Sometimes, a small annoyance is nothing but a small annoyance.
Your coffee spills.
People respond too late.
You fail to take the right turn when driving.
Your colleague throws one last question at you.
Usually, you would shrug it off.
However, on other occasions, that very same situation becomes utterly unbearable.
Your patience wears out more easily. Every comment takes on a new meaning. Small issues begin to seem as though it’s the last straw.
Then you ask yourself:
“Why am I responding in this manner?”
It turns out that, usually, you have very little to do with that particular event and everything to do with how much your body and mind had already been burdened.
This is where the study of stress reactions comes into play.
The stress reaction does not usually arise from the last straw.
It is often cumulative.
Difficult start to the day.
Being swamped with responsibilities.
Lack of sleep.
That unfinished argument.
Workplace stress.
Anxiety about something beyond your control.
Before you reach the little thing, your emotional reserves could be depleted.
Think about having a number of bags at once.
Suddenly someone gives you another, lightweight bag to carry.
The additional bag is not necessarily a heavy load.
However, since you are holding several bags in your hands, it is just too much.
The stress response can happen in the same way.
The last straw is not necessarily a big deal.
It is just the last straw when you are already at full capacity.
As stress increases, the emotions become more difficult to control.
You can be more reactive to criticisms.
Less tolerant of delays.
Irritated by noises.
Quick to conclude that someone was being rude because he or she had sent a very brief message.
This doesn’t mean that all of a sudden you have become unreasonable.
It means that both stress and emotions can affect your perception of what is going on around you.
What used to be neutral comments can be perceived as negative.
Small errors could appear to be major failures.
Delays in responding can seem like rejection.
The environment hasn’t really changed.
What has is your emotional condition.
Stress tends to be something that people recognize after it reaches an evident level.
However, your body could pick up on it much sooner than you think.
Your breathing speeds up.
Your shoulders tighten.
Your jaw tenses.
You find it hard to concentrate.
Your sleep becomes more shallow.
You find yourself moving from one task to the next without finishing anything that you start.
This could all be part of your stress reaction.
When you realize that you are stressed, it could already have been trying to get your attention for hours, if not days.
That is why it is important to pay attention to your emotions.
It will give you more time to react before you feel overwhelmed.
One sign of emotional overload is that simple things begin to require too much effort.
Choosing what to eat feels annoying.
Answering a message feels like another task.
Making a small decision feels strangely difficult.
Someone asking, “What do you want to do?” can feel like pressure instead of a simple question.
When you are feeling overwhelmed, your mind may already be processing too many demands at once.
This can reduce the amount of attention and patience available for new decisions.
That is why a person who normally handles problems calmly may suddenly say:
“I cannot deal with one more thing.”
Sometimes, that sentence is more accurate than it sounds.
If someone tries to visualize what emotional overload is, he/she might see an individual crying or visibly distraught.
However, it might be quite different.
You may begin acting irritable.
You will probably cease answering others.
You might become abnormally quiet.
You might feel numb.
You might delay your actions with something that you could do easily.
You might begin to get angry about things that would not matter to you before.
Emotional overload might disguise itself differently.
At times, it will show itself as impatience.
At times, as withdrawal.
And sometimes just as everything being too much.
Identifying your own kind of emotional overload will help you identify when you should relieve the pressure instead of criticizing yourself for overreacting.
Irritability can be easily misinterpreted.
You might ask yourself:
Why is everyone bothering me today?
The truth is that no one around you has really done anything different at all.
It could be just the case that you have less emotional room left.
As you become stressed out, your patience can become shorter.
Distractions seem more disturbing.
Repesitions seem more annoying.
Noises seem louder.
This is why irritability can be a sign that your mental workload has gotten too high.
Rather than asking:
“Why do I feel so irritated by everyone?”
it may be helpful to ask:
“How much am I being stressed right now?”
One of the best things you can do when under stress is make a distinction between your trigger and your load.
Perhaps the remark made by your co-worker made you angry.
This is your trigger.
But then you might have gotten inadequate sleep, have three deadlines to meet, and have been spending all morning trying to solve a personal problem.
This is your load.
Lack of awareness under stress makes it easy to put the full blame for the emotional response on the most recent incident.
You will say to yourself:
That remark has destroyed my whole day.
But in reality, the remark came on top of a hard day.
Understanding this distinction will make it easier for you to be fair both to yourself and to others.
Stress can make people feel urgency.
Everything needs to be done right away.
You should reply to that message right away.
You should finish that assignment right away.
You should settle that dispute right away.
You should make that decision right away.
However, everything does not get easier because of the urgency with which you handle it.
Sometimes, emotional self-regulation involves waiting till you are thinking clearer before having that conversation.
Sometimes, it involves taking a quick break before sending your reply.
Sometimes, it involves realizing that some of those tasks can wait for the next day.
Sometimes, slowing down is not an act of avoidance but rather an act of effectiveness.
When people face stress, it is common for them to ask:
How can I learn to deal with all this?
This is often a helpful response.
However, another response that is also useful includes:
What do I not have to do at the moment?
You might not need another system of productivity.
You might need less commitments on your schedule.
You might not need to be more patient with each demand.
You might need to refuse some of them.
You might not need to resolve every problem at once.
Some of them could wait.
ealing with stress does not always consist of building your capacity to handle more things.
It can consist of handling less.
You do not have to get exhausted to start dealing with stress.
Listen to the little things.
Have you become more irritable than normal?
Is even making simple decisions wearing you out?
Are you having trouble concentrating on anything?
Are you staying away from other people because talking is hard work?
Are you unable to derive pleasure from activities that usually make you happy?
Do you feel like you are always on the go but never really getting anywhere?
Just because these signs are not necessarily a problem does not mean they cannot tell you something important.
A strong reaction might be followed by a second layer of frustration.
First, you feel frustrated.
Next, you get frustrated because you are feeling frustrated.
“You are telling yourself that”
It is such a tiny issue.
“Why am I overreacting like this?”
However, self-criticism is not going to lighten your load.
The better option is to engage your curiosity.
What was happening before this?
How tired am I?
What have I been stressing about?
Did I have some time to rest?
Do I need to react to this right now?
Not all small things are necessarily big simply because they matter.
Some are big because there is too much that already exists beneath them.
In CHE Academy, self-awareness involves realizing not just how you reacted but what you carried prior to reacting.
The idea is not to be someone who never experiences stress or irritation.
The idea is rather to be aware that your emotional capacity is running low and to start making better decisions before the small annoyance becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
For it is possible that the most valuable question to ask is not:
“Why did such a small thing upset me?”
But rather:
“What have I been carrying?”
