The Danger of Getting Used to Stress & 5 Easy Ways to Change

Remember those old commercials about going noseblind? Where the homeowner walks into the room thinking it smells fine, and then their friend enters and the couch suddenly morphs into a smelly dog-couch hybrid?

Kinda gross, but funny and relatable too, right?  Well, I’m here to tell you that you can become stressblind too. Stressblind is what happens when you’ve become so accustomed to constant stress that you no longer notice it–you think of it as normal. Yes, I know it’s not a real word, but I’m making it one now because it really hits home.

So, what are some examples of stressblindness?

• You get home from work and are too exhausted to do anything beyond collapsing on the couch

• You have dreams (nightmares, really) about work, and you can’t stop talking about work even when you’re off the clock

• You get so “in the zone” that you forget to attend to basic bodily needs like eating, drinking, or using the bathroom…all day

• Even your most go-getter colleagues or friends start to express concern that you’ve taken on too much

• You can’t say no to a new project, even though you’re burning the candle at both ends and running on fumes

Need I continue? Sadly, these are all real-life examples from real-life stressblind folks.

To sum up- you may be living the life of this graphic… You’re smiling with bags under your eyes and all the while your nervous system is ramped wayyyyy up, on FIRE, and you have no idea. Why? Because it’s been going on so long it’s your new normal. 

Ouch. 

Habituating Stress

The sad thing is, stress by itself is not automatically a bad thing. Some stress can push us to try new things, adapt to changes in life, and revisit our beliefs and expectations. Experiencing stress is a normal part of life. It becomes problematic when the amount of stress and the toll it takes on us become unbalanced.

All change–whether good, bad, or neutral–represents a stressor. With a healthy stress level, our bodies respond to stress triggers by activating our fight-flight mode. We get a boost of hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, which make us more alert so we can respond quickly and effectively to threats. Our heart rate increases, sending more blood to our muscles so we can hit our enemies harder when we fight, or so we can hit the ground harder when we flee to safety. Our respiration rate increases to get more oxygen into the lungs.  Our digestive processes pause so we are not diverting precious energy to processing food, allowing our bodies to bring all resources to the goal of survival. 

These bodily responses and mechanisms have been in place since our ancestors had to worry about saber-tooth tigers. As far as our bodies are concerned, there’s no difference between the tiger and being asked to unexpectedly speak at an important meeting, needing to slam on the breaks in traffic, or needing to get through a weekend at your in-laws’. These physiological changes help us to fight or flee a physically or emotionally dangerous situation. After the stressor is over, we return to equilibrium.

When our threat detectors become flooded by a constant barrage of stressors, we lose the ability to differentiate between major and minor concerns. We begin to respond to all stressors as potential life and death situations. Even worse, we don’t have time to downshift back to equilibrium before being asked to ramp right back up for the next stressor. And to put some salt in those wounds, the more your emergency response system is activated, the more you get used to being in emergency mode.  You become less responsive to stress, seeing it as the norm in our go-go-go society, and your hyperactive stress response system gets more reactive and easier to trigger.  

Eventually, we get used to being in this constant state of stress and never getting a clear signal to return to our normal level of functioning.  So, we get used to being hyper-vigilant, our body waiting on high alert to protect us from that next bad thing, and because that’s the new norm, we don’t. even. realize. it’s. happening.  

Stress can be sneaky that way!  And all too often, we don’t realize it’s a problem… until it becomes a bigger problem. What was once the helpful emergency response now contributes to a decrease in proper functioning in the cardiovascular, sleep, immune, digestive, and reproductive systems.  

How Stress Impacts Us

What’s the problem with being stressblind?  It sounds kind of nice to not know you’re stressed, right?  

Wrong!  This too can be a problem.  The more you push down, ignore, or deny your stress, the louder it gets, piling up higher and higher until it begins to manifest physically, emotionally, and relationally.  The more often you are stressed, the more exposure you are getting to stress hormones. This exposure can lead to serious health concerns such as high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, stroke, unhealthy weight gain, insomnia, hypertension, stroke risk, ulcers, GI issues, sexual issues, suppressed immune system, chronic fatigue, and more long-term health concerns.

Not only does stress impact us physically, it can also show up mentally and relationally. This looks different for everyone, but could include depression, anxiety, irritability, constant worrying, racing thoughts, moodiness, anger, difficulty concentrating, focusing on the negative, withdrawing from others, using drugs/alcohol/cigarettes to relax, and oh so much more!

The most dangerous thing about unrelenting chronic stress is that when you become stressblind, you may not realize there’s a problem until you are seriously, chronically, and perhaps permanently sick. And that’s pretty freakin scary.

From Stressblind to Resilient

So what now?  You know you’re stressed.  And maybe you even feel me on the whole stressblind thing.  So how do you turn it around? I’ll break it down into a couple of easy steps.

1. Increase awareness.  It is 100% an impossible dream to think you can improve your stress management if you don’t even know that you are stressed. Practice taking 5 minutes to check in with yourself at some point during the day. Try to notice how you feel physically (tense, tired, or hungry?), emotionally (irritable, depressed, or overwhelmed?), and relationally (short fused, impatient, or disengaged?).

2. Identify your red flags.  Most of us can recognize when we’re at the very end of our rope, but the red flags that we’re getting overloaded start showing up much earlier than that. Stress is cumulative- the little things add up. Try to notice when your symptoms of stress overload show up in earlier stages. Maybe it’s ignoring the endless pile of paperwork that’s now become a computer stand, or being annoyed that your partner ate the center of your cookie (the best part!!). Or maybe you notice your jaw hurts a little midday because you’ve been grinding your teeth all morning. These are all flags you can start to notice before escalating to the point of a meltdown.
   
   
3. BOUNDARIES.  Boundaries can be really hard for the stressblind, but when they are set up with intention and care, they can be extremely useful for preventing burnout. I’ll give you an example from my own life: Checking emails. I normally love reading emails and connecting with others, but if I read every one as soon as it comes in, I feel pressure to respond even when I’m out of the office. Over time, that leads to feeling tired, resentful, and not getting enough rest. So I set a boundary with myself that I do not check emails after a certain point in the day, and not at all on the weekends. This boundary helps me create the space I need to focus on my non-work life, to recover from the workday, and to feel refreshed and ready to head back to the office the next workday.
   
   
4. Take small, sustainable steps for self-care.  The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that self-care is a discipline and not a luxury. Yes, it can be luxurious.  But a spa day twice a year is not the fix for a system in a constant state of stress. Take small, sustainable steps to regularly remind your body that not every deadline, date, career change, or fight with your partner is a life and death situation. These steps will be unique for everyone, so try different things to find what works best for you. I teach my clients a variety of small, accessible skills for decreasing and managing stress from the worlds of mindfulness, psychology, and yoga therapy. The most important thing is that the steps work for you.
   
   
5. Dive a little deeper.  Take some time to reflect on what is driving your stressblindness. Do you hold certain beliefs about productivity, rest, work/life balance? Do these beliefs tie into how you view yourself or your self worth or self esteem? And are these beliefs in line with your personal value system? When we explore more deeply where, how, and why some of these patterns, themes, or schema may have emerged in our life, the deeper understanding can help us to make a change. This can sometimes be challenging to do alone and a therapist can be a great support by helping you to reflect on your experiences, understand your patterns, heal the underlying cause of patterns that are no longer helpful, and to create new, healthy patterns of thought and behavior to aid you in living a life based on your values rather than the expectations of society, others, and/or deeply seated beliefs.

So you’re ready to make a change, to increase your awareness around your stress and stressblindness?  Great!  Reach out today to schedule a therapy session, a yoga therapy session, join a yoga workshop, or get a compassion fatigue training for your company.