8 Smart Ways to Quickly Calm Stress
Science-based tricks that help balance your nervous system
I learned an immensely beneficial set of Help Now Skills after the 2018 lava eruption on the Big Island of Hawaii.
24 fissures erupted one by one, causing lava to flow continuously for three months. Lava covered more than 13 square miles of land and destroyed 700 homes. You never knew when or where the next eruption would occur or where the lava would head next.
Everyone’s stress levels roller coasted non-stop.
These Help Now Skills help relieve stress whether you’ve had a tense day at work or are dealing with the after-effects of a natural disaster.
Chronic Stress Can Become Trauma
Stress is a normal reaction to the modern fast-paced lifestyle most of us lead. Trauma is a common response after an overwhelming event.
Both stress and trauma activate the nervous system.
These biologically based responses are normal and self-protective. And they’re meant to be temporary.
But in our crazy modern times, it’s easy to get carried away by stress or trapped by trauma. In fact, nervous system specialist, Irene Lyon, classifies chronic stress as one form of trauma.
Your survival or emotional brain can take over, repeatedly activating the nervous system and triggering the same stress reactions again and again. You may lose the capacity to stabilize your nervous system. Then even a small stressor can pull you into the destabilized zone.
But you don’t have to stay stuck in an unending cycle of stress or trauma. The self-help skills I’ll share with you today can bring down nervous system activation so you feel better again.
These methods are part of the skill-sets contained in the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) developed by the Trauma Resource Institute and its first Executive Director, Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW. This model is based on cutting-edge research on stress, trauma, and the brain. It also draws from the organization's many years of experience working with people after natural disasters around the world.
These self-help skills are easy to learn, simple to use, and can be shared with others.
What Is the Resilient Zone?
Once stress has hijacked your body and brain, you want to get back to your Resilient Zone as soon as you can.
What is the “Resilient Zone?”
CRM describes the Resilient Zone as a state of well-being in mind, body, and spirit. You’re in your Resilient Zone when you feel capable of handling the stresses of life. It’s also called the “OK Zone,” a term that works well when sharing these skills with children. And some of my friends in the CRM teacher training here in Hawaii dubbed it the “Aloha Zone.”
The Resilient Zone isn’t the same as a “happy zone.” You may feel happy and content sometimes when you’re in the Resilient Zone. But you can also feel challenged. Difficult emotions like anger, annoyance, sadness, or fear can arise.
So, what’s the difference between being in or out of the Resilient Zone? When you’re in the Resilient Zone, you feel able to handle whatever arises. You don’t feel overwhelmed, disabled, or swept away by events or triggers, and their associated emotions.
Some people have big zones of resilience. Others have small ones. It’s different for every individual depending on multiple factors from genetics to environmental stresses to previous life experiences that may have made you more vulnerable.
By using the skills taught in CRM, you can learn to quickly regulate your nervous system and gradually widen your Resilient Zone, so stress and trauma impact you less.
What Happens When You’re Bumped Out of the Resilient Zone?
It’s a natural part of life to get bumped out of your zone of resilience due to stressful events, trauma, or re-triggering of past trauma. When that happens you might naturally return to baseline. Or you can get stuck in the high-stress zone or the low zone. What does that look like?
In the high-stress zone, it’s common to feel:
- On edge
- Hypervigilant
- Anxiety and panic
- Anger or irritability
- Increased pain
- Increased breathing rate
- Increased blood pressure
- Elevated heart rate
- Sweating
As well as other signs and symptoms of stress.
In the low zone, you may feel:
- Disconnected
- Exhausted
- Numb
- Depressed
- Isolated
- Hopeless
Learning to recognize when you’re in your Resilient Zone, Low Zone, or High Zone will empower you to manage stress or the after-effects of trauma more effectively.
Micro-Action: As you move through the coming week, pause at different times during the day to get to know your own zones. Tune into whether you’re in your Resilient, Low, or High Zone. Notice the sensations in your body associated with each zone. Are they pleasant, unpleasant or neutral?
If you find yourself in the Low or High Zone, use one of the 10 Help Now Skills shared below to bring you back into your OK Zone.
10 Help Now Skills to Relieve Stress and Trauma
Help Now skills bring down nervous system activation. Use them whenever you feel stuck in your High or Low Zone, or whenever you feel headed in that direction.
They will help you focus on something other than the distress or overwhelm at hand. They work because they activate parts of the body and brain other than your fear, fight, flight response, and thus can bring you back into balance.
Some of these methods will work better for you than others. So experiment and find out which ones work best for you.
- Drink a glass of water or juice.
- Open your eyes if they’re closed.
- Look around the room (or wherever you are), paying attention to anything that catches your eye.
- Name 6 colours you see in the room or outdoors.
- Count backwards from 20 as you walk around the room.
- If you’re inside, notice the furniture. Touch the surface and notice if it’s hard, soft, rough, ridged, etc.
- Notice the temperature in the room.
- Notice the sounds within the room and/or outside.
- Walk and pay attention to the movement in your arms and legs and how your feet are making contact with the ground.
- Push your hands against the wall or door slowly and notice your muscles pushing.
After using one of the skills, tune into your body and notice the sensations you feel. Are they pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? Are you back into your Resilient Zone or moving closer toward it?
Moving Forward with Help Now! Skills
Over the coming week, try out different Help Now Skills. Then select three or four that work the best for you. Ask yourself:
- What reminders can you put into place to help you remember to use these strategies when you’re bumped out of your Resilient Zone?
- Is there someone in your life who would be willing to help you remember to use the skills when you need them?
These Help Now skills have become an invaluable part of my stress first-aid kit. It’s reassuring to know I’m not a victim of stress. I can do something about it.
Download the Free I-Chill App
Help Now Skills are simple to learn and easy to use. They can be used by anyone who encounters stress in their daily life or anyone who is recovering from trauma.
However, if you feel constantly overwhelmed by stress or trauma, you may need the help of a therapist to fully regain your balance. Therapies like Somatic Experiencing, Organic Intelligence, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be extremely helpful for trauma.
If you do opt for therapy, these Help Now Skills can be an excellent complement to your sessions, helping you regulate stress and trauma responses between appointments. But always check with your therapist first.
These Help Now strategies form your frontline resource for deactivating a stress response. The Community Resiliency Model also offers a range of additional exercises — like tracking, resourcing, grounding, gesturing, and shift and stay — to help you strengthen your resiliency and make you less prone to stress.
You can download its free i-Chill app—available in English and Spanish. Use it whenever stress starts to mount. It will remind you of the Help Now Skills listed above. It will also teach you the additional self-help skills I mention above.
I lost my home and all my possessions—aside from two suitcases and a few other essentials—to the lava.
Life happens. Sometimes it arrives in the form of stressful or traumatic events. Sometimes it’s all the tiny stressors that add up and bring you down. You’ll never be able to completely eliminate stress from your life. But you can learn to regulate your nervous system and get back into your Zone of Resilience. You’ll feel so much better when you do.
Originally published on alwayswellwithin.com
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