We Can’t Eliminate Stress, So Let’s Make the Most of It!
“When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage.”
~ Kelly McGonigal, The Upside of Stress
Most of us want to reduce or eliminate stress from our lives. But at Courage to Caregivers, we discovered early on that no matter how much we would like to, we can’t take away the stress of caregiving. But we CAN empower caregivers with coping mechanisms to better manage that stress.
Coping mechanisms are strategies that we consciously use to help manage uncomfortable or painful feelings. They help us remain emotionally stable when facing a crisis.
Unfortunately, some coping mechanisms, such as turning to drugs or alcohol, are unhealthy. We want to adopt healthy strategies and responses to help us get through stressful situations faster and with less negative impact on our physical and emotional health. By looking at stress as an opportunity for growth and learning, we can adopt healthy coping mechanisms to help us get through stressful situations faster and with less negative impact on our physical and emotional health.
Author, psychologist, and educator Kelly McGonigal offers a new way to look at stress in her book The Upside of Stress. She says, “Research shows that stress can make us stronger, smarter, and happier – if we learn how to embrace it.” McGonigal teaches that life’s challenges can be a catalyst for positive action, personal growth, and compassion, and she reveals practical strategies for “transforming anxiety into courage, isolation into connection, and adversity into meaning.”
“The most helpful mindset toward stress is one that is flexible, not black or white: to be able to see both sides of stress but choose to see the upside; to feel your own distress and yet also decide to focus on how that stress connects to what you care about,” McGonigal says.
For us, that sentiment falls right in line with our “Seven C’s” of caregiving:
I didn’t CAUSE it.
I can’t CURE it.
I can’t CONTROL it.
I can’t CHANGE it.
Yet, I can have
COURAGE,
COMPASSION,
and I can COPE!
Not all stress is bad. In fact, our ability to respond to stress has helped keep humans alive for countless generations. It’s when we don’t cope or manage our stress effectively that it can take its toll. The key is to find responses and mechanisms that help YOU cope … and grow.