138. Stress vs. Stressors
We use phrases like “I feel so stressed” in our daily language, but what is stress really, and what are stressors? One is your internal response, while the other is an external stimulus. For someone who’s exhausted and on the edge of burnout, understanding the difference might seem inconsequential, but I promise, it’s not.
While we can’t eliminate all stressors from our lives, we can control our reactions to them. When you don’t understand the difference between your experience of stress and the external things that are causing it, you’re left feeling like life just happens to you. On the other hand, being able to separate external stressors from your reaction gives you power and control over your experience to make the changes you want.
Join me this week to hear how learning to distinguish between stress and stressors is the key to finally getting out of the burnout cycle. I’m showing you what stress is, why understanding your stressors matters, how they aren’t as dangerous as our brains think, and my top tips for beginning to harness the power you have over your internal response.
Podcast listeners can join my coaching program and get $500 until January 5th! Sign up for your free consultation HERE to learn how my program can help you change what you are struggling with and achieve your goals.
To ensure you get the coaching you need while this podcast goes on a break, I’m providing 12 organizations with webinar workshops on topics that apply to your organization. If you want a slot, email me by clicking here and we’ll discuss a collaboration!
What You Will Discover:
What stress really is, and why it’s not an emotion.
The difference between acute and chronic stress.
What a stressor is and why understanding them matters.
How stressors aren’t a real threat or problem.
Some common things that put us into an unnecessary stress response.
How distinguishing between stress and stressors gives you power and control over your experience.
Resources:
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62. The Relationship Between Creativity, Stress, and Rest
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hello, everyone, how’s it going? Listen, if you hear at some point in this episode, my heater kick on, I apologize. I turned it off this morning and realized, no, too cold, I need it on. So I’m not really in control when it decides to kick on and off. So it might happen, it might not, but nevertheless I hope you’re doing well.
We are actually going to jump right into today’s podcast episode. But I want you to make sure to listen to the very end because I have a special bonus just for you podcast listeners. This isn’t being shared on my email list, my LinkedIn, my Instagram, anywhere else, just for those of you tuning in. So make sure to stay till the very end. So today we’re going to talk about stress versus stressors. This was one of the distinctions that I made when I was going through burnout that really helped me get out of it. And I still use this today.
It’s about separating what I am experiencing and what is happening outside of me. And it really helps you feel empowered to calm your nervous system, to make conscious, thoughtful decisions and so much more. Now there are whole fields of study that look at stress, that look at the nervous system. I’m not a stress researcher nor do I claim to be an expert in this topic area. But I will say I have studied informally how stress works.
I’m constantly learning about it, reading books, taking trainings, understanding, listening to podcasts, getting coaching, all that stuff. Because I think it’s such a big part of understanding burnout, understanding your experience of overworking, of struggling in your relationship with your colleague or your boss or even your partner.
It comes up so often in coaching with my clients. So I’ve done a lot of work to really understand how stress works, the mechanism of it, what it is, what it’s not. But with that said, I’m not going to cover everything about stress in just one episode. There are whole podcasts about it if you want to nerd out, if you want to the nitty gritty. Today is going to be (a) a bit more of an overview, but (b) specifically about understanding the difference between stress and a stressor.
And also why it’s important for you to understand this as someone who works in a field like public health with lots of challenges, lots of things out of our control like underfunding, not enough staff, rejection, all these other things. If you find this episode helpful, I invite you to go back and listen to episode 62 where I talk about the relationship between creativity and stress. I talk a lot more about the stress response and creativity as a tool to help close or slow the stress cycle. So if you find this episode helpful, I guarantee you’ll also find that episode helpful.
We’ll also leave a link for that episode in the show notes to make it super easy for you. So let’s just start with understanding what stress is because so often in our daily language we say things like, “I’m so stressed, I feel so stressed.” And you’re not alone, I’ve definitely said those things. I even use it in my marketing. I use that terminology because we all identify with it. But stress is not an emotion. We think of stress as an emotion, as a feeling we’re having but it’s not really. Emotions are physical sensations in our body that we can name with one word.
So if I’m going to give a public speech and I have a knot in my stomach and sweaty hands, that might be anxiety. Now, I might tell someone, “I feel so stressed about the speech.” But the emotion I am feeling might actually be anxiety. Similarly if I’m going on a date and I have a knot in my stomach and sweaty hands, that emotion might be excitement. Maybe those sensations are because I’m excited about the date. Often when we say things like, “I am stressed, I am so stressed, I have so much stress.” We are talking about an emotion we’re feeling and we’re not really able to name it.
You might be overwhelmed or anxious or annoyed and instead of naming the actual emotion you are feeling, you just attribute it to this kind of big bucket of stress. But stress is actually a physiological response or a hormonal response depending on how you’re looking at it and discussing it. I like to think of it as the stress response is when your nervous system is activated. It’s that fight, flight, freeze or FON response. Fight is fighting off a threat. Flight is running from that threat or getting away from it. Freeze is being frozen in the face of a threat.
And FON is often a response to appease a person causing harm. We often see this in cases of abuse. But when our nervous system is activated it’s because our brain thinks we are in danger and we need to protect ourselves or stay safe or stay alive. And it’s activated in response to a stressor or an external stimuli or some people like to say an external trigger. I don’t love the word ‘trigger’, so I’m not really going to be using that throughout. But you will see a stressor described that way in other places.
And in science recently, and by recently I mean modern times, we have separated stress into two categories, acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is your nervous system’s reaction to one specific event. For example, if you’re walking your dog and it’s dusk and the sun is disappearing and you hear a strange loud noise behind you. Your brain might perceive that as a potential threat and you become alert. And you might go into fight, flight or freeze. That’s acute stress.
Now, there is this thing called acute stress disorder. I’m not getting into today, I’m not discussing that. I actually don’t have a ton of in-depth knowledge on it. I’m learning more about it. If you’re curious, you can, of course, Google, there’s lots of resources. But I just want to be clear, not getting into that today. But acute stress itself is just your nervous system stress response to one specific event.
Now, chronic stress on the other hand, which many of you might be familiar with because this is the type of stress we talk about a lot in public health, is when your brain is always perceiving a threat, it’s always on response. For example, living in constant poverty. Your brain might always be perceiving there’s a threat to your safety when every day you don’t know how you’ll pay your bills or find food or keep a roof over your head, etc.
Acute stress is the experience that every human will have, it’s important for human survival. But chronic stress on the other hand is something that at least in the modern day is a result of societal and social factors, where someone might be facing constant threat to their safety and survival every single day chronically. Where their stress system is always on, never gets a break, never slows down, never is turned off because of their surroundings, their environment, racism, discrimination, economic factors, all these things, policies that we have in place.
And chronic stress is studied a lot in public health because we look at how that impacts health outcomes such as heart disease and diabetes and many, many other things. So in short, stress is a physiological response to an external stimuli. And this can be a real or perceived threat and stress can be acute or chronic. Stress is not the emotions you feel, overwhelm, dread etc. The stress response can sometimes be like anxiety or fear because your fear brain is responding so there is some nuance there.
But often just think about how many times you say you’re stressed when you’re actually trying to articulate a specific emotion you’re having. Maybe it is overwhelm. Maybe it’s dread. Maybe it’s resentment. Maybe it’s something else. So let’s get into what a stressor is and why it matters. Remember, I said the stress response is in reaction to an external stimuli or a stressor. It’s an external event or situation that our brain, that our nervous system has a reaction to, that might think is a threat, a danger.
You see a bus driving at you, that bus is the stressor, the external stimuli. Your brain might be like, I’m in danger and your nervous system might be activated and your fight, flight or freeze might turn on. Maybe you run out of the street. That’s a stress response. Similarly, maybe you get an email from your boss with negative feedback. That email, what’s written in it is the stressor, is the external stimuli. Your brain might interpret that as danger, as a threat. Your nervous system might be activated and you might avoid opening the email. That’s a stress response.
For most of us, our nervous system is being activated by stressors that don’t actually put us in physical danger. An email from your boss with negative feedback, your sister-in-law not texting you back, your colleague interrupting your presentation, a neighbor complaining about your dog. Those can be stressors, they can be external stimuli but it doesn’t mean you’re in danger. It doesn’t mean physically you’re in danger. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily threats. But your brain is interpreting it to be and then your nervous system is activated and reacting as if it is.
And you might be going into fight, flight, freeze or FON. So in short, stressors are the external stimuli, events or situations that your brain has a reaction to, that triggers your nervous system responding. Your nervous system reaction might be fight, flight, freeze or FON, which is the stress response. But just because your nervous system is reacting, doesn’t mean that that external stimuli or stressor is actually a threat or a problem or that you’re in danger. Why does this matter? Why am I telling you this?
Separating the external stressor from your reaction to it, allows you to have more power and control over how you react and your experience, how you respond, the decisions you make, how you feel. When you don’t understand the difference between a stressor and stress it feels like things are just happening to you and there’s nothing you can do. It also feels like all these external things are causing your emotions, causing your experience, causing your reactions, which makes you feel disempowered.
Your colleague is just stressing you out and making things terrible for you at work and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s not true. that external stressor or stimuli might be what your colleagues says or does but that does not cause your stress. Your brain interpreting what they are saying or doing as a threat, as a problem, that creates your stress response. And your reaction to what your colleague says or does, is what creates your experience of stress, not your colleague.
So let’s go through an example. This came up recently in a coaching call. Let’s say your boss is reviewing your grant report draft and you get an email back with their comments. You open it and you see the document is just full of tracked changes, maybe you panic, you close it out, you avoid looking at it again, you avoid passing your boss in the hallway. What is the stressor in this scenario and what is the stress response? Think about it. The stressor is the external stimuli, what would that be? It would be the document with the tracked changes.
The stress response is you avoiding the paper, avoiding your boss. That’s the flight piece, you’re flighting away, flighting isn’t a word but you all know what I mean. Why is that happening? Because your brain interpreted that document with the tracked changes to be a problem or a threat or something that’s dangerous or you have to avoid or run from, it activated your nervous system in a stress response. How do we know?
Well, if you forward that to your 70 year old father who maybe was a mechanic, he probably wouldn’t react that way because his brain doesn’t interpret that external stimuli, that Word document with a bunch of tracked changes as a threat, as a problem. He probably wouldn’t have an activated nervous system. He probably wouldn’t avoid reading it. When your nervous system is activated it’s because your brain has believed something has gone wrong, that there is a problem, that you are in danger.
But for most of us, the majority of the time this is happening especially if you’re listening to this podcast, you aren’t. You’re reacting to things that aren’t a problem, that aren’t a threat, that don’t put you in physical danger. And listen, this is no shame here. My brain does this too. This still happens to me too because this is the modern world we live in. We evolved as a species from thousands of years ago when literally every day, 24 hours a day all we could focus on was survival. How to get enough food, how to seek shelter, how not to be killed.
And now in modern day, while, yes, there are some places in the world and communities where that is still their reality. For most people, most of you listening, that is not your daily reality but our brain still thinks it is. So here are some common things our brains think are a problem, are a threat, put us in danger, activate our nervous system, we go into a stress response, when typically they don’t.
Number one, rejection, a friend not wanting to hang out, a paper turning down our manuscript, not getting the promotion you put yourself up for.
Number two, getting something wrong, making a mistake on a report, someone editing your grammar, forgetting the time of a meeting and being late.
Number three, other people not liking us, your brother-in-law not supporting you, your neighbor not inviting you to their holiday party, your colleague thinking that you’re not very good at what you do.
Number four, not being good at something, making a new recipe and it not tasting great. Starting a new position not knowing everything, organizing an office party and having people offer to help you or they start changing what you’re doing.
So much of our experience of a stress response is a reaction to external stimuli that aren’t necessarily problems. They don’t put you in danger, they aren’t something you have to be afraid of, but your brain interprets them as if they are a ‘threat’. And you might go into fight, flight, freeze or FON. You might get defensive when your presentation is questioned. You might panic and not respond when your manuscript is sent back for edits. You might try to convince your brother-in-law to like you when they don’t. You might avoid your neighbor after they have a party you weren’t invited to.
And you do this because your brain believes that external thing is a problem but it’s not, it doesn’t have to be. It’s a neutral circumstance, it’s something external that did or did not happen, that’s all. Doesn’t mean anything about you, your worth, your ability, your value. It doesn’t mean you’re in danger. When you can separate that stressor from your response to it, you can access more control. You can separate what’s happening outside of you that you don’t have control over like what other people say or do, from your reaction to it, which you do have some level of control over.
You can give yourself space between that external thing that happened and how your body is feeling. You can pause between what someone else said or did and what your brain is making that mean about you. It gives you a buffer between what’s happening externally, where you might not have control and your internal reaction or experience of it. It gives you an opportunity to respond instead of react. It gives you a chance to see that external event as something neutral, not as a problem or danger. And it allows you to challenge your brain’s immediate assumption or perception or response.
You cannot avoid stressors but you can have an impact on how you react to them. When you separate the stressor from your stress response you can deal with what’s happening more effectively. You can make more helpful decisions about what to do, not to do, say, not to say. You can problem solve. You can figure out how to support yourself. You can learn from it.
So here’s what I want you to do with this information because for some of you, this might be cliquing and helping immediately. But at least in my experience, it took me a little bit of marinating with this and wrestling with this and putting this into practice for me to really understand this and see the benefit of it. So I just want you to start with practicing naming what is the stressor in the situation and what is my stress response to it.
Tomorrow when you see dirty dishes in the sink that your partner hasn’t done, and you notice you’re starting to get upset, you want to start an argument. Ask yourself, what is the stressor in this situation? Was that external stimuli and what is my stress response to it? Am I about to fight, flight, freeze or FON? And if you don’t want to use those terms, fight, flight, freeze or FON, you don’t have to. Just ask yourself, what is my immediate response to this? What is the response I’m having? What am I feeling in my body? What is it that I want to do?
Later this week when your kids interrupt you for the 10th time while you’re trying to work, ask yourself what is the stressor here, what’s the external stimuli? And then was the automatic autopilot response I’m having to it? When your colleague asks you to do something that’s within their scope, not yours, what is the stressor, what’s the external stimuli? And what is your immediate response to it?
Practicing separating your reaction from what’s happening and building the skill of seeing the difference between an external stimuli and your internal response may sound simple or inconsequential but it’s not. You can’t control what happens externally, what others say, or do, don’t say, don’t do, but you have some power over what happens internally, your reaction or your response or how you support yourself or the decisions you make. But in order to harness that internal power, that response, you have to first separate what is external from what is internal and create some space between them and slow it down.
So you can see that your nervous system, even though it’s activated, might be reacting to something that isn’t really a threat, that you’re not in danger, that this isn’t a problem. That what makes it hard and challenging isn’t necessarily the external thing happening, it’s actually your internal response of it or perception of it or assumption of it. And when you immediately go into that response of fight, flight, freeze or FON, it’s hard to process any emotions that come up with it. Your creative thinking and problem solving shuts down.
You might jump to conclusions or make assumptions. It’s not helpful for you and it just makes things so much harder for you. So this week ask yourself these questions. What is the external stimuli in this situation, what is the stressor here? How am I responding to that? Do I like my response? How could I respond differently? Why am I responding this way? I want you to practice that this week.
The last thing, here is a special bonus I want to make sure you all hear and leave with before you shut out of the podcast app. Most of you know by now, the podcast is taking a break in all of 2024. Our last episode will air January 1st, that only about two weeks or so, which is insane. But there is a special podcast listener gift just for you. To recognize and celebrate all the growth you’ve had listening to this podcast, but just the fact that you take the time to listen, to improve yourself, to help yourself. Do you know how many people out in the world aren’t even doing that?
Part of the reason why Facebook, Instagram and TikTok makes so much money is because everyone’s escaping their problems on those apps. And people do it with alcohol and shopping and over-exercising and a million things, it’s very human. But you have made the decision, I’m going to listen to this podcast every single week to help yourself with your problems rather than escape them. And that is worth celebrating.
And I want to help you dive deeper and work with me one-on-one to make the changes you can never make by just listening to a podcast. And for some of you, you’ve been almost using the podcast as a crutch to avoid going deeper, to avoid getting that more in depth help that can really eliminate your burnout. That can help you manage the normal human stress you’re going to face in your life, to help you achieve your goals, improve your confidence, be more productive, set boundaries, say no, have more time, be more fulfilled.
So I’m going to give you $500 off my coaching program enrollment. This bonus is available until January 5th. And this is only available to you the podcast listeners. My consults are publicly closed but I have a special consult calendar for you. It’s not open to the general public. We have it linked in the show notes. You can go there, sign up for a consult, it’s completely free. We’ll talk about what you’re struggling with, what your challenges are, what you want to be different in 2024.
And then I’ll share how my coaching program can help you, if it’s the right fit. If it’s not the right fit for you I will tell you that. And if it is the right fit for you and you decide to join you will get $500 off the cost just for being a podcast listener.
Now, the coaching program for 2024 is slightly different than this year. It’s going to be six months long and cost $6,000. Now, you all, I have to tell you, if you listened to last week’s episode, I quoted the reduction in price for it and it was wrong. And the price for 2024 is a lot less than this year and I’ll explain why in a second. But you all, I’m really bad at math. So bad, any time I do math I ask my Alexa to do it or Jared to do it because I have always been so bad at math. Math and spelling, terrible, absolutely terrible.
But anyways, I was sending some emails to folks in the Not Your Average Productivity course about joining the coaching program if they want to. And I redid the math, I was like, “Oh, yeah, I said that wrong on last week’s podcast episode.” So nevertheless it’s a 40% cost reduction compared to the coaching program this year. You get more sessions so you can go deeper and make sure you eliminate your burnout or at least make the most progress you can towards doing that and it’s going to cost you less.
While the rest of the world is increasing their prices and giving less for more, thanks to shrinkflation, I’m going to do the opposite and here’s why. I was really thinking about this as I was talking to the folks in the Not Your Average Productivity course. I don’t want to do that. I want to actually make it a little easier and more accessible for you all to get help because I know that burning out and the stress you’re experiencing is causing problems across your life in different areas, from financial to career to relationships to fulfillment and everything in between.
And I want to make sure that you could benefit and have access to coaching. Now, $6,000 is still a lot of money, of course, I’m not denying that. And is six months a big time investment? Yes, absolutely. But I truly believe that it is so important for you to invest the time and the effort and the money in eliminating your burnout and working towards that and reducing your stress. And learning how to manage the challenges in your career that you’re going to have the rest of your career so you can achieve more financial success and work life balance and career fulfillment.
I truly believe for so many of you, your burnout is costing you way more, not just in terms of finances or time, but costing you in your happiness and fulfillment and career. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I know you’re in a great place to dive deeper and build off the momentum of what you’ve learned from the podcast and get the most out of coaching and make permanent changes in your life for the better. I know you need this. You needed this yesterday.
And your life is too short to be stuck in burnout, stress, resentment, overwhelm. Your skills, talents, knowledge is too important for you to be stuck at your dead end job with no upward trajectory. Your fulfillment and purpose in life, it’s just wasting away when you could be harnessing it. So that’s why if you join by January 5th, in addition to the program shifting, so it’s actually a 40% reduction in cost and you get more support. You will also get, if you join before January 5th, additional $500 off the cost of the program. And before summer next year your life could be unrecognizable.
That burnout and stress and overwhelm could be gone without it coming back. You’ll know how to prevent it coming back or deal with it if it does. You don’t have to dread waking up to go to work or overworking and missing out on nights and weekends or constantly wondering what am I doing with my life. You don’t have to be second guessing yourself. By summer instead of passing up promotions, you could be seeking out that job that gives you the actual title and pay or job functions you really want.
No longer holding yourself back or doubting yourself. Instead of being that extra actor on set hidden behind the camera, you can be the leading actor in your life. No more thinking, well, one day and then that one day never coming. By next summer you could be prioritizing the things you’ve been putting to the wayside for way too long because you’ll finally have time to prioritize them without it hurting your career. You could be having more success at your career because of the elimination or your burnout, where no one’s going to be thinking you’re a slacker and not a team player, or questioning your ability or if you’re doing a good enough job.
And you’ll know how to juggle all these things in what we call life without dropping the balls or when you do drop a ball because how very human of all of us, you don’t feel like shit and beat yourself up. Do you want 2024 to be different than 2023? Do you want to stop having each new year come around with nothing changing? Do you want to finally accomplish all the things you plan to do each year but never end up doing? Do you want to feel proud and fulfilled in your life and your career by this time next year or even months before?
Do you want to stop wasting the time that you have, the precious time? Time is one of the only resources we can’t get back. If your answer is yes I want you to schedule a consult. Go to the link in the show notes, pick a day and time that works for you, fill out the form. You’ll get a confirmation email with the Zoom info. And then you and I will jump on a call and chat. The last day to join my program is January 5th, to get that $500 discount. Don’t wait, go do it right now. I’ll see you on the consult. And I can’t wait for 2024 to be the year you change your life.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hello, everyone, how’s it going? Listen, if you hear at some point in this episode, my heater kick on, I apologize. I turned it off this morning and realized, no, too cold, I need it on. So I’m not really in control when it decides to kick on and off. So it might happen, it might not, but nevertheless I hope you’re doing well.
We are actually going to jump right into today’s podcast episode. But I want you to make sure to listen to the very end because I have a special bonus just for you podcast listeners. This isn’t being shared on my email list, my LinkedIn, my Instagram, anywhere else, just for those of you tuning in. So make sure to stay till the very end. So today we’re going to talk about stress versus stressors. This was one of the distinctions that I made when I was going through burnout that really helped me get out of it. And I still use this today.
It’s about separating what I am experiencing and what is happening outside of me. And it really helps you feel empowered to calm your nervous system, to make conscious, thoughtful decisions and so much more. Now there are whole fields of study that look at stress, that look at the nervous system. I’m not a stress researcher nor do I claim to be an expert in this topic area. But I will say I have studied informally how stress works.
I’m constantly learning about it, reading books, taking trainings, understanding, listening to podcasts, getting coaching, all that stuff. Because I think it’s such a big part of understanding burnout, understanding your experience of overworking, of struggling in your relationship with your colleague or your boss or even your partner.
It comes up so often in coaching with my clients. So I’ve done a lot of work to really understand how stress works, the mechanism of it, what it is, what it’s not. But with that said, I’m not going to cover everything about stress in just one episode. There are whole podcasts about it if you want to nerd out, if you want to the nitty gritty. Today is going to be (a) a bit more of an overview, but (b) specifically about understanding the difference between stress and a stressor.
And also why it’s important for you to understand this as someone who works in a field like public health with lots of challenges, lots of things out of our control like underfunding, not enough staff, rejection, all these other things. If you find this episode helpful, I invite you to go back and listen to episode 62 where I talk about the relationship between creativity and stress. I talk a lot more about the stress response and creativity as a tool to help close or slow the stress cycle. So if you find this episode helpful, I guarantee you’ll also find that episode helpful.
We’ll also leave a link for that episode in the show notes to make it super easy for you. So let’s just start with understanding what stress is because so often in our daily language we say things like, “I’m so stressed, I feel so stressed.” And you’re not alone, I’ve definitely said those things. I even use it in my marketing. I use that terminology because we all identify with it. But stress is not an emotion. We think of stress as an emotion, as a feeling we’re having but it’s not really. Emotions are physical sensations in our body that we can name with one word.
So if I’m going to give a public speech and I have a knot in my stomach and sweaty hands, that might be anxiety. Now, I might tell someone, “I feel so stressed about the speech.” But the emotion I am feeling might actually be anxiety. Similarly if I’m going on a date and I have a knot in my stomach and sweaty hands, that emotion might be excitement. Maybe those sensations are because I’m excited about the date. Often when we say things like, “I am stressed, I am so stressed, I have so much stress.” We are talking about an emotion we’re feeling and we’re not really able to name it.
You might be overwhelmed or anxious or annoyed and instead of naming the actual emotion you are feeling, you just attribute it to this kind of big bucket of stress. But stress is actually a physiological response or a hormonal response depending on how you’re looking at it and discussing it. I like to think of it as the stress response is when your nervous system is activated. It’s that fight, flight, freeze or FON response. Fight is fighting off a threat. Flight is running from that threat or getting away from it. Freeze is being frozen in the face of a threat.
And FON is often a response to appease a person causing harm. We often see this in cases of abuse. But when our nervous system is activated it’s because our brain thinks we are in danger and we need to protect ourselves or stay safe or stay alive. And it’s activated in response to a stressor or an external stimuli or some people like to say an external trigger. I don’t love the word ‘trigger’, so I’m not really going to be using that throughout. But you will see a stressor described that way in other places.
And in science recently, and by recently I mean modern times, we have separated stress into two categories, acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is your nervous system’s reaction to one specific event. For example, if you’re walking your dog and it’s dusk and the sun is disappearing and you hear a strange loud noise behind you. Your brain might perceive that as a potential threat and you become alert. And you might go into fight, flight or freeze. That’s acute stress.
Now, there is this thing called acute stress disorder. I’m not getting into today, I’m not discussing that. I actually don’t have a ton of in-depth knowledge on it. I’m learning more about it. If you’re curious, you can, of course, Google, there’s lots of resources. But I just want to be clear, not getting into that today. But acute stress itself is just your nervous system stress response to one specific event.
Now, chronic stress on the other hand, which many of you might be familiar with because this is the type of stress we talk about a lot in public health, is when your brain is always perceiving a threat, it’s always on response. For example, living in constant poverty. Your brain might always be perceiving there’s a threat to your safety when every day you don’t know how you’ll pay your bills or find food or keep a roof over your head, etc.
Acute stress is the experience that every human will have, it’s important for human survival. But chronic stress on the other hand is something that at least in the modern day is a result of societal and social factors, where someone might be facing constant threat to their safety and survival every single day chronically. Where their stress system is always on, never gets a break, never slows down, never is turned off because of their surroundings, their environment, racism, discrimination, economic factors, all these things, policies that we have in place.
And chronic stress is studied a lot in public health because we look at how that impacts health outcomes such as heart disease and diabetes and many, many other things. So in short, stress is a physiological response to an external stimuli. And this can be a real or perceived threat and stress can be acute or chronic. Stress is not the emotions you feel, overwhelm, dread etc. The stress response can sometimes be like anxiety or fear because your fear brain is responding so there is some nuance there.
But often just think about how many times you say you’re stressed when you’re actually trying to articulate a specific emotion you’re having. Maybe it is overwhelm. Maybe it’s dread. Maybe it’s resentment. Maybe it’s something else. So let’s get into what a stressor is and why it matters. Remember, I said the stress response is in reaction to an external stimuli or a stressor. It’s an external event or situation that our brain, that our nervous system has a reaction to, that might think is a threat, a danger.
You see a bus driving at you, that bus is the stressor, the external stimuli. Your brain might be like, I’m in danger and your nervous system might be activated and your fight, flight or freeze might turn on. Maybe you run out of the street. That’s a stress response. Similarly, maybe you get an email from your boss with negative feedback. That email, what’s written in it is the stressor, is the external stimuli. Your brain might interpret that as danger, as a threat. Your nervous system might be activated and you might avoid opening the email. That’s a stress response.
For most of us, our nervous system is being activated by stressors that don’t actually put us in physical danger. An email from your boss with negative feedback, your sister-in-law not texting you back, your colleague interrupting your presentation, a neighbor complaining about your dog. Those can be stressors, they can be external stimuli but it doesn’t mean you’re in danger. It doesn’t mean physically you’re in danger. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily threats. But your brain is interpreting it to be and then your nervous system is activated and reacting as if it is.
And you might be going into fight, flight, freeze or FON. So in short, stressors are the external stimuli, events or situations that your brain has a reaction to, that triggers your nervous system responding. Your nervous system reaction might be fight, flight, freeze or FON, which is the stress response. But just because your nervous system is reacting, doesn’t mean that that external stimuli or stressor is actually a threat or a problem or that you’re in danger. Why does this matter? Why am I telling you this?
Separating the external stressor from your reaction to it, allows you to have more power and control over how you react and your experience, how you respond, the decisions you make, how you feel. When you don’t understand the difference between a stressor and stress it feels like things are just happening to you and there’s nothing you can do. It also feels like all these external things are causing your emotions, causing your experience, causing your reactions, which makes you feel disempowered.
Your colleague is just stressing you out and making things terrible for you at work and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s not true. that external stressor or stimuli might be what your colleagues says or does but that does not cause your stress. Your brain interpreting what they are saying or doing as a threat, as a problem, that creates your stress response. And your reaction to what your colleague says or does, is what creates your experience of stress, not your colleague.
So let’s go through an example. This came up recently in a coaching call. Let’s say your boss is reviewing your grant report draft and you get an email back with their comments. You open it and you see the document is just full of tracked changes, maybe you panic, you close it out, you avoid looking at it again, you avoid passing your boss in the hallway. What is the stressor in this scenario and what is the stress response? Think about it. The stressor is the external stimuli, what would that be? It would be the document with the tracked changes.
The stress response is you avoiding the paper, avoiding your boss. That’s the flight piece, you’re flighting away, flighting isn’t a word but you all know what I mean. Why is that happening? Because your brain interpreted that document with the tracked changes to be a problem or a threat or something that’s dangerous or you have to avoid or run from, it activated your nervous system in a stress response. How do we know?
Well, if you forward that to your 70 year old father who maybe was a mechanic, he probably wouldn’t react that way because his brain doesn’t interpret that external stimuli, that Word document with a bunch of tracked changes as a threat, as a problem. He probably wouldn’t have an activated nervous system. He probably wouldn’t avoid reading it. When your nervous system is activated it’s because your brain has believed something has gone wrong, that there is a problem, that you are in danger.
But for most of us, the majority of the time this is happening especially if you’re listening to this podcast, you aren’t. You’re reacting to things that aren’t a problem, that aren’t a threat, that don’t put you in physical danger. And listen, this is no shame here. My brain does this too. This still happens to me too because this is the modern world we live in. We evolved as a species from thousands of years ago when literally every day, 24 hours a day all we could focus on was survival. How to get enough food, how to seek shelter, how not to be killed.
And now in modern day, while, yes, there are some places in the world and communities where that is still their reality. For most people, most of you listening, that is not your daily reality but our brain still thinks it is. So here are some common things our brains think are a problem, are a threat, put us in danger, activate our nervous system, we go into a stress response, when typically they don’t.
Number one, rejection, a friend not wanting to hang out, a paper turning down our manuscript, not getting the promotion you put yourself up for.
Number two, getting something wrong, making a mistake on a report, someone editing your grammar, forgetting the time of a meeting and being late.
Number three, other people not liking us, your brother-in-law not supporting you, your neighbor not inviting you to their holiday party, your colleague thinking that you’re not very good at what you do.
Number four, not being good at something, making a new recipe and it not tasting great. Starting a new position not knowing everything, organizing an office party and having people offer to help you or they start changing what you’re doing.
So much of our experience of a stress response is a reaction to external stimuli that aren’t necessarily problems. They don’t put you in danger, they aren’t something you have to be afraid of, but your brain interprets them as if they are a ‘threat’. And you might go into fight, flight, freeze or FON. You might get defensive when your presentation is questioned. You might panic and not respond when your manuscript is sent back for edits. You might try to convince your brother-in-law to like you when they don’t. You might avoid your neighbor after they have a party you weren’t invited to.
And you do this because your brain believes that external thing is a problem but it’s not, it doesn’t have to be. It’s a neutral circumstance, it’s something external that did or did not happen, that’s all. Doesn’t mean anything about you, your worth, your ability, your value. It doesn’t mean you’re in danger. When you can separate that stressor from your response to it, you can access more control. You can separate what’s happening outside of you that you don’t have control over like what other people say or do, from your reaction to it, which you do have some level of control over.
You can give yourself space between that external thing that happened and how your body is feeling. You can pause between what someone else said or did and what your brain is making that mean about you. It gives you a buffer between what’s happening externally, where you might not have control and your internal reaction or experience of it. It gives you an opportunity to respond instead of react. It gives you a chance to see that external event as something neutral, not as a problem or danger. And it allows you to challenge your brain’s immediate assumption or perception or response.
You cannot avoid stressors but you can have an impact on how you react to them. When you separate the stressor from your stress response you can deal with what’s happening more effectively. You can make more helpful decisions about what to do, not to do, say, not to say. You can problem solve. You can figure out how to support yourself. You can learn from it.
So here’s what I want you to do with this information because for some of you, this might be cliquing and helping immediately. But at least in my experience, it took me a little bit of marinating with this and wrestling with this and putting this into practice for me to really understand this and see the benefit of it. So I just want you to start with practicing naming what is the stressor in the situation and what is my stress response to it.
Tomorrow when you see dirty dishes in the sink that your partner hasn’t done, and you notice you’re starting to get upset, you want to start an argument. Ask yourself, what is the stressor in this situation? Was that external stimuli and what is my stress response to it? Am I about to fight, flight, freeze or FON? And if you don’t want to use those terms, fight, flight, freeze or FON, you don’t have to. Just ask yourself, what is my immediate response to this? What is the response I’m having? What am I feeling in my body? What is it that I want to do?
Later this week when your kids interrupt you for the 10th time while you’re trying to work, ask yourself what is the stressor here, what’s the external stimuli? And then was the automatic autopilot response I’m having to it? When your colleague asks you to do something that’s within their scope, not yours, what is the stressor, what’s the external stimuli? And what is your immediate response to it?
Practicing separating your reaction from what’s happening and building the skill of seeing the difference between an external stimuli and your internal response may sound simple or inconsequential but it’s not. You can’t control what happens externally, what others say, or do, don’t say, don’t do, but you have some power over what happens internally, your reaction or your response or how you support yourself or the decisions you make. But in order to harness that internal power, that response, you have to first separate what is external from what is internal and create some space between them and slow it down.
So you can see that your nervous system, even though it’s activated, might be reacting to something that isn’t really a threat, that you’re not in danger, that this isn’t a problem. That what makes it hard and challenging isn’t necessarily the external thing happening, it’s actually your internal response of it or perception of it or assumption of it. And when you immediately go into that response of fight, flight, freeze or FON, it’s hard to process any emotions that come up with it. Your creative thinking and problem solving shuts down.
You might jump to conclusions or make assumptions. It’s not helpful for you and it just makes things so much harder for you. So this week ask yourself these questions. What is the external stimuli in this situation, what is the stressor here? How am I responding to that? Do I like my response? How could I respond differently? Why am I responding this way? I want you to practice that this week.
The last thing, here is a special bonus I want to make sure you all hear and leave with before you shut out of the podcast app. Most of you know by now, the podcast is taking a break in all of 2024. Our last episode will air January 1st, that only about two weeks or so, which is insane. But there is a special podcast listener gift just for you. To recognize and celebrate all the growth you’ve had listening to this podcast, but just the fact that you take the time to listen, to improve yourself, to help yourself. Do you know how many people out in the world aren’t even doing that?
Part of the reason why Facebook, Instagram and TikTok makes so much money is because everyone’s escaping their problems on those apps. And people do it with alcohol and shopping and over-exercising and a million things, it’s very human. But you have made the decision, I’m going to listen to this podcast every single week to help yourself with your problems rather than escape them. And that is worth celebrating.
And I want to help you dive deeper and work with me one-on-one to make the changes you can never make by just listening to a podcast. And for some of you, you’ve been almost using the podcast as a crutch to avoid going deeper, to avoid getting that more in depth help that can really eliminate your burnout. That can help you manage the normal human stress you’re going to face in your life, to help you achieve your goals, improve your confidence, be more productive, set boundaries, say no, have more time, be more fulfilled.
So I’m going to give you $500 off my coaching program enrollment. This bonus is available until January 5th. And this is only available to you the podcast listeners. My consults are publicly closed but I have a special consult calendar for you. It’s not open to the general public. We have it linked in the show notes. You can go there, sign up for a consult, it’s completely free. We’ll talk about what you’re struggling with, what your challenges are, what you want to be different in 2024.
And then I’ll share how my coaching program can help you, if it’s the right fit. If it’s not the right fit for you I will tell you that. And if it is the right fit for you and you decide to join you will get $500 off the cost just for being a podcast listener.
Now, the coaching program for 2024 is slightly different than this year. It’s going to be six months long and cost $6,000. Now, you all, I have to tell you, if you listened to last week’s episode, I quoted the reduction in price for it and it was wrong. And the price for 2024 is a lot less than this year and I’ll explain why in a second. But you all, I’m really bad at math. So bad, any time I do math I ask my Alexa to do it or Jared to do it because I have always been so bad at math. Math and spelling, terrible, absolutely terrible.
But anyways, I was sending some emails to folks in the Not Your Average Productivity course about joining the coaching program if they want to. And I redid the math, I was like, “Oh, yeah, I said that wrong on last week’s podcast episode.” So nevertheless it’s a 40% cost reduction compared to the coaching program this year. You get more sessions so you can go deeper and make sure you eliminate your burnout or at least make the most progress you can towards doing that and it’s going to cost you less.
While the rest of the world is increasing their prices and giving less for more, thanks to shrinkflation, I’m going to do the opposite and here’s why. I was really thinking about this as I was talking to the folks in the Not Your Average Productivity course. I don’t want to do that. I want to actually make it a little easier and more accessible for you all to get help because I know that burning out and the stress you’re experiencing is causing problems across your life in different areas, from financial to career to relationships to fulfillment and everything in between.
And I want to make sure that you could benefit and have access to coaching. Now, $6,000 is still a lot of money, of course, I’m not denying that. And is six months a big time investment? Yes, absolutely. But I truly believe that it is so important for you to invest the time and the effort and the money in eliminating your burnout and working towards that and reducing your stress. And learning how to manage the challenges in your career that you’re going to have the rest of your career so you can achieve more financial success and work life balance and career fulfillment.
I truly believe for so many of you, your burnout is costing you way more, not just in terms of finances or time, but costing you in your happiness and fulfillment and career. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast, I know you’re in a great place to dive deeper and build off the momentum of what you’ve learned from the podcast and get the most out of coaching and make permanent changes in your life for the better. I know you need this. You needed this yesterday.
And your life is too short to be stuck in burnout, stress, resentment, overwhelm. Your skills, talents, knowledge is too important for you to be stuck at your dead end job with no upward trajectory. Your fulfillment and purpose in life, it’s just wasting away when you could be harnessing it. So that’s why if you join by January 5th, in addition to the program shifting, so it’s actually a 40% reduction in cost and you get more support. You will also get, if you join before January 5th, additional $500 off the cost of the program. And before summer next year your life could be unrecognizable.
That burnout and stress and overwhelm could be gone without it coming back. You’ll know how to prevent it coming back or deal with it if it does. You don’t have to dread waking up to go to work or overworking and missing out on nights and weekends or constantly wondering what am I doing with my life. You don’t have to be second guessing yourself. By summer instead of passing up promotions, you could be seeking out that job that gives you the actual title and pay or job functions you really want.
No longer holding yourself back or doubting yourself. Instead of being that extra actor on set hidden behind the camera, you can be the leading actor in your life. No more thinking, well, one day and then that one day never coming. By next summer you could be prioritizing the things you’ve been putting to the wayside for way too long because you’ll finally have time to prioritize them without it hurting your career. You could be having more success at your career because of the elimination or your burnout, where no one’s going to be thinking you’re a slacker and not a team player, or questioning your ability or if you’re doing a good enough job.
And you’ll know how to juggle all these things in what we call life without dropping the balls or when you do drop a ball because how very human of all of us, you don’t feel like shit and beat yourself up. Do you want 2024 to be different than 2023? Do you want to stop having each new year come around with nothing changing? Do you want to finally accomplish all the things you plan to do each year but never end up doing? Do you want to feel proud and fulfilled in your life and your career by this time next year or even months before?
Do you want to stop wasting the time that you have, the precious time? Time is one of the only resources we can’t get back. If your answer is yes I want you to schedule a consult. Go to the link in the show notes, pick a day and time that works for you, fill out the form. You’ll get a confirmation email with the Zoom info. And then you and I will jump on a call and chat. The last day to join my program is January 5th, to get that $500 discount. Don’t wait, go do it right now. I’ll see you on the consult. And I can’t wait for 2024 to be the year you change your life.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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