Coping Strategies for Stress: Dealing with the Paradox of Stressing About Your Health

There are so many tips out there when it comes to coping strategies for stress. It may (ironically) leave you feeling overwhelmed with where to start. Stressing about being stressed seems ironic, but I can bet that most of us are guilty of it more often than we realize!

There was a time when you didn’t worry about things like your health. Do you remember that time? A time when you weren’t worried about what food you put in your mouth, what your monthly income was, and whether you were making the right choice for a variety of obligations on your plate…

When was that?? Maybe you were 5 or 15 or even 25 before you learned from some sort of bad experience that life is more fragile than you realized. And from that point on, suddenly the world and the way you interacted with it became a place of anxiety and worry.

Why Does Stress Exist?

You know the importance of stress management for living a full healthy life. There are so many gurus, programs, and products designed to help us be calm, relaxed, happy, content, etc. So if we’re supposed to be happy and stress free then why the heck does stress even exist?

Here’s the truth: life is full of polarities so that we experience it fully and with purpose. Because, from those low points we get to truly appreciate and acknowledge those high points in our life.

Think about it for a second… if you didn’t understand pain and hurt, would you truly be able to understand the power of pure joy and love?

The Biology of Stress

The same goes for our bodies. There is a balance that they need to thrive. And that balance does not include a lifestyle that is completely void of stress. Stress in moderation, or eustress, is key for keeping the body running efficiently. When areas of the body are completely free of stress, like the bones, they slowly breakdown and become fragile. When we don’t use our muscles, they slowly wither away. When we don’t use our brains, dementia sets in.

Life is about balance. It isn’t meant to be free of stress. Yet, our current realities in the fast paced life that technology brings has made the level of stress we experience on a daily basis quite high. Add in the current issues surrounding quarantine and COVID-19 and a lot of us are at a 10/10 for stress levels, ouch!

Coronavirus is Forcing Us to Slow the Heck Down!

If you’re like me, your immediate responses to being put in a mandatory quarantine with shelter at home orders has left you feeling scared, hopeless, anxious, and a little defiant. Ultimately, this time has forced many of us to slow down and re-evaluate.

We’ve traded 9-5’s for days stuck at home with those that we love most and making the best of it. Many of us are losing our jobs, losing our minds, and wondering when it’s going to end.

HOWEVER, I hope you will take this time to see the blessings that will come from this time. How many of us complain that we feel like zombies just going through the motions? Well, here is your wake up call! (I know it was for me!) And it is saying this: stop being complacent, spend more time with those you love, do what you love, and live your life with purpose.

When you start focusing on what you truly want to be doing with your life and not on what you’re expected to do… you may find a loss of a job or complete change in your routine is just what you needed to, ironically, finally start living.

When we live in a state of stress and anxiety, it slowly chips away at our peace of mind and health. Use these crazy times to start tuning in to what you truly need.

Stop Stressing, Start Living: How I Did It

My story of how stress was affecting all levels of my health started last summer. I started this health blog with the hopes of being able to stay home with my 9 month old daughter. My interest in holistic health was growing everyday and I was eagerly learning all I could about diet, exercise, mindset, and more.

Then something really weird happened. The more I learned about how to be “healthier,” the more it seemed my health was spiraling out of control.

Getting Myself Back On Track with a Little Grace

Over the years, it’s become crystal clear for me that my biggest health weakness is food. I love it, I dream about it, and I always seem to be stuck in a binge cycle more often than not. And then last summer I found out about a gut test with the company Viome. It was going to tell me exactly what I should eat for my unique gut based on a fecal sample. After having read a lot about the gut and it’s importance for health, I was totally pumped to get started. That is until I got my test results back. Basically, it told me I shouldn’t be eating anything except a few random vegetables and all the meat I want (I was a vegetarian at the time). Needless to say, I was a bit perplexed. And suddenly, I was completely overwhelmed with choosing what I should eat everyday.

With this new stress around eating, the intense summer heat and staying at home by myself with a 1 year old, my health suddenly got flipped upside down. I was anxious, reactive, fluctuating between diarrhea and constipation, and had a full on crazy rash that I couldn’t stop itching on my head (that ultimately led to my hair falling out in chunks)! I literally had bald spots. It was terrible.

So suddenly, at a time when I wanted to start helping other people be their best selves, I was sinking further into my own health issues. I felt stuck for a while. After several months of soul searching and gaining better awareness, I learned of the importance of grace and learning to let go. It was such a great thing to learn BEFORE all this COVID-19 stuff hit the fan because I am now learning just to “roll with it.” 🙂

Learning to Tune in to What I Need

Sadly, my health got worse before it got better in 2019. For a while, I was convinced that my worsening health was because I wasn’t following the recommended diet I had received ( I know, ironic). So I tried my hardest to stick to it and even went on a complete no carb diet for 10 days in September before heading on a trip to Europe to visit my in-laws. I had decided that I would give it my best and then when I got to Europe I would just enjoy myself because, let’s be honest, carbs and Europe are a delicious match made in heaven 🙂

When I got to Europe, something ironic happened. I went back to eating whatever I wanted and suddenly I started feeling better. From there, it was a long process to learn how to better tune into my body. In the past 6 months I have learned when I truly check-in that I do have some slight sensitivity to eggs and wine (boo, I love them both). And that my stress levels were very much attached to my anxiety around my daughter’s moods.

Needless to say, it’s been quite the process where I’ve needed to learn to let go. I can’t control my daughter’s moods as she becomes a toddler and I can’t control my husband’s work hours but I can control my own reactions. And I can spend a lot of time worrying about how unfiltered water, gluten, an occasional sugary snack, or a bad night of sleep will affect myself or my family. OR I can just do my best and stop with all the shame and guilt. (As you can guess, option 2 goes over a lot better if you want to be less stressed and more happy!)

My Newest Tool: Heart Math

I decided that meditation was something I should start doing when I was pregnant. Before then, meditation always seemed like this intangible thing that I didn’t need. Then I realized that my Type A, need for control, monkey mind needed it badly. Since then, I’ve been doing my best to meditate when I have time, which honestly hasn’t been much and a lot of times was combined with breastfeeding time as a new mom.

Then, in San Diego in December I learned a really cool technique that gave me the immediate results I had always hoped to get from meditation but had never found. The short 2 minute meditation we did as a group at a personal development seminar immediately left me in a sense of calm that I’ve never experienced. It was amazing!

This 2 minute meditation (that of course can be longer) is part of some pretty cool science called Heart Math. The founders, Doc and Sara Childre, have done some amazing research into how the literal energy of our hearts affect our health.

The actual meditation technique is called a “heart lock in.” It starts by placing your hands on your heart, closing your eyes and focusing your breath and energy on your heart. From there, you can shift your entire being to a higher frequency energy- a frequency where health flourishes. Basically, you will slowly imagine a radiating light that glows out of your heart and gradually spreads to the entire universe before imagining it returns to the heart where it started. This can take 2 minutes or 1 hour, do what feels right! You won’t be sorry.

For me, it helps me re-center anytime I feel overwhelmed (which is more often lately). If you’re feeling skeptical, I encourage you to keep an open mind and try it. I am the most left brained logical person I know and it has completely changed my perspective on life.

My Favorite Mantra: I Choose…

Think your mood or your levels of stress don’t affect your health? There is a large body of science that shows the effect negative energy has on the real physical systems in the body. It can be explained even further with theories related to quantum physics. Did you know that our entire universe is made up of more than 99% energy (and less than 1% physical matter)? And that energies we come in contact with on a day to day basis majorly effect your own body’s energy levels?

To influence your own energy fields, imagine how beneficial it would be to have positivity as your default reaction to the world around you. When I realized just how powerful my own thoughts and beliefs are, I realized I needed to make a change to the internal chatter going on in my head.

So ultimately I decided to change the way I interact with the world and what words I choose to shape my reality. I stopped telling myself: I can’t or I shouldn’t. Instead, I subtly changed my action statements to: I CHOOSE or I WANT TO… FOR… It was a seemingly simple shift that has made a huge shift for me. It has left me feeling in control of my own health while not feeling like I need to literally control everything going on around me.

The Bottom Line: Embrace the Low Points as Learning Points

I’ve learned a lot this year about coping strategies for stress. And I’m so glad I had this clarity prior to quarantine, as it has helped me keep my sanity.

• I’ve learned no one is perfect and trying to be will just be hard on my body.
• I can simply do my best and then leave the rest up to grace.
• Guilt trips and shame don’t work.
• Embrace positive energy (use the Heart Math and I CHOOSE affirmations discussed above)
• I listen to what my body needs and it take a lot of fine tuning to figure it out. After all, life and health are a continuum.
• Each year and challenge brings new insight and I will simply continue to learn and live.
• There is no such thing as failure, only learning and growth.

So I encourage you to look for the learning moments in your current situations. And if you’re struggling, just learn to be okay with your emotions. Simply lean into them and figure out how to move on when you’re ready. There’s no right or wrong answer, what’s more important is that you keep growing, questioning and being open to whatever the worlds throws at you. When you look at your life from this perspective, I guarantee you, you can manage anything!

Wishing you all health and happiness in these crazy times! How are you holding up? And how can I help you? I’d love to know!

I talk about my own story of stress and the paradox of stressing about our health in my first ever YouTube video! Check out out here.