What are the emotions of stress? E72
December 13, 2022
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In this episode, we are going to discover the emotions of stress. Why? When you understand which emotions harm your mental and physical health because you are constantly living in stress and survival – you can actually do something about it. How does that sound? Good? Ok, let’s get started.
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When I think about myself before I accepted that I was burned out and had to change, I remember that my life was full of stress. I constantly lived in a state of survival. My fight-and-flight nervous system was activated all day long. I would find reasons to be frustrated and annoyed all the time. To feed the tress, I could get upset easily by what I would call small things these days. I was stuck in thought spirals all day long about situations that happened in the past or worries about the future.
I can see now what kind of life I was living. A life full of stress, always flooding my body with chemicals that kept the stress levels high. And you know what?
I never really realized it. It was my norm.
I thought that’s how you live as an adult, as somebody who wants to do a good job and have a career, as an intelligent woman that wants to show the world what she can achieve. I thought that this is the way you have to live your life in order to achieve everything you wanted to achieve.
Because that was my way of seeing the world for all of my life, why would I think that there was anything wrong with it?
Sure, I wasn’t having a lot of moments where I was truly happy especially in the last few months before I pulled the rip cord. I knew on some level that I was not very healthy as I was not spending time looking after myself. I was distracting myself from looking closer by spending my free time watching TV, eating comfort food and drinking too much alcohol.
And still, I did not see another option.
My mind was not able to come up with another way of living my life until I faced the hard truth and stopped. In this episode, I want to talk more about living a life full of stress and how it is heavily linked to certain emotions. When I look back and observe my old self, it wasn’t the stress that was painful. It was not the avoidance and the unhealthy ways of living that were painful. What was painful were the emotions that I kept feeling living in stress.
My dominant emotions when I was living under constant stress were frustration, guilt, shame, unworthiness, hopelessness, worry and sadness. And let me be clear, you will not have the same set of emotions. We are all unique even in times of stress.
3 Different Types of Stressors
So let’s first think about the connection between emotions and stress. Are emotions the only stressor in our lives? No. There are other stressors but we are much more evolved in these areas to deal with them or treat them.
We have physical stress. That’s injuries through accidents like a broken bone, a dislodged shoulder or a strained muscle. To a degree, humankind can deal with most of these today.
Then we have chemical stress. That includes bacteria, viruses, and toxins in our air, food, and water. Hangovers from too much alcohol. Colds or the flu. We know already a lot in this area but then the last couple of years have shown that we can still get surprised and hugely impacted by new viruses evolving.
And then we get to the emotional stress. Examples that create emotional stress are family tragedies, the loss of a loved one, financial problems, the loss of a job or being unsatisfied with your current job. Emotional stress is created as well by traffic jams, bad internet connections or flight delays.
What are the emotions of stress?
So we might be clearer now on what causes emotional stress, but I want to talk to you about the actual emotions behind it. What are the emotions of stress?
All emotions are chemicals in our body and depending on the situation, depending on the combination of chemicals and in which area in our body they appear, they create different emotions.
Emotions are generally not bad or good, negative or positive. It’s a chemical process in the body that creates a certain emotion as a result when we have an experience. Your body does not know the difference between a good emotion and a bad emotion. It doesn’t see it like that.
It’s just an emotion that gives a signal. In a way, most emotions can be harmful or useful, it’s all relative. But repeating and holding on to certain emotions can become a danger to your health.
Triggering the fight-and-flight nervous system
If you listened to or watched last week’s episode, we talked about the 2 branches of the autonomic nervous system. And we discussed our overuse of the sympathetic nervous system, the one branch, called as well the fight and flight nervous system. It gets switched on when we are in stress. So we know now what kind of stressors turn it on. Either the physical, the chemical or the emotional stressors. But another way of defining if you are living in stress is to look at the current emotional state you are in.
If you know which emotions are likely to make you be in stress and survival, you know that you are overusing one part of the nervous system and that this is harmful over time. It means you are out of balance and your nervous system is unbalanced. So let’s then move on to looking at the total range of emotions so you know exactly how to assess the balance of your nervous system.
What emotions don’t cause stress?
Emotions that are not related to the fight-and-flight nervous system are love, freedom, compassion, gratitude, kindness, compassion, peace, bliss, harmony, and happiness. All of these emotions are associated with the other branch of the nervous system which helps us to recover and restore.
When we feel these emotions we are in a balanced and healthy state of being. In this state of being, we are creative, we can learn, and we can push ourselves out of our comfort zone. We feel safe and aligned with the flow of life. And this is a state we want to have more off in our lives.
Emotions that are useful but triggering
Then let’s look at emotions that are useful and right in certain situations but still can trigger the fight-and-flight response: remorse, concern, sadness, disappointment, slight worry, pain, and selfishness. These are emotions that are good messages for us to look closer at what is going on or what just happened.
For example, it’s completely understandable to feel sad for a while if you lost someone in your life. Everyone would agree that this is a typical and justified emotion to have. The same with disappointment if you did not get a job that you interviewed for.
But the important point is that these emotions still trigger the part of the nervous system that helps us to fight, hide or run – which means as long as you are feeling these emotions – even if they are warranted- you are not in a state of recovery or restoration but you are in a state of stress.
Do you see that this can be harmful if we keep living in these emotional states for a long time? We think we are doing the right thing to keep feeling these emotions because of what happened to us a few days, a few weeks or months ago – but we are not aware that we are weakening our mental and physical health.
These emotions trigger the stress response
And then we have the emotions that are harmful and always strongly trigger the stress response: shame, anxiety, anger, hate, depression, fear, suffering, hopelessness, powerlessness, frustration, competition, envy, jealousy, control, judgement, regret, rage, disgust, and unworthiness. When you feel any of these emotions you can be sure to be living in stress. And the stronger the emotion the harder it is to stop it while you are in it and to get out of that stress cycle.
When we are under high stress and feel strong emotions like the last ones I mentioned, it is hard to disrupt the cycle of thinking and feeling that is keeping this emotional state going on. We are even looking for more excuses, justifications or other people’s approval to feel that way.
People connect based on emotions of stress
Let me give you an example of an organization. Let’s say you have a person angry at their company’s leadership team. This could be because their best friend at work lost their job last year due to a restructuring. The friend has already long found a new job – and is even happier where they work now. That doesn’t mean that the person is still holding a grudge that this happened to them and still carries around hate and anger towards the company’s bosses.
What do they do next to support their emotional state and the angry thoughts that go along with it? They will try to find people that feel similarly. Maybe that other person feels angry at the company, at their boss or even their co-workers. But once these 2 find each other, they will form an alliance.
They are both in the same emotional state of anger and by talking about each other’s reasons to feel angry, they will feel heard and listened to. They will feel that the other person understands them. And that makes them feel good about themselves and supported in their anger.
Stuck in a loop of living in stress
Do you see how easily that can happen? These 2 won’t talk to people that are content or even happy working at this company. No, they would never do that because their emotional states are completely misaligned and they won’t click. But can you see the danger in this and how this can grow inside an organization, a group of friends, or even a family?
If people don’t understand that they are stuck in a loop of living in stress and keeping these emotions from their past alive, they will never be able to step out of it. They will keep harming themselves but after a while even the people in their lives, the team they work with and ultimately the company they work for.
Do you see now how important it is for people to know this? For us to create awareness around these emotions of stress?
Now that you know, you can create awareness around your top stress emotions. Look out for situations in your life where these emotions get triggered. And when you become aware of it, you can change your perspective or your thoughts about the situation to stop yourself from staying too long in this emotional state.
Learn how to get out of the emotions of stress
If I have opened your eyes today to a whole new world and you suddenly see the potential of changing your life and even yourself through this knowledge and tools like this, then check out the ENERGY ACADEMY that I teach. This is exactly what you will learn in-depth and receive all the right tools to implement this in your life. Just imagine how much more time you could spend feeling emotions that you actually want to feel and less of the ones you feel now living in stress.
Thank you so much for reading today’s episode. Managing your emotional state is a huge part of emotional intelligence. And if you can become a master of your emotional state, the sky is the limit. I promise you that!
Two easy ways to show your appreciation!
If you found value in today’s episode, here’s what you can do to show your support:
First, consider making a donation to the podcast. Every little bit helps to cover the costs of producing and hosting the show. And ensures that I can continue to bring you the latest insights and opinions on the topic of energy and improving your life.
Second, leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This helps boost the podcast’s visibility and attract new listeners, which helps me create more tailored content for you to enjoy.
So whether you choose to donate, leave a rating and review, or both, know that you’re an integral part of my vision. You are helping everyone who struggles with burnout or high-stress levels to experience how awesome their life can be. So, thank you for your support!
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