Stress Counselling in Newton Abbot
Stress Counselling Newton Abbot: When You're Heading For Burn Out
“I was diamond on the outside, and I would not break. Inside, though, I was already broken.— Shaun David Hutchinson
Stress is not an inconvenient box you can store under your bed and pretend doesn’t exist. It can be that frazzled feeling that you never quite switch off, or pure burn out – but however it shows up for you, it colours your everyday life.
For some of us, stress trickles in -heavy workload, continual problem solving at work or mentally multi-tasking so much your brain feels like mush. And for others, stress can come out of nowhere when we’re faced with a challenging situation or life change. Counselling help for stress can help to recognise and understand some of the signs that what you’re experiencing is stress.
What are the signs of feeling stressed?
When you’re stressed you might notice physical symptoms in your body. Tight shoulders, headache, heart palpitations or perhaps that exhausted feeling that won’t shift even if you’ve had enough sleep. Stress can play on your emotions too: feeling frazzled, snappy, teary, overwhelmed or finding it hard to concentrate or make decisions.
Stress counselling can help you pump the brakes and understand what your engine is doing- to identify those particular events that rev you up, recognise exactly how your body and mind reacts, and find small, practical steps you can take to help you feel more settled and grounded again.
How Stress Affects Your Body
When you’re stressed, your body goes into fight-or-flight mode. You’ll feel your heart pumping and your senses becoming sharper – your body is flooded with hormones including adrenaline and cortisol. This is awesome if you need to run away from a bear. But horrible if you’re constantly stressed and your body thinks you need to run fight-or-flight mode daily.
Consistent high stress weakens your body and mind’s foundations.
Physical & emotional effects of stress
Physical Impact: Stress that stays unexpressed can make you feel achy all over, cause stomach upsets (IBS, heart burn), headaches, high blood pressure and a weaker immune system. You catch every cold. Your heart is racing while you’re sitting down.
Brain Drain: You can’t concentrate. Making decisions feels laborious. You can’t remember things and your inner judge is shouting criticisms or worrying about everything inside your head.
Behavioural: You snap at people. Stop socialising. Can’t sleep or wake up tired. Drink alcohol, smoke or caffeinate to try and feel normal again.
It’s like your nervous system is having a breakdown but with stress counselling you can learn how to navigate out of overwhelm.
Stress counselling: for when you’re feeling like a over stretched rubber band
Why Stress Happens
Stress is your body’s response to demands. Everyday pressures. Deadlines at work. An argument with your partner. Stress is very individual – what you might breeze past, someone else might find debilitating. It’s about how your mind perceives the threat and whether you believe you have the resources to cope with it.
We tend to think about acute stress versus chronic stress. The former is short term and usually tied to an event or period of time. Chronic stress is the ongoing, relentless stress that leaches your energy and makes you feel like you can’t change your situation.
Helping You Understand Stress
Stress counselling breaks down that awful, heavy feeling stress can bring into smaller chunks. We may work on:
Triggers: Identifying the immediate people, events or demands that set you off.
Loop: Stress often includes a pattern of negative self-talk (“I’m so rubbish” “I can’t do this”) that amplifies a problem that may actually be quite small or solvable.
Price: Identifying what your stress is costing you – your sleep, your temper, your body.
Therapy For Stress
Stress counselling can give you the tools to help you feel less…stressed. It won’t magically make all your deadlines disappear. But it can help your body learn how to switch off and recover when the danger has passed.
Some things we may work on:
Learning to Identify: We can work on identifying and challenging the critical or unproductive thinking patterns that contribute to your stress responses. Once you can recognise these thought patterns, you can begin to take the power away…
Break The Cycle: Practicing breathing techniques and deep relaxation exercises (such as Paced Breathing) that can help to tell your nervous system there is no danger and directly decrease your heart rate and muscle tension.
Change Your Response: We’ll explore the situations that are triggering your stress and practice different ways to respond to stressors. You can build new coping skills that work for you.
Taking that first step towards stress counselling
Stress might make you feel burnt out and like you’re running on empty. It can seem daunting sorting out how you react to stress and find ways to manage it.
Reachng out for help is letting yourself recognise that things aren’t quite working for you and have become too overwhelming. Once you’ve taken that first step of acknowledging it, we can work together to understand what’s going on and explore how to find some solutions.
I offer a calm and nonjudgmental space. There are no agendas or prescriptions. Rather than telling you what to do, I listen to you and ask questions. Questions that might allow you to view your situation differently. I’m here to support you in finding your own path towards feeling more rested and grounded.
Contact me for a free initial consultation to see if working with me, from Newton Abbot or online, is a good fit for you.
Have a question?
Read more about how stress can affect you on my stress blog page
You can find frequently asked questions about Counselling – visit my FAQ page
Or you can read more about how I work with clients – visit my About page