Prefer to listen?
This blog post is taken from our podcast on the same topic which you can listen to here.
Stress is something that clients might bring to the coaching space.
Generally people are going to come to coaching because they want to change something or to discuss a goal to strive for, but it might be they want to change the thing that’s causing them stress.
And change is stressful as well.
About Stress
Stress is normal, sometimes useful. Helpful stress is called eustress.
Something that perhaps inspires us, puts us under pressure. It could be a job promotion that’s quite exciting, but also, stressful. We might even feel and interpret that stress as a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and opportunity.
Standing on stage to give a presentation is a good example of this. It actually gives you that bit of energy.
Then we’ve got the opposite negative type of stress: Distress.
That negative stress, that distress, if we go to the correct terminology of it, that can have adverse effects on our mind and our body, depending on whether it’s short term acute or chronic long term stress.
Short term, acute stress is perhaps not as harmful.
If a zebra is munching the grass and a lion is approaching. Once the lion starts running, the zebra starts running. But once the lion has stopped running because it’s eaten something else or just given up, the zebra goes back to that homeostasis of not being stressed anymore. And that’s fine. Zebras live quite healthy lives, except for being eaten by lions.
That’s really what the stress response is for, short term stress that comes and goes quite quickly, whether it’s a lion or something else.
In these instances, the body is having a physiological response, a stress response where adrenaline and cortisol is being released and that’s for us, or the zebra to get away or to fight.
In order to kick and fight or run, that zebra is going to need energy, it’s going to need sugar so that its muscles can fire and so on. So, we’ve got this physiological response of increased heart rate, blood flow to the muscles, sugar being released, rapid breathing and that hyper alertness. And our non essential functions within our body shut down temporarily, for example, in that moment, our body doesn’t need to digest, so it’s stops trying to do that. And then when it’s over our parasympathetic nervous system kicks. It’s a lot slower to respond but it calms everything down and brings our zebras and ourselves back to homeostasis, so that we’re nice and calm.
We’ve all experienced that in one form or another, it happens on the road if something is happening and we need to brake suddenly.
Note: other stress responses are available, but we’re just going to touch on the surface of this for this article.
As humans, and one of the reasons why chronic stress is so harmful for us, is that we have the ability to conjure up that event time and again. We will probably do lots of replaying of it and what might have been. We have these wonderful minds that help to think, but in those moments, that’s not useful because we think about and overthink about those moments. And that can lead us on to chronic stress.
In the workplace, obviously for medics, they might well be experiencing stress time and again, so that acute stress might be happening for them more than it would for other people in normal life. It depends on your workplace. I guess people in normal life might have very stressful workplaces as well, but for a GP who is under time pressure stress, they might constantly be experiencing that fight or flight stress just because they’re behind and they’re trying to get through their workload, which might well be impossible in the time constraints that they have.
Amygdala Hijack
The amygdala is the part of the brain that react to situations and trigger the body to release the stress hormones, these override our prefrontal cortex, our rational reasoning part. When this happens, it is often referred to as an amygdala hijack. We call it the amygdala hijack because that is the part of the brain that takes over and it suppresses the prefrontal cortex. We temporarily lose the power of rational thought.
Chronic Stress.
Chronic Stress is the type that lasts for a longer period of time, perhaps years for some people. People may experience chronic stress if they’ve got an ongoing money problem, difficulties in a relationship, trouble at work, or a stressful work environment. We’re working with doctors who are in emergency medicine, under time pressures, all of those things, and equally their patients will be under stress with health concerns and so on.
Chronic stress also comes up then when that stressor or trigger is constantly around. It would be like the lion constantly watching the zebra, ready to pounce. The stress response is being reactivated over and over and over again and people don’t get that time to reset back to calm at all or for a decent amount of time.
And for some people, even if the stressor isn’t there, they’re not able to calm their nervous system down. It’s what’s termed as dysregulated, they stay on hyper alert mode. The parasympathetic nervous system isn’t doing its job properly and not getting us back to balance.
It’s often because of the thinking that people are doing that they stay in that state of stress. It’s that ability to revisit the problem and then worry about it potentially happening again, or to project into the future and have anxiety about what might happen. There’s nothing happening, but revisiting something in our thoughts causes the stress.
Our clever brains can have a negative impact on us sometimes and not be helpful.
All of these situations, and the chronic stress that they bring can have a long term impact on us physiologically and emotionally and mentally.
The World Health Organisation on their website says that
“stress is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives.
Everyone experiences stress to some degree and the way we respond to stress, however, makes a big difference to our overall wellbeing.”
If we can handle our response to stress and manage our thinking, then we can get out of that cycle of constantly being in a stressful place.
If we’re in a situation, maybe within an organisation or a system where we are being exposed to constant stressors, that’s not going to be particularly helpful. It could well be that the environment is not serving us well in terms of our stress. And that’s something to recognise. It’s not just about our thinking. There may well be things going on that are not helpful to us. Things that are outside of our control.
How Can We Help Our Coachees With Stress?
We’re not going to be diagnosing stress in the coaching room. That’s not our job. People will recognise, generally, if something is stressing them out or they might recognise they need to relax more or perhaps to respond differently.
There’s a lot that can help with stress, but everyone’s situation is going to be different and we can’t say there’s one way to deal with a client’s stress. So, first of all we want to let them talk about what’s going on. A very person centred approach of letting them tell their story, finding out what the stress is all about and playing back maybe things that are just a story and not real. Asking questions about what is real and what assumptions they’re making.
If a coachee is saying that they’re just stressed, using a ‘wheel of stress’ can be really helpful. Helping them to identify all the things that might be contributing to their stress, placing them on the wheel, and then scoring them on a scale of 1 to 10, how much they are impacted by them at the moment. And it may be that some things that they think are causing them stress are actually quite low scoring. This can help them to gain some perspective on what their stressors actually are.
If you’ve got a client that we think is telling themselves a story and that the stressor may be in that story, rather than real, the ABCDE model from cognitive behavioural coaching can be useful.
This is where we explore:
A) What’s the activating event?
B) What’s your belief about this event?
C) What’s the consequence, which will probably be stress.
D) And then being able to just discuss that with them to get to a good place, to get to a better understanding of what’s actually going on. (Dispute)
E) This might result in them having a better emotional response and removing the stress. Or finding a more effective way of working through things.
The SPACE model could also be helpful in terms of understanding what is going on for them when they experience stress. Understanding what is the emotion they are experiencing, their physiology, their thinking and what action they’re taking or could be taking to help resolve it. You can listen to our podcast on the SPACE model here.
In social situations, or the workplace, perhaps the SCARF model could be useful. Understanding what’s going, what the stressor is that’s producing a threat response for them. You can find out more about the SCARF model here.
These are all models we cover on our transformational coaching diploma.
Managing Stress
It might be that our coaches need some help to develop a strategy for managing stress, how to look after themselves, get the adrenaline out of their bodies. That could be through movement, or breathing exercises. Our breath can help to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system and get everything back to calm. In terms of the fight or flight response, breathing really is the only thing we can control.
We talk a lot about not being directive and not being leading in our coaching conversations, but sharing that information with people who may not have thought about how they can manage their stress can be really helpful. To share information and then coach around how they could use it, is useful in the coaching room.
Also helping them to look for new resources to help them deal with a situation or manage that stress. Looking for support within their network, their family, their friends, that can be useful as well in the coaching space. Even perhaps learning new hobbies or learning new skills, because bringing more positive experiences into your life can be useful in combating stress.
Other areas to be explored with your clients could be understanding boundaries, values, and priorities.
Find out more about our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma and get in touch if you have any questions about either.
The Transformational Coaching Diploma is
Approved by the UK & International Health Coaching Association for the purposes of Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
The Transformational Coaching Diploma is
Accredited By:
Policies & Disclosures
Provider of The Transformational Coaching Diploma For:
Copyright © 2020 – 2024 Your Coaching Journey Limited | All Rights Reserved
Registered in England & Wales | Company Number 13233094
Registered Office: 13 Edyvean Close, Rugby, Warwickshire, CV22 6LD
V.A.T. Reg. No. 450175416

