Are You Addicted to Stress?

Recognizing, Breaking the Cycle, and Transforming Stress in Modern Life

Stress is like the food you know will make you feel sick, but you can't stop eating. We say we want to get rid of it, but it's an addiction. Stress makes what you do feel important - an unconscious status symbol, and an embedded part of our cultural currency. The more stressed, the busier you are, the more valuable you must be. Except you're too exhausted to enjoy it.

This is engrained even in childhood, with parents packing their children's schedules to the brim for fear of missed opportunities, giving them a head start on embracing stress and overextension as a lifestyle. It's so systemic culturally that the people that seem "unstressed" are sus (Are they lazy? Aliens? Just hiding it better?).

You'll know you've reached peak addiction when it begins to leak into your passions, hobbies, and what used to provide you stress relief. Early in my IT project management career, I was working 60-100 hour weeks, grabbing whatever fast food I could, coming home to collapse in front of the TV, numbing out, and avoiding going to bed because it was the only time I had to myself (revenge bedtime procrastination is a real thing). Rinse and repeat. I hit a point where I was almost 40 pounds heavier than I am today, accepted that I no longer wanted to feel chronic fatigue, and started my journey with fitness.

Working out once a week eventually became a full-blown second career as a fitness instructor, in addition to my full-time job. Finally, an outlet for my stress and a way to pour my creativity into my passion!

But this became my greatest lesson in how you can't out-passion a bad stress management plan.

I'm Fine, It's Fine, Totally Fine

Stress is contagious. From home to work. From work to home. From job to job. From person to person.

Stress will fill whatever space it's given. Two people in the same situation can feel completely different levels of stress. Two people in wildly different situations can have the exact same level of stress. Comparing yours to someone else's is pointless, but it becomes a sort of "comfort food" to justify an unsustainable lifestyle. How many "That's nothing! Listen to my day!" conversations have you been a part of?

As these careers grew, I took on leadership positions in both, climbing and climbing with no real destination. Succeeding for the sake of succeeding, at some point, I had latched on to someone else's idea of success and never looked back. Every hour of my days in meetings, putting out fires, trying to move massive strategic gears, calculating risks and driving decisions, being "on", and every night and weekend turning the "on" dial even higher coaching other coaches, maintaining relationships with riders, planning, and teaching an extremely physically/emotionally/mentally demanding style of classes - constantly measuring by output.

But it was never enough, and I never felt satisfied. I'd found my "passion" as a way to fulfill needs my other career didn't, but instead of escaping stress, it just followed me.

Admitting You're an Addict

When you are trapped in this cycle, you hear things like "I don’t know how you do it!" "You don't have to do all that!" But if you are hearing these comments, you are likely just brushing them aside - why? I challenge you to peel that onion. Layer by layer, reason by reason, I'll bet you find that somewhere along the way, your unconscious mind started to let stress become your worth.

This is an unconscious mindset that has to be consciously shifted in order to break the cycle. You have to see it for what it is and let go of justifying a lifestyle that isn't serving you.

Most client work involves building an energy management plan because no matter what your dreams and goals are, this is a huge part of what is impacting your quality of life. Some people are nervous when we first meet that I will tell them to quit their job (that's not how coaching works, by the way), but the reality is, most of the time it's not the work itself - it’s the way you are working.

It wasn’t until I made this connection that I could step into owning my well-being, see where my biggest energy leaks were, and start to plug them. I changed how I structured and approached my days and weeks, and changed my life. When I left my IT career, I had to do this all over again because the nature of my stressors changed.

Shifting Your Mindset and Overcoming Stress Addiction

Be honest with yourself and answer these questions:

• Does the quality of your work get better or worse when you're stressed?

• Does connecting and communicating with your family, friends, and co-workers get easier or harder when you're stressed?

• Is your mental and physical well-being better or worse when you're stressed?

Consider these things:

• What am I doing on the days I feel the most drained? What am I doing on the days I feel the most energized?

• Are there times of the day or week that are better for me to do certain activities?

• Where am I telling myself I "have" to do things a certain way, when I have the ability to control and change the way I do them?

Start to break the cycle:

• Pick one particularly stressful habit or stress-inducing activity that you have control over.

• Make a plan for how you can make this less stressful next week based on what you know leaves you feeling more energized than drained (ex. getting up earlier, planning for the next day the night before, only checking email at certain times of day, changing your meeting schedule, not doom-scrolling before bed or right after you wake up).

• Share your plan with someone who will hold you accountable! When we are breaking deeply engrained habits, it’s easier to stick to things we’ve committed to out loud, to another person who can help us stick to it. Have a plan to check in and track your progress. What’s working? What’s not? How can you continue to adjust?

Want to go deeper? Learn about ways to work with me.

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Takeaways + Tools + Prompts

• Sounds, smells, tastes, visual cues, and physical stimuli can all impact stress. Think about your habits and home and work environments from all these contexts, not just what tasks and activities you are doing.

• For my stress management, I have specific scents, music, and morning and evening rituals I follow that dramatically impact my mood and the stress I carry into each day.

Meditative Prompt

Spend some time identifying which senses impact your stress level the most. How can you incorporate this into reducing your stress each day? Some ideas:

• Sounds

  • Different frequencies can create different physiological responses (have you ever noticed how the tones and frequencies of the music they use in horror movies create a sense of dread in your chest?).

  • I love to listen to 963 Hz and 528 Hz frequency music in the morning - it lowers my blood pressure and creates a feeling of positive calm in me.

• Smells

  • Using room sprays, diffusers, candles, or burning incense or palo santo can shift the whole mood of whatever space you are in.

• Tastes

  • I slam coffee, but tea, I know I will sip and enjoy more intentionally - peppermint, ginger, turmeric, chamomile, and lavender are some of my favorites.

• Visual Cues

  • Maybe clutter stresses you out, or bright colors make you feel more joyful - sometimes just watching something like the smoke of incense curling or a meditation candle slowly burning down can relax your body and open space in your mind for more creative thought.

• Physical Stimuli

  • Going for a walk, taking 5 minutes to stand in the sunlight, walking barefoot in the grass, stretching, taking a bath, working out - adding any of these to your day can change the shape of your life.

Creative Project Prompt

This exercise helps you visually identify stress triggers and creatively brainstorm ways to alleviate them to take a proactive approach to managing stress.

• Draw a simple outline of your daily or weekly routine. Include major activities, tasks, and interactions that typically fill your day or week.

• Use a color or symbol to mark the areas during the day or week where your stress increases the most.

• Now, reimagine this outline. What changes can you make to reduce the stress high points you marked? Delegate? Rearrange your schedule? Take a short break?

• Add symbols or notes to represent these changes (ex., a star - or our Prism snail Simon - for a moment of pause and mindfulness, a sun for taking a break outside).

• Reflect on this redesigned outline. How do these changes make you feel? What steps can you commit to next week? Who can hold you accountable for making these changes?

Gratitude Prompt

Consider writing these out for yourself and saying them out loud.

• I’m grateful to realize my value and worth have nothing to do with how busy or stressed I am.

• I’m grateful to realize that I am my best for others when I take care of my energy needs first.

• I’m grateful that I can start making changes today that will create the tomorrow I want to be.

Please share your feedback, comments, and requests so I can provide you with the most impactful value. Thank you for being a part of our community!