Bolte Counseling

Everybody feels stress on a daily or near daily basis. When we get stressed out it makes it hard for us to focus on tasks, regulate emotions, it even impacts the way our body digests food! Identifying what stress feels like in the body is a helpful tool to help us manage our stress. As simple as it sounds knowing your are stressed is the first step in managing that stress.

Fight

When we go into fight mode we can experience anger, frustration, irritation, annoyance and confrontation. This can look like yelling at friend over something relatively small, or being in a near constant state of annoyance that makes it hard to parent your children.

Flight

Flight mode is where we feel anxious. Our body is using anxiety to tell us to get away from whatever it perceives the threat is. Along with anxiety, in flight mode we also can feel worry, fear, panic and terror. This can look like racing anxious thoughts about an upcoming social interaction, or not being able to shake the feeling of worry about an email you received from your boss.

Freeze

Freeze happens when our bodies decide to shut down as a way to try and block out the threat. Freeze can feel like depression, emotional numbness, low energy, and even dissociation. When our stress brings us to freeze mode we struggle to have the motivation to get out of bed in the morning, or we end up just shutting down and feeling emotionally numb as a way to deal with the stress.

Fawn

Fawn may be a new one for you as it is often overlooked. If you haven’t heard of fawning you can read a little more about it here. Fawning is essentially people pleasing or becoming compliant and nonthreatening. We can spot ourselves being in fawn mode by noticing when we are ignoring our own needs, being codependent, not able to set or maintain our boundaries, and feeling guilt. Fawning can look like saying yes to things you really want to say no but feel unable to do so, or taking on the responsibility of others at the cost of meeting your own needs.

So What Now?

Learning about how stress can feel to our bodies helps us realize when are stressed more quickly. When we know we are stressed we have the power to do something about it! Instead of wondering why you’re screaming at your kids for small things you can instead reflect on if stress may be the cause of your irritation, and if it is stress, then you can address the stress to help yourself feel better instead of just focusing on the the things that happen to set you off. I work with my clients to help them understand what stress feels like to them, and ways for them to manage their stress with habits, coping skills, and tools that work for them.

To learn more about stress and ways to manage it I recommend the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski.