5 things we do when stressed #314

3:07AM Feb 2, 2020

Speakers:

Keywords:

stressed

tapping

feel

response

overreact

writing prompt

attacked

stress response

assume

deeply

notice

happen

disconnect

bark

point

talking

connecting

change

options

act

Hello, everybody, welcome back to tapping this week. I am Deborah Donnndelinger. And today we're talking and tapping about the things we do when we're stressed. So there are five things that I noticed that we do i do other people do when we're stressed. And this is when we're acting, we sort of act out of character for ourselves. And we actually might be wondering, who the heck am I because this is not my normal state. And the five things I've noticed that we do, our first thing is that we assume the worst. We assume that the situation is that is happening right now is going to stay the same. We assume that other people's intentions are bad. we sort of have a negative slant to how we're interpreting the events around us. There's a somebody I follow on Facebook. She's an unschooling mom, who also does a lot of work around your diversity and trauma. And she said people who come from a traumatized backgrounds tend to see a negative intent, right when there's actually a neutral intent. And I was thinking about that, and that regardless of our background, when we're stressed and feeling under resourced, we can sort of assume negative intent when there isn't any. So that's the first thing we assume the worst. The second thing is that we lash out we overreact, we try to change our external circumstances because we feel trapped. It's like we have this intolerable cognitive dissonance and we must resolve it. We have this tension inside our bodies, and we have to fix it by going outward and changing the circumstances. But others of us do the exact opposite. And actually, we can do both of these. Some of us withdraw. We just give up. We don't interact anymore. We go into our own world, our own bubble, and we get lost in our ruminations and our ideas and we we just think we have no power In fact, both of those lashing out and withdrawing are a state of thinking that we don't have power to change what's happening. And it's our attempt to try to enact change. The other thing we do when we're stressed and wherever we act is we get myopic, we get short sighted, we get tunnel vision. We don't notice their other options. We think there's just one option. And we're assuming the worst. So we think the one option is like the worst possible outcome. So our vision gets more narrow, our purse, our thinking gets more narrow our perspectives, and our idea of possibilities gets narrowed. The last thing we do when we're stressed is we disconnect. we disconnect from ourselves and we disconnect from other people. Peter divine taught in his trauma work talks about you know, you have the fight or flight response, but that a healthy and a human response to trauma to a traumatic situation is to connect when my son had surgery and was coming in anatomist Asia, I was there in the operating room connecting with him. Because the connecting as you come in and out of anesthesia to go under as you're coming out is a way to help calm the response. So connecting is a very healthy and resourceful way to deal with things that are difficult.

Former stress never reacts, reacting,

many people first response is to disconnect, we stopped paying attention to our own intuition. And we also stopped paying attention to other people.

So do you recognize any of these responses in yourself?

What do you do when you're stressed? And you're acting out of character for yourself? Some of you know that I'm studying with Personality Hacker and I'm getting certified in their personality profiling system. And there, they of course, work with the Myers Briggs system and they're 16 types. But one of the things that Antonio Josh talks about and Joel I don't know his last name right now, Joel. Okay. her partner is that There are different stress responses based on your type. So if you know your Myers Briggs type, check out and look at stress response for your type and see if you get any insights. For myself, I know I'm learning that I do get quick tempered, and I want to take immediate action to fix what feels like the problem. And what's helpful to me is actually to pause and notice how I'm feeling. And notice where I'm feeling vulnerable.

So let's do some tapping

around what we do when we're stressed. And we'll cover you know, a couple of these different things that we talked about.

And let's see what happens.

So we're not really trying to fix anything. But wouldn't it be great if we could become less reactive and more centered when we encounter stress? Wouldn't it be great if we become more emotionally resilient, more flexible, more resilience, the best word so that we encounter something that is unconscious are not how we like, we don't

crack, we don't get brittle.

But we sort of

let it bounce off of us. We keep our center, we keep our shape, and we notice what's happening, but we don't let it Pierce us to the core. That's what my goal is here with today. And all the work that I do with people is how can we become more emotionally resilient? So that we stay centered when bad things happen. We don't just collapse into this place of fear. And if you do collapse, it's really okay. I don't anybody to feel like I'm judging or shaming you. bad stuff happens and it can throw us off. And that's really okay. This is more talking about stresses that happen in our day to day lives, our weeks and our months, not like the major life shattering changes that can really store us for a loop. Those are a whole nother type of stress response that I'm not talking about here. Okay, we're tapping on the side of the hand. If you're new to tapping, make sure you know what the points are. Please don't just listen. I want you to tap along With me, the physical act of tapping, especially if you're new to it changes your body's response to things. Once you've been tapping for a while,

some of us can actually imagine the points being tapped.

But if you're new to tapping, I need you to have the physical experience of tapping on these acupressure points on your body that help change your relationship to the words and the memories and the thoughts and they actually can affect your nervous system and how you respond to stress.

Okay, on the side of the hand,

even though I overreact when I get stressed, and repeat after me out loud, please. And when I think about I'm actually a little bit embarrassed at how quickly I overreact

deeply and completely accept myself anyway.

Even though I overreact when I get stressed.

I just want to lash out and fix whatever's in my way.

I deeply and completely accept myself anyway.

Even though I overreact when I get stressed.

Doesn't everybody ever react when they get stressed?

Maybe not.

I deeply and completely accept myself and the way I handle stress. Moving through the points I begin with the eyebrow. I overreact when I get stressed.

I lash out at the world.

I get short tempered

I get impatient.

Now we're on the chin point. You've been following along with the points. I over react.

I just want the problem to go away.

I have such a quick response. It doesn't even register what I'm doing.

I overreact when I feel stressed.

Stop there gentle breath, relax your hands.

And see if you notice whether a new father inside has shown up for you. What's occurred to me is that it's not that when I feel stressed is when I feel attacked, but I want to react back. So it's like some, some personal freedom a personal value has been attacked and I must defend it. side of the hand, even though I feel attacked,

and I will defend myself.

I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even though I noticed that I feel attacked,

like my freedom of my values are at stake.

I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even though I overreact when I feel like I'm being constrained or challenged.

I deeply and completely accept myself.

Even to the point someone the eyebrow feeling attacked.

side of the eye.

Feeling restricted

under the eye,

feeling invisible

under the nose, feeling attacked.

Chin point feeling defensive

collarbone

Feeling attacked.

Let's add in the liver point we don't always use it. The liver point is along the crease of the breast if you're female, the bottom of the breast dead center, man Oh, just be a couple of inches below the nipple. So tapping or rubbing they're called the anchor point. Sometimes you might find a sore slow load. Yeah feeling attacked under the arm, noticing how quickly I defend myself.

top of the head

feeling attacked.

Okay, stop there.

Nice breath.

So that's one aspect of feeling stressed as we feel attack we have to defend ourselves might be that our sense of values or freedom or action or identity has been challenged. Another aspect that I've already mentioned is that we withdraw because we feel like we are powerless over the situation.

We give up

it's too much it's going to stay like this. There are no solutions and we just feel stuck. This is a more subtle kind of stress side of the hand even though I think this is going to last forever

and there's nothing I can do about it.

I deeply and completely accept myself anyway.

Even though I don't see any solutions to this problem.

I feel stuck and stressed

deeply and completely accept myself anyway.

Even though I feel stranded

and there's no way for heard

I deeply and completely except myself anyway.

I feel stuck.

I'm going to be here forever

this will never change.

I feel so stuck.

I don't see any options.

I don't see a way out

some giving up

feeling sad.

I don't like giving up.

But I don't know what else to do.

I don't see other options.

I don't know what else to do here.

I'm Kevin up.

Finish up to the points.

Another gentle breath.

Just notice how you feel now whether you feel calmer, more compassionate for yourself starting to realize and notice how myopic you do get when you're stressed. And there are the other potentials. A couple of practical approaches after you've done some tapping when you're in a stressful situation. A couple of writing prompts I guess, I should say is you can say what am i assuming here? command? Are there three other things I could assume instead? So what am i assuming here? And the last three other things that you could assume instead? The second writing prompt is what am I afraid of? What do I think's going to happen?

And write them out.

So for example, we're going on a big RV trip. In the summer, and we're taking our dog and our cat a little bit stressful. And I'm worried about when we have to leave our dog for like six hours during the day. It'll be like in a shady spot with air conditioning. But I'm concerned about like, well, she bark, and she's been arguing before with us. And I'm sort of stressed, I'm like, okay, we can't go on this trip. Let's think about what is it exactly that I'm worried about. And I'm worried that she'll bark during the day. And we'll get kicked out of the campground. And my response to that is like, oh, that would be absolutely horrible. But it actually isn't that big of a deal. And we probably wouldn't get kicked out. We'd be warned. And she probably won't bark. She tends not to bark and as somebody gets too close to the unit, and that's actually an okay reason to bark. So I have this exaggerated response, like it's going to be really bad. And then as I start to like lay it out what actually do I think's going to happen? I can see that it's not as big of a deal as I thought. So my nervous system tends to exaggerate things and their consequences. Because I have had enough situations where big things happen that I wasn't ready for big, big, bad things. And so my I'm still even despite, you know, I've been tapping since 2006. And I still have a slightly exaggerated negative response to things that fell out of my control, especially if it involves other people being mad at me. So the second writing prompt is what's the worst thing that can happen? How possible is it? And what can I can I live with it? Or can I mitigate it? The third writing prompt is, Who can I reach out to to help me with this? We tend to disconnect and we also have only one way of interacting with the world. But if we interact with people have different personality types, they can bring a groundedness or compassion or a perspective that gives us ideas we've never thought about. So again, just listing three things, three people that might help us, it gives us options and get us it gets us out of that, that tunnel vision. My mother lives in Spain and I, she's her health is okay. She's not on her deathbed at all. But I'm sort of obsessed with the fact that I have no idea how to handle things and her affairs. When she dies. I can't even imagine going to Spain and dealing with the paperwork and corporate like it just I just get completely stuck. So I was texting with another mom who is a very practical and just get things done. I'm like a friend. When my mom dies, will you come to Spain with me and help me because she cuz she knows how to make things happen on it on a very practical level. She's like, yeah, I'll come You know, like, it won't be very good circumstances, but the outcome and I just felt so much better. Like just because I don't know how to handle it. is a way to I could ask for help. So the things that we're stressing about either short term or long term, once we do some tapping, we can then get into our logical brainstorming phase and look at what are the what do i think is going to happen here? And how likely is it to use our thinking process to look for some solutions was the panel the stress of the situation? Okay, the things we do when we're stressed, be nice to yourself. Understand that you're going to act differently than you normally are. Look at how can you reduce this

your threshold for stress

and tapping is definitely your friend either in the moment, or preventively, his daily self care routine, so that you don't overreact,

that you're not quite at

your edge. You're not quite burning the candle on both ends.

Okay, hope this makes sense. hope it's helpful, and until next time, keep on tapping Thanks everybody. Bye