It doesn’t rain but it pours: Recognizing a stress storm when you’re in one

For the past eight months, a storm has been brewing in my life.  It began gradually with intermittent squalls and turned into a long drawn out cyclone intent on wreaking havoc in its path.  Please don’t get me wrong, there have been many, many important lessons learned because of the storm.  Those lessons helped me find a much needed calm.  I am better prepared for future storms because of the lessons of the past eight months.  So what has the weather got to do with my stressors and Self-Reg?

When Dr. Shanker talks about a stress cycle, it conjures up an image of a spiralling cyclone.  This image is perfect to illustrate what happens when we are impacted by stressors in several domains at once or we’re impacted by significant stressors in a single domain for too long. These stressors will interact with each other and can grow into a vicious cycle, difficult to escape.
I’ll try to explain what has happened in a way that helps you recognize my unique stressors in each of the five domains. Being able to recognize stressors is a critical step in Self-Reg. It is also complex. My learning to be a better stress detective first began by looking back on past life experiences in my life.  It's helped me to better understand Self-Reg.

My storm started brewing in July when my father ended up in hospital and he was not able to return home because of dementia and other physical health problems. Many extreme emotions came out of this experience. This was a constant drain on my energy reserves during a time of year when  I typically recharge my batteries.  During this emotional fog, my siblings and I had to make many life changing decisions involving doctors, lawyers and realtors. Thinking clearly was difficult. This was new territory for the three of us and each of us approached all this information in different ways. This added to the stress cycle build up in the prosocial domain.  Being gentle with each other as we navigated this new territory was sometimes difficult.

I went into the school year with a lower energy reserve than most years.  The workload was the same, though.  I noticed that my problem solving skills weren’t as sharp.  I struggled to find ways to support students and staff in the steps of Self-Reg. After just being given the opportunity to focus on self-regulation in my role as an associate principal, I really wanted everything to go well.  My frustration with myself consumed my days and I lost many nights of sleep. Thankfully, I was able to connect my low energy with the increased stress and talked about it with my close colleagues.  Just acknowledging where I was at in terms of energy, seemed to help me forge a path ahead.  Many staff members paid close attention to me, making sure that I was taking time to eat and get a few minutes away from the busyness of school each day.  The social and prosocial stressors are many in a busy elementary school.  Many staff are beginning to be stress detectives for each other and there is a feeling of safety and caring within our walls as a result.

Later in the fall, I went to my doctor with what I thought was a minor health concern.  It soon became clear that a swift diagnosis was not to be. There would be months of waiting between many tests with no conclusive results.  The busyness of school did help to keep the extreme emotions of worry and panic away, at least during the day.  But that’s the thing about stress, it will not be ignored.  My sleep was being affected as the emotional stress triggered a biological one. I had to find ways to be calm as the storm was brewing.  

Winter rolled in and with it the unexpected loss of both my husband’s parents.  Once again, my family was plunged into a sea of emotions while trying to navigate through days spent in hospitals, funeral homes, banks and lawyer’s offices.  Too much information, too many decisions, and too many memories were affecting us all but in slightly different ways.  Once again, caring for one another became an additional stressor as each sibling reacted to another’s distress.  Misunderstandings, hurt feelings and concern for the future affected everyone in our family.  The stress from one domain was impacting another domain and the drain on our energy was hard to dismiss.

Sometimes it takes a storm to stop us in our tracks.  I’ve been forced to recognize several stressors during these past few weeks while on a medical leave. I am at home, healing from yet another, rather invasive medical test, With the extra time away from school, I have been able to think more clearly and consider on several stressors in my work life. Identifying hidden stressors is tricky business. Sometimes we don’t recognize a stressor until we remove it.  Or if we do recognize the stressor, we may not fully acknowledge how much it negatively impacts us and so we do nothing about it.

As difficult as it is to admit, I find the social, prosocial and cognitive stressors in school very energy draining. The number of bodies in the building, always moving, always talking and asking questions, requiring that I’m always “on” burns an incredible amount of energy.  At the same time, I’ve always said that a school day without students can be very lonely, too quiet and unrewarding. How can the social aspect of school be both energy zapping and energy boosting?  My morning hugs with kids while on supervision, my classroom lessons and one-on-one chats with students and staff are all reasons I keep going back for more each year.

Working in the trenches with staff, trying to differentiate between stress behavior and misbehavior isn't always straightforward, particularly in the prosocial domain. When my tank is almost empty, it's sometimes easier to slip back into a self-control mindset or miss the signs of stress behavior in my staff. The prosocial stressors of empathy and a sense of justice quickly drain my energy reserves when I don't take time to step back and practice my own Self-Reg first. In these times, the cognitive stressors get triggered and I can't think clearly. There needs to be a balance between helping others and pausing long enough to recognize the signs of my own stress. For me, empathy is a gas guzzling stressor.

Something as simple as eating these past few weeks has been very difficult as I heal up from my most recent medical procedure. Having to be very careful about what I eat has given me the opportunity to take notice of those hidden biological stressors Dr. Shanker talks about.  At work, in a low energy - high tension state, I didn’t notice how my eating was affecting me.  Well, to be honest, I did notice but didn’t think I could make any changes because I felt I didn’t have time. I just needed to eat something quickly so I could move on with my day.  Often, that quick source of nutrition was not a very healthy choice. On days that I'd packed a healthy lunch, I wouldn't always get to it before the end of the day.

These past weeks without the busyness of school,  I’ve had so much more time to think about food in a different way. One day, I timed myself eating a small bowl of oatmeal.  It took me 35 minutes to finish it.  I just sighed when I was done, thinking that at school I have never taken that much time to eat.  I now have to carefully consider the food that goes in my mouth.  Will this cause me pain?  I’ve been so careful to protect my throat from the stress of swallowing.  The result is that I’m enjoying the time I’ve spent preparing foods that are healthy and won’t hurt going down.  I’ve avoided some junk food (except popsicles) and increased the amount of ice water I am drinking, My body has had a chance to not only heal, but be more present while I prepare and consume food.

What’s ahead?  It’s anyone’s guess what the future holds.  Has the storm been hard? Absolutely! But I just know that I wouldn’t have wanted to navigate the past eight months without the knowledge of Self-Reg that I’ve gained through the TMC Foundations courses.  The storms of life offer rich experiences to fine tune our stress detecting skills and find moments of calm. The lessons we learn from applying Self-Reg to our own lives are essential. These lessons stick with us and give us the courage to move forward, knowing there is a way out of the storm.