Basics of managing the stress response

- Stress, we've all experienced it. But with recent events across the globe, it is increasing significantly. Stress spikes when we feel a lack of control ability and a lack of predictability over our environments. Pretty much the definition of working from home with kids. Stress also increases when we detect threat, another factor that has heightened in our lives as of late. The mental and physical effects of stress are significant. Evolutionarily speaking, they were positive adaptations. They helped us not get eaten by a saber tooth tiger. But when we're trying to compose an important work email and our dog is barking, and our kids in the next room sound like they're engaging in some sort of demolition derby, that stress response no longer works for us. It takes away our focus. It heightens our agitation. We lose patience. Even our tone of voice changes, which our kids respond to, and their stress response picks up as well. If we don't manage our stress well, we make the entire household pay the price, and we lose productivity for work. Let's focus on six empirically supported ways, to reduce your stress response. Protecting your sleep, getting physical activity, connecting with nature, reaching out for social support, engaging in creativity, and labeling your emotions. Perfection is not the goal here. Some days will go better than others. But if each day you can nudge yourself along these six lines, you will go a long way towards better management of your stress response. That will help you be a more calm and balanced parents, and it will also improve your work productivity as well. Connecting with nature, could be as simple as taking a walk before your workday, or even just bringing in a houseplant. Physical activity could just be starting your day with some stretches or doing some silly dancing with your kids after work. Engaging in creativity could mean doing some drawings with your kids, or even just trying to use up that last ingredient from the back of your pantry. Seeking out social support could be just laughing with your friends over text about a funny video. And finally, labeling your emotions, it's good to teach your children as well. Saying out loud how you're feeling like, "Hey, I'm really sad, "that you can't do swim team this summer," helps those emotions feel more in your control. And it also helps connect you with them as well. When you commit to addressing your stress level, you make yourself more physically and emotionally resilient. And you prime yourself to be better able to enact the tools that you'll learn in this course, and make them far more likely to stick.