behavioural and social expectations. These days, the size of that tribe that we belong to has increased a thousandfold, so there are far more ‘people’ that we have to get things right for (looking the right way, wearing the right clothes, doing the right activities to make you appear cool, the list is endless). Marketeers are paid to ensure we know exactly what the cultural and societal norms are and to capitalise on our fear of not fitting in to sell us products and services which promise to help us ‘get it right’.

So, while very few of us are actually facing life-threatening experiences on a daily basis, our nervous systems are still scanning the world around us for environmental and relational threats, and responding if they detect anything vaguely iffy.

These responses are all fear-based and can manifest in a number of different ways – fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn.  And here is where the nervous system starts to feel like it might be working against you…

Because if you are faced with a looming deadline that you are afraid you might not meet, it’s rather inconvenient that your nervous system might decide that this requires a fight response and you find yourself boiling with incandescent rage because someone has interrupted you, or a flight response and no matter how hard you try, you can’t make yourself concentrate on the task in hand, instead feeling marginally anxious you find yourself preoccupied and distracted.

This is not a dysregulated nervous system; this is a nervous system that is working perfectly. It has detected a threat (a missed deadline might mean getting the sack, getting the sack means losing your income, losing income means bills don’t get paid, and food doesn’t get bought) and is rolling out a protocol it believes will keep you alive. The problem is that society has developed so fast that our evolution has not been able to keep up, and our nervous systems have never received an update on what programs need to run in response to a looming deadline.

So what can we do about it?

This is a complex issue, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.  But there are some very simple things you can do to help your nervous system feel like the world is a safer place and therefore navigate the stresses of the modern world with a little more ease.

I couldn’t hope to cover everything in a blog post, there are whole books dedicated to the subject, but here are a few tips to get you started that could have a noticeable impact:

Reduce the scary stimuli – Evolutionarily, we are not designed to be as connected as we are today. We are built to pay keen attention to the small section of the environment and our tribe that we find ourselves surrounded by.  But thanks to the digital world, we are absorbing information from people across the globe, in vast quantities, and concerning ourselves with events which are far beyond the reach of our little neighbourhood.

You might argue that it is good to be abreast of world events as they do have an impact on us, and that we can now access information at the touch of a screen, which can be really helpful. While these things are true, it’s also very real that our minds are not designed to be able to handle that.

And digital technology is having a massive impact on our social connections: instantaneous, 24/7 responses to messages and calls are unrealistic yet expected, many prefer messaging rather than actually speaking on the phone, and people are seeing each other face-to-face way less than we used to. The result is that we are actually less connected and more stressed by social expectations than at any other time in recent history.

And, to cap it all off, digital technology is absolutely ruining our concentration spans and our internal reward system.

Getting conscious about why, when and how you use your phone is really quite important.

• Decide what you really want to consume digitally, be mindful, avoid the doom scroll.
• Restrict screen time; use technology to limit your access to apps, put your phone in another room & remove apps that feel like they suck up too much of your time.
• Set realistic & achievable expectations with your people about how available you will be for digital communication & what is realistic in terms of response times.

Orient to signs of safety – Sometimes we can be going along in life, under a bit of pressure, and we start to notice that we are having what feels like disproportionate responses to events and situations we suspect we might ordinarily handle a little better. It might be that someone’s tone of voice makes us angry, or we feel more anxious than we usually would about an upcoming conversation, for example.

Most people’s response to this is to feel a bit embarrassed or ashamed, issue some apologies, and to try to puzzle out why they are behaving that way so that they can change their behaviour moving forward.

But this ‘overblown response’ business is a sure-fire sign that your nervous system is currently perceiving you to be under threat. It’s an automated system and takes over your rational thinking-brain when it perceives a threat to be present. It doesn’t respond to rational thinking and most of the time it doesn’t respond to words at all.

What it does respond to are cues of safety, which it perceives through your senses.

So asking yourself why it’s happening is often not a good first port of call.

Understanding your compulsion to be a response to perceived danger, and finding the brief pause between stimulus and response to ask yourself ‘am I actually in danger here, or can I perceive some signs of safety around me right now?’ can really help to de-escalate that alarm which has been triggered in your system.

A great method for this is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method (there are many other ways to ground and bring yourself back towards rest and digest, this is just one that can be particularly effective). Take in your environment and name:

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can hear
• 3 things you can feel/touch
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

This brings you right into the present moment and lets your nervous system know that you are actually not about to die. It can be really helpful in navigating times of stress with a little more ease.

It’s not a fix-all, though. It can help de-escalate in the moment, but if you find these overblown responses are an ongoing pattern for you, there may be more stuff under the surface that needs attention, and it can be helpful to get some support to work this stuff out.

Connect more with the natural world – There are cues of safety for our nervous system everywhere in the natural world, and our bodies respond to them rapidly.

Just exposing yourself to green and blue spaces has a direct impact on your mood and how resourced you feel. Natural light is essential for our bodily functions, green signals safety to the nervous system, there is a structure in our eyes that when it perceives a fractal-like structure (trees) sends a signal of safety to the nervous system, being able to see the sky has been shown to have profound effects on our mood and perceptions, being around moving water has countless health benefits, and all plants and trees emit chemicals that can boost our mood and support our immune system. You get all of these benefits just from going to a natural space.

If you want to enhance the experience to get even more benefits – slow down:

• go for a mindful walk
• count colours
• name the things you see
• watch how the trees move
• listen to birdsong
• do a bit of cloud watching
• hang out under some trees and do some extended exhale breathing

Getting outside will not remove the stressors from your life, but it will enhance your resources to enable you to deal with them. When you connect regularly with natural environments, your nervous system, mind and body reap the rewards.

Co-regulation – Our nervous systems are not fully formed at birth, and we need safe, calm adults in our lives to teach us how to return to a rest-and-digest state.

This education starts really young, before we can understand language, so our nervous systems are not designed to respond to specific words or reasoned argument. They respond to sensory input instead. A calm, regulated presence and a caring tone of voice are much more important when it comes to re-regulating ourselves than the specifics of what is said. This is why gently speaking, singing or reading to an infant or toddler can have a really calming effect on them, even though they don’t understand what you are saying.

This act of a calm, caring other helping someone return to a rest-and-digest state is known as co-regulation and is just as powerful for adults as it is for infants, and can be one of the fastest ways to return to a rest-and-digest state. And for those of us who never really received this early education because we didn’t have caregivers who knew how to support us with this, it is essential for helping us to train our nervous systems to be more flexible now.

Trying to reason with someone who is greatly distressed by offering rational explanations and solutions can be totally ineffective because the parts of the brain that do this type of processing are temporarily switched off. What is far more important (at least initially) is understanding and empathy, having someone on hand who can say “that sounds really sh*t.  Here, let me give you a hug”.  Equally, it doesn’t have to be another human that you get this from; a regulated pet that you can interact with can have just as potent an impact.

Once the nervous system alarm is down-regulated, the brain’s logic processing centres come back online, and problem-solving can commence if it is going to be useful.

Learn to be a boundary boss – Digital technology has completely redefined our social expectations. With the advent of technology, which makes it easier for us to complete tasks and be connected, has come the social expectation that we will do more of both.  I won’t turn this into another rant about the negative impacts of digital technology on our mental and emotional health; instead, I will focus on the idea that we do not have to sign up to this social expectation.

Getting real about what capacity you have to do a certain thing (task or social connection) is absolutely essential for you to reduce the amount of stress you are handling at any given time, as is the ability to set solid boundaries around what you will/won’t or can/can’t do.

Think about it, if we keep letting the pressures heap on, without saying no, we will quickly become overwhelmed.

And our biology works against us here, too; remember, we are wired to prioritise maintaining our connections to others and meet social expectations, so our nervous systems tend to respond with fearful alerts when we go against the grain.

The good news is that it’s only scary to start off with.  Setting boundaries that say “I can do this”, “I won’t do that”, or “In order to achieve that, we need to make a compromise. What are you willing to contribute?” becomes less scary with practice. Simply because the more we repeat this, the more our nervous systems learn that this way of relating is actually safe.

So, start taking some brave steps towards setting boundaries and, if it spikes your fear, use sensory cues of safety or another regulating strategy to bring yourself back to res-and-digest.  Managing it this way supports your system in learning safety in relationship and helps lighten your stress load.