If you’re a high-achieving, health-conscious woman who feels like stress is taking over your life, you’re not alone. The constant pressure to excel at work, manage your home, and stay on top of your health can feel overwhelming and unmanageable.

You might be struggling with low energy, poor digestion, sleep issues, or even a lack of joy in your daily life. Stress can feel like a relentless burden, but there are practical steps you can take to regain control.

In this article, you’ll discover a holistic approach to managing stress. By the end, you’ll have a toolkit to help you feel more balanced, energized, and in control, enabling you to tackle your greatest fears and live your best life.

Understanding Stress: It’s More Than Just a Thought

Did you know that 90% of our daily thoughts are repetitive, and 80% of those thoughts are negative? Stress isn’t just an invisible force we can ignore or push through. It’s chemical. Each stressful thought triggers the release of neurotransmitters and hormones, impacting your energy, metabolism, and hormone balance.

The Three Major Systems That Run the Body

There are three primary systems in your body that stress impacts: the nervous system, the immune system, and the hormonal system. These systems are interlinked, meaning stress in one area can cascade into the others.

They are all deeply affected by the conscious mind, especially the nervous system. However, imbalances in the hormonal system and/or immune system can also impact the nervous system and cause stress. They create cross-talk with one another that can go both ways.

In this way, regulating the nervous system by managing stress can 100% improve hormone balance and immune function. Today, let’s focus on the nervous system and its crucial role in stress management.

Navigating the Nervous System States

Your nervous system operates in three states throughout the day:

1. Safe and Engaged: You feel good, want to interact, and engage with your environment.
2. Activated: You start scanning for threats and deciding how to handle problems. This can become a constant state where you’re hurrying, busy doing-doing-doing, and not taking time to rest. It’s the state of perpetual busyness and vigilance, where rest becomes a rarity.
3. Overwhelmed: If a problem feels insurmountable, you go into a state of overwhelm. This state is the gateway to burnout, where chronic stress takes a significant toll on your mental and physical health.

This understanding comes from polyvagal theory, which shows how our vagus nerve controls rest and digest functions (parasympathetic) and counterbalances the fight or flight response (sympathetic).

Balancing Your Nervous System

A healthy nervous system balances these states, allowing you to handle stress and return to calm. If you often feel locked in stress or go from zero to 60 too quickly, it’s a sign of imbalance. Here’s how to bring that balance back:

Short-Term and Long-Term Stress Relief

1. RAISE Acronym: Recognize, Accept, Interrupt, State Elevate.
   • Recognize: Acknowledge your stress.
   • Accept: Embrace your feelings without resistance.
   • Interrupt: Break the cycle with a deep breath or a change in activity.
   • State Elevate: Shift from a lower, disempowered, irritable, or hopeless mental-emotional state with simple practices so that you can give yourself an immediate boost and lower chronic baseline stress (when applied over time, just like any kind of exercise).
2. Emotional Scale: Use the emotional scale by Abraham Hicks to identify your current state. This scale ranges from feelings of joy, knowledge, and empowerment at the top, to feelings of fear, grief, and depression at the bottom. Recognize where you are on this scale and aim to move towards a more positive emotion. Click here to download a copy of the emotional scale for your reference.

EFT Tapping: A Powerful Stress Management Tool

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping is a powerful tool for managing stress. It involves tapping on specific acupressure points while acknowledging your feelings and gradually shifting to a more positive state. Here are the points used in EFT tapping:

• Karate Chop Point: Side of the hand (SI-3)
• Eyebrow: Beginning of the eyebrow, just above the nose (UB-2)
• Side of Eye: Outside edge of the eye socket (GB-1)
• Under Eye: Under the center of the eye, on the bone (ST-2)
• Under Nose: Between the nose and upper lip (GV-26)
• Chin: Midway between the bottom of the lower lip and the chin (CV-24)
• Collarbone: Just below the collarbone, about an inch from the center (KD-27)
• Under Arm: About four inches below the armpit, on the side of the body (SP-17)
• Top of Head: Directly on the top of the head (GV-20)

EFT Tapping Template

1. Round 1: Feel into the Negative Emotion
   • Tap on the points listed above while focusing on the negative emotions you are currently experiencing. Acknowledge and accept these feelings.
2. Round 2: Reframe
   • Continue tapping on the same points while starting to reframe your thoughts. Use “what if” statements to imagine a more positive state.
3. Round 3: Reach for a Better Feeling Emotional State
   • Tap on the points while focusing on a slightly higher emotional state that is accessible to you. Aim to shift to a better feeling, such as calmness, confidence, or hope.

Take a deep breath in and let it out. This is a basic round of EFT tapping, but you can tailor it to your specific needs. For a basic demonstration, check out guided videos by Brad Yates or Sandra Inman.

Daily Tools for Long-Term Balance

1. Set Priorities: Put yourself first. Think of it as putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others. If you’re continually putting other people’s needs ahead of your own, you will only build resentment and the feeling of being at the mercy of life circumstances rather than feeling empowered. Taking care of yourself first ensures you have the energy and mental clarity to support others effectively.
2. Use Timers: Set periodic reminders to check in with your stress levels. Whenever the timer goes off, choose a quick activity that calms your nervous system. This could be taking one deep breath, yawning, squeezing your shoulders briefly before relaxing, or EFT tapping. Doing these activities periodically throughout the day will decrease your baseline stress over time and drastically improve digestion, rest, and libido.
3. Meditation: Spend five minutes daily in meditation to calm your mind and body.
4. Mindful Movement: Exercise mindfully when possible to both complete the fight-flight stress cycle and to boost serotonin and dopamine.
5. Positive Self-Talk: Praise yourself for accomplishments to boost dopamine and practice gratitude to enhance serotonin.

Homework: Implementing Stress Management

• EFT Tapping: Try EFT tapping daily for the next 7-14 days.
• Choose One Tool: Start with one new habit for 30 days, such as setting a timer for check-ins or adding a meditation practice.

Final Thoughts

Stress management is about creating balance in your nervous system and other major body systems. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and need personalized guidance, I offer functional health support online, where I create a custom tailored plan for you to restore harmony within your nervous, hormonal and immune systems based on your labs and lifestyle.

If you’re serious about doing the work and ready to make a change, I invite you to schedule a free discovery call to explore how we can work together (schedule here).

Let’s transform stress into strength and live a balanced, joyful life!

I hope this toolkit brings magic into your life. Share your experiences in the comments below, and let’s support each other on this journey to stress mastery.

xx

Dr. Chelsea