Demi: [00:00:00] I’m so stressed out today. I am not doing anything.
Simon: All right, let’s deal with that cuz you are gonna struggle with any new behaviors whilst you are stressed.
Demi: Mm. You better not annoy me though.
Simon: Yeah, there’s pretty much zero
chance of me not annoying you.
Okay, Demi. So today we need to help you work out the best way for you to remove or deal with stress. So there’s three different steps to dealing with stress. The first one being remove, the second being recontextualize, and the third being coping strategies. So step one, let’s see if we can remove that stress from your life.
Demi: Easy.
Simon: Hold on, hold on. I’m the stress?
Demi: Always.
Simon: Well. Damn. Okay. Okay, [00:01:00] so back on track. The first and best way for us to deal with stress. Is to remove the source of stress from your life. This works best as the stress has now gone all together. However, in this case, I’m going nowhere. However, sometimes you won’t be able to remove the stress.
So in that case, we’ll try step two, which is recontextualize . It can be hard to get your head around recontextualization and even hard to say to be fair. But essentially what it means is that all information enters our brain neutrally. After this, it’s our experience and our current situation that determines whether this neutral information has a green filter put on it, as in positive.
Or a red filter put onto it, as in this is negative. For example, let’s imagine that your car broke down.
[00:02:00] Now if you
were heading to the gym, this could be seen as a positive thing if you weren’t really looking forward to going to the gym anyway. And the fix is not gonna be very hard. Or it could be seen as a negative thing if you were really looking forward to going to the gym and felt like you were progressing.
Demi: Yeah, you’re just annoying regardless of what filter I put onto you.
Simon: Okay, fair enough. So in this situation, we can’t recontextualize for the information to become positive. So I suppose we’re gonna have to look at step three. Coping strategies. So coping strategies are behaviors that we use to better deal with our stress.
They fall into two categories, which is playing the thoughts through or distraction. Playing the thoughts through is effectively getting the cause of the stress off your chest. How you go about this will be really individual, but you might go for a drive and a think about [00:03:00] the situation. You may possibly have a conversation or a call with a friend or a family member, or alternatively, some people just like going for a walk and just thinking through what
happened.
Demi: Yeah,
okay. But sometimes I’m just not in the mood to think about.
Simon: Yep. Very fair.
Sometimes when the stress is high and our emotions are strong, we’re not really in a state to play the thought through, and in this case, we could instead use distraction coping mechanisms. These can literally be anything that you genuinely find fun.
Demi: Yeah.
Simon: And is not detrimental to your long-term goals. Okay, so in summary, if stressed, the first thing to do is identify what the cause of the stress is. Then ask yourself, could I remove this cause of stress? If that’s not possible, then go to [00:04:00] option two, recontextualize i e. Can you see the cause in a less stressful light?
And if neither of those will work, instead, you can use coping strategies
Demi: This reason
and this
reason. And this other one, and eat too much blue cheese
and like…
Simon: So from the one side, ask yourself, are you in a mental head space to think about the situation and play your thoughts through? And if not, instead, what could you do that would be fun and would distract you from the cause of the stress
Once you’ve worked out your strategy, make a note of it, test it out, write down what happens, and then reflect on if it works or not. If yes, keep going with this as your way of dealing with this stress. If no, come up with a new solution and test that out instead. Outside of [00:05:00] that, everyone, I hope that’s been useful for you.
Obviously, if you have any questions, throw them down in the comments and do make sure you subscribe or like our page so that you’ll see any future videos we have for you. Outside of that, have a good day and I’ll see you next time.