If you’ve ever felt stressed, you’ve probably turned to some of the recommended stress management techniques such as meditation, yoga, breathing, taking time to relax or even turning to exercise.
While there is absolutely nothing wrong with these kinds of activities, we’re here to tell you that they won’t reduce your stress.
Before we get into why, let’s take a quick look at what stress is and how it affects you.
What is stress
Stress is a normal part of everyday life and is simply the feeling of emotional or physical tension.
Our bodies are designed to produce a ‘stress response’, to protect us from danger – either real or perceived. Small amounts of stress are good for us. The stress response helps us stay alert, focussed and energetic, and may help us in situations such as escaping a house fire or avoiding a car accident.
However, too much stress can harm your health.
Effects of stress
When the demands placed on a person exceed their ability to cope, they become stressed. Too much stress, poorly managed stress, or long-term exposure to stress can be quite harmful to our health, mood, productivity and quality of life.
Stress can cause a number of health issues including headaches, nausea, high blood pressure, chest pain, and sleep problems. It can also lead to depression, panic attacks and other forms of anxiety and worry. It can also worsen symptoms of other medical conditions. Research has shown that chronic stress is linked to heart disease, cancer, lung illnesses, accidents, liver disease and suicide.
To make things worse, many people turn to substances or behaviours as a way to deal with their stress. These may include emotional or binge eating, excessive drinking, relying on tobacco or other drugs or engaging in other addictive and harmful behaviours.
Stress also affects your ability to lose weight. You can learn more about this in our blog How stress and weight gain are linked.
What causes stress
Stress is usually triggered by things that are happening in your life and how you react to them. The most common culprits include:
Being “too busy”
Most people cite being “too busy” as the main reason behind their stress — too much to do and not enough time to do it. This means that people often lurch from one thing to another, never having time to relax or take care of their own needs. You can read more about this in our blog The real reason you’re always too busy and how it affects your weight.
Lack of structure
Not building structure into your week is a sure-fire way to increase your stress. Without structure, you’ll never have enough time in your week. Structuring your week saves time, helps you achieve more and reduces your stress. Without it, you only fritter your time away, only to panic when you ‘run out of time’, to do the things you need to do.
Procrastination
Another common reason for being stressed is procrastination. Putting off things you need to do only leads to panic and stress. This explains why so many people hate Mondays — because they spent the whole weekend doing everything except what they needed to do, which means they don’t feel rested and rejuvenated. Learning how to stop procrastinating is key if you want to reduce stress. You can read more about this in our blog Why you procrastinate and how you can stop
Trying to control things
How do you feel when things are out of your control? If you’re like most people, you probably freak out. As humans, we have a deep need to feel in control. We believe that being in control keeps us safe, causes us not to worry about things, helps us predict the future, and protects us from something bad happening to us. However, the need to always be in control of what’s going on around us, causes an enormous amount of stress, particularly when things are beyond your control.
Worrying about what others think
How much do you care about what others think of you? If you care a lot, then you’re likely to spend a lot of time trying to control other people’s perceptions of you and trying to make everyone like you. Constantly worrying about what others think of you means that you end up doing things that you don’t necessarily want to do, which leads you to being unhappy, depressed, and anxious. You’ll also have toxic relationships and will always be second-guessing yourself. You can read more about this in our blog Why caring what others think leads to weight gain, and how you can stop caring.
People pleasing
If you spend most of your time trying to keep other people happy at the expense of yourself, you’re bound to feel pressure. That’s because you spend all your time doing things for other people and put your needs at the bottom of the list. This can cause you to feel rundown, burnt out and resentful because you never have enough time to do what you need to do.
Comparing yourself with others
Instead of being happy with themselves, many people compare themselves with other people. This habit prevents you from focusing on what you do well, and causes you to focus on your flaws and shortcomings, which can make you feel the need to engage in perfectionist behaviours — another thing that leads to stress.
Trying to be perfect
If you engage in perfectionist behaviours in a bid to feel better about yourself, chances are you’re a highly stressed person. Trying to get everything perfect means you’ll always try to do more or be more, in pursuit of those lofty expectations. This causes stress.
Not being your authentic self
When you don’t feel you can be yourself, you’re bound to feel stressed. People who are afraid to be themselves believe themselves to be so flawed that no one could love them as they are. This means that they create fake personas to try to be what they think others want them to be, so they will be liked. However, continually wearing masks and pretending you’re someone you’re not takes a great toll on mental health. It also creates enormous amounts of stress and anxiety due to the fear of being ‘found out’ as someone unworthy. You can read more about this in our blog How to be your authentic self, so you can lose weight.
You can read more about stress in our blog Signs of stres that almost no one knows about.
Why stress management techniques don’t eliminate stress
Stress management techniques won’t eliminate stress. They will only put it on hold for a while. Let’s look at an example:
Claire arrives home late on a Friday night feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Her boss asked her to fill in for him in an important meeting as well as work back late to help on a project. As a result, Claire didn’t get time for lunch, and her stress levels increased as she tried to meet deadlines for her own clients. She would dearly love to have a quiet weekend, but she had agreed to catch up with family on Saturday, and attend a lunchtime BBQ with friends on Sunday. Given her commitments at work, her next chance for some quiet time is a whole week away.
Because she doesn’t want to disappoint family and friends, Claire decides to do some meditation and burn some aromatherapy oils on Friday night, as a way to de-stress. However, as soon as her meditation is finished, she begins to feel overwhelmed and stressed at the thought of not having any time for herself for at least another week.
As you can see, meditation and aromatherapy don’t eliminate her stress levels. They just keep them at bay for a short period of time. While meditation is great, what Claire really needs to do to eliminate her stress is to work on her people-pleasing habits. Because until she learns to say ‘no’ to other people and put herself first, she will always feel stressed and overwhelmed.
We certainly recommend taking time out for activities such as meditation, yoga or aromatherapy in conjunction with working on the things that cause you stress. However, these stress management techniques should not be used as a replacement for working on your habits and mindset.
How to reduce stress
The truth of the matter is that stress management techniques only serve to help you manage stress. They won’t help you reduce it.
While stress management is important, the only way to permanently reduce your stress levels is to remove the things in your life that are causing you to feel stressed — people-pleasing, comparing yourself to other people, worrying about what others think, being ‘too busy’, trying to control everything, trying to be perfect and carrying around your emotional baggage of shame and embarrassment.
And the way to do this is to add in structure and increase your self-worth.
Build in structure
If you don’t have a plan or schedule, you’ll never have enough time and you’ll always be stressed out, chasing your tail.
Structure means making a plan and then working the plan. It means scheduling time for your workouts, making time to prepare healthy meals, ensuring you get enough rest and ensuring you have time to do all the other things you need to do, including going to work, raising your kids, and enjoying your downtime.
If there are ‘hard’ things that you need to do, schedule them early in the day and get them done first. That way, they don’t hang over your head for the rest of the day.
Structure actually reduces stress because you know you’ve got plenty of time for all the things that matter, and you’ll eliminate the worry of trying to find time to fit everything in.
You can read more about the importance of structure in our blog Two things your weight loss plan must include.
Increase your self-worth
Most of the behaviours in your life that are causing you stress are because you have low self-worth.
- You keep yourself busy because you find value in what you do and achieve, rather than who you are.
- You procrastinate because you’re afraid of getting things wrong or not doing a good enough job.
- You try to control everything around you, because you don’t believe you can cope with the unknown.
- You care about what others think of you because you think so little of yourself.
- You engage in people-pleasing behaviours so other people will like you, because you don’t like yourself.
- You compare yourself with others because you don’t believe you’re good enough as you are.
- You try to be perfect because you don’t believe you’re good enough.
- You’re afraid to be your authentic self because you’re afraid of being judged as unworthy.
Stress management techniques will only get you so far. At the end of the day, the only way to rid yourself of these behaviours and the accompanying stress they bring you, is to face your fears and build your self-worth.
Self-worth is the belief that you are valuable, worthy and loveable regardless of your traits or what’s happening to you. It’s the belief that you deserve love and positive things, despite your faults. Self-worth is a belief based on your worthiness as a human being, rather than your personality traits, physical appearance, or list of achievements. You can read more about this in our blog How low self-worth affects your weight.
Building your self-worth is key to reducing stress in your life, because once you believe you’re worthy as you are, you will no longer need to engage in the behaviours listed above.
Imagine how much easier life would be if you didn’t constantly worry about what others thought about you, whether they gossiped about you behind your back, and how you could make them like you. Imagine how much more relaxed you’d feel, if you weren’t busy ‘doing’ things all the time, or trying get everything ‘right’, and you actually had time to rest and rejuvenate and do things to help you lose weight and feel confident.
Well, the good news is that you can build your self-worth and reduce stress in your life, so you can lose weight and feel confident — and we can help you.
All you need to do is reach out.
