Stress Awareness Month 2023
Written by Tara
What is Stress Awareness Month?
Stress Awareness Month began in 1992 and has continued to raise awareness and shed light on this epidemic throughout April. Stress is something that everyone experiences at one point or another in their life and, in some cultures, including work, it has become normalised to some degree. This is something that Stress Awareness Month tries to combat and highlight how stress can have a big impact on your wellbeing, including your emotional, mental, and physical health, and is not something that should be endured (particularly for extended periods of time) or celebrated and that there are coping strategies, movements and support services that can support you to overcome and manage your stress.
What is stress?
Stress is a physcial response to protect ourselves as a result of feeling under attack, in danger or threatened.
Stress is the term that we use when experiencing, usually uncomfortable, symptoms cognitively, physiologically, emotionally and behaviourally as a result of a trigger.
When we are feeling stressed, the body tries to protect ourselves from thinking it is under attack and activates the ‘fight or flight or freeze ’ response, which releases hormones and chemicals such as adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine.
It is important to note that everyone experiences stress differently, which includes the situations that cause stress. We are all unique and have different life experiences, beliefs, perceptions and circumstances, therefore meaning that one situation may cause someone to feel stressed, whereas it may not feel as stressful to another.
How stress impacts on you
Everyone experiences stress, and so it is important to distinguish between acute and chronic stress because a little bit of stress can be healthy and helpful, as it can keep us alert, productive and motivated. However, when we experience too much stress, it can cause severe physical, emotional, and behavioural symptoms.
Acute stress is brief but intense. Short-term stressors—such as public speaking, getting into an argument, or preparing for an interview—cause acute stress.
Chronic stress is long-lasting. The symptoms experienced may not be as obvious or intense in the moment, but the long-term effects of chronic stress are more severe. Some common chronic stressors include: financial struggles, bereavement, serious illness in yourself or a cared one, relationship problems etc.
What we did to raise awareness during Stress Awareness Month
Creative Links Peer Support Group
For Stress Awareness Month, Creative Links competed a variety of activities including mindful colouring and learning to crochet.
The crochet session was particularly notable since many in the group had not tried crochet before and managed to get a few rows completed by the end of their first session! The group feedback to us that they have continued to practice outside of the session and are looking forward to our next crochet session!
Managing Anxiety Peer Support Group
On Monday 3rd April we addressed panic attacks and panic disorder. We invited the attendees to share their experiences with panic and the symptoms they experienced. We covered evidence-based ways of preventing the likelihood of panic attacks which included reducing caffeine consumption, eating 10 portions of fruit of vegetables a day, practising a form of meditation, improving sleep hygiene, taking up a form of exercise and accessing a trauma-focused therapy. We than covered healthy ways of coping with panic attacks when they occur, which included the ‘Don’t attempt to stop the panic attack’ approach, keeping in mind how short-lived panic attacks are and practising self-affirming statements.
On Monday 17th April, we dedicated a session to the contribution of caffeine to feelings of anxiety. The group acknowledged that we do not generally know how much caffeine we are consuming on a daily basis. It was acknowledged that an upper limit of daily caffeine consumption was ideally between 100mg and 400mg a day. We addressed the effects of caffeine, which included headaches, dependency, getting the jitters, an increased risk for panic attacks, fatigue, dehydration and interference with antidepressant medication. We then covered ways in which caffeine consumption could be reduced, such as gradually substituting regular coffee with herbal coffee, enjoying the benefits to skin, sleep and energy of cutting back on caffeine, and not obliging oneself to quit caffeinated drinks altogether.
On Monday 24th April, we talked about the effects of alcohol on anxiety. We learned that people who had an anxiety disorder were 4 times more likely to suffer with a substance abuse disorder. We also looked into the effects of alcohol withdrawal syndrome, alcohol’s interference with GABA in the brain, and the disruption of the efficacy of medication. The group then discussed ways of replacing or reducing alcohol consumption, such as consuming more alcohol-free beer, wine and spirits, seeking support in the form of Turning Point, SMART Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Maintaining Wellbeing Peer Support Group
On Thursday 6th April, we discussed Mental Health Awareness Week and mentioned the stress awareness workshops that we were running at various locations through April. The attendees and facilitators all participated in a mindfulness meditation designed for and by people with ADHD, which was very well received. We also then completed a ‘gratitude mapping’ exercise in which the attendees wrote out and shared things that they genuinely felt grateful for and the reasons why.
On Thursday 13th April, the session topic was Compassion Focused Therapy. The attendees were provided with a lot of information about this relatively new understanding of psychotherapy, and then completed a worksheet asking them to cite occasions in their lives where they felt cared for, safe, content and connected. We then engaged in two videos developed by ‘Lewis Psychology’ which were meditations that invited the attendees to call to mind memories of instances they felt cared for, and to mentally repeat of compassionate affirmations to themselves.
On Thursday 20th April, the group discussed meditation and what meditation can accomplish for good mental health. The attendees engaged with a short activity called ‘Leaves on a Stream’ which invites the listener to visualise their thoughts passing as leaves floating on a stream. Attendees were invited to write their stress provoking thoughts on printed-out ‘leaves’ to help with this.
On Thursday 27th April, we completed a gratitude-based mindfulness meditation suited for individuals with ADHD. We then covered the principles of Exposure Therapy and how effective it is as a way of overcoming fears. The group completed their own ‘exposure ladder’ where they rated sources of anxiety in their lives in order of potency as if they were rungs on a ladder.
Older Person’s Peer Support Group
In our Older Adults Group we dedicated a session of the month to look at our own individual stress. We broke our own stress into symptoms, stressors, coping strategies and techniques. During this session we were able to look at what starts our stress, how we response and then how to better manage our stress by using our coping strategies early.
Workshops
Throughout April we ran a series of stress management workshops. During these workshops we looked at the definition of stress and how to recognise stress by identifying early warning signs of stress. Looking at early warning signs, we split these into 4 main categories including: thoughts, feelings, behaviours and bodily sensations.
We looked at how stress can affect the body by looking at our response to stress using the fight or flight response. This helps to understand why we experience symptoms of stress. We then expanded on our knowledge of stress by looking at the Yerkes-Dodson Model. This allows to notice the difference between healthy and unhealthy stress. YES we can have healthy levels of stress!
After this, we looked at tools and techniques to better manage our stress levels. This was split into two main categories of:
Action-oriented approaches
Acceptance-oriented approaches
What else could you do for Stress Awareness Month?
Test your stress
If you would like to test your stress levels and gain a personalised report with recommendations on how to better manage your stress, click here: Stress Test
Guide to de-stressing
Click here to find the guide from the Stress Management Society to better manage your stress levels.
