Stress: How to De-Stress without Doing Less (16 page)

Learning to relax is about gradually finding out how to switch your body and mind off and bring that stress baseline back down to normal. Once you get better at it, you will find that it is much easier and you will not need to be as deliberate about it. But for now, you will need to schedule in specific periods of time for ‘relaxation practice'. Remember, this is important! Although it might feel as if you are doing nothing, planning relaxation is the most important thing you can do to make sure that you are able to keep doing everything!

After the last chapter you should have a good list of things you could do to practise relaxing. Now though, let's look at the practical question of when on earth you are going to do them! This chapter is about how to fit relaxation into your life because that is what this book is all about: not just understanding more about how stress affects you but taking some time to think about what you are going to change as a result.

If you do only one thing as a result of reading this book, work out how to fit in some regular relaxation. There are many myths about relaxation, and because of some of the classes and techniques around, some people see it is a rather ‘New Agey', ‘alternative' thing to do. You know the kind of reaction – ‘It's nice, and some people like it, but it's not for me.' But relaxation is actually essential for all of us, whoever we are, wherever we come from and whatever we do. Some people are naturally really good at relaxing. Their personality is more laid back, they tend to be less prone to anxieties and they suffer less with stress. But if you are not one of those people, this isn't an excuse for you to rule relaxation out. It simply means you have to make more of a deliberate effort to relax regularly.

How often?

People often ask how often they should be relaxing. The
truth is that every day should include a slot of time for you to chill out a little. You might put this at the end of your day or you might take an hour or so out after you have just done something particularly stressful – maybe a difficult presentation, class or meeting. Try to make it a regular slot, something you do each day after work. Think of relaxation as the antidote to stress.

Let's be realistic. You may have one of those weeks from time to time (or more often!) when you barely get a chance to stop at all. Or do you have days like I do when you can get right through to six or seven in the evening before you have time even to stop for a cup of tea or something to eat? If you know you have had a hard day or week, then remember that means you need to relax. You can think of it as a bank account. If you imagine your energy reserves are the amount of money in the account, a busy day or week is a bit like constantly taking money out. Relaxing is when you put money back in. So, if you have had a really busy time, making lots of withdrawals, you need to spend some extra time relaxing and balancing that out. If you know in advance that you are going to be busy, you can even plan something relaxing at the end of that busy period.

At first when you start making time to relax, you may find it hard to think of what to do, or find that you feel guilty for stopping and ‘doing nothing'. Remember, though, this is not time doing nothing. It is time relaxing, and thereby enables you to do all the other things you do in the day. Without it, you will end up doing much less in the long term. The trick is to treat learning to relax in much the same way as you would learning any new skill. Come at it from a position of being fairly analytical. Try lots of new things and note the effect they have on you. Most of all, give it time.
You will not learn to relax overnight, and at first you may find your mind jumping back to work, or you may feel the urge to get up and do ‘something productive' or deal with something you know needs doing. But relaxation is really important, so remind yourself of that and stick to what you have planned.

Planning relaxation

So, let's start to look at how you are going to introduce more relaxation into your day. First of all, get out the timetable you kept as part of Chapter 13. You need to work out how you are going to fit some times for relaxation into your day. This might mean making some changes. You might need to leave work slightly earlier, get a dishwasher or move some commitments around. You might even find at first that you need to shed some of the things you do. This might seem counterproductive. But remember that, ultimately, learning to relax is something you need to do in order to be able to keep pushing yourself hard and fitting so much into your life. Although there may be a period when you have to slim down what you do for a while, you should find that eventually you can take those things back on. Do remember, though, that you are only human! Sometimes it may be simply about admitting that, much as you would like to, you cannot do everything.

When planning how much time to relax, don't aim too high at first. As you get more used to including relaxation in your everyday life, you'll find that it is automatically built in. Right now you may find that three or four half-hour or 45-minute sessions each week is all you can fit in. If you can, try to get something in every day. You may find that on
some days you have no time, whereas on other days you can take a whole morning or afternoon. That is fine. Eventually you will be doing things to relax much more automatically and you won't have to do this ‘scheduling'. At first, however, it is important; otherwise you'll find that it just gets pushed out and you'll have gone through the whole week and not done it. So, think about your next couple of weeks and plan when you will fit in your relaxing time. I would suggest you actually write it down because this makes it more likely that you will stick to it.

The best way to start is to put together a list of ideas of things you could do to relax, just as we have done in Chapter 15. Use the categories in that chapter to help you if you haven't already written your list, but also think about what people you know do, or things you would like to have time to do but never manage to fit in. Get as many ideas as you can and try to be varied. Include some things that you can do at home and some that involve going out; some that involve other people and some that are just you on your own; some that are shorter and some that take up an evening or few hours. Have a brainstorm and write down as many ideas as you can (you should have at least ten). So you might put ‘have bath and read book; watch episode of
Friends
; meet friends for coffee; go and watch film at cinema; go for long walk; play round of golf…' and so on.

Write down your ideas in the box opposite. (If you are really good at this, you might need more space, so do use another piece of paper!)

 

Once you have your list, you are ready to go. For each ‘relaxation slot' in your week you need to select one thing from your list. Obviously it needs to fit the slot you have available, but do try each thing on your list at least once. Once you have started, make sure you do it for the allotted time, even if you don't feel like it! Make a note in the table below of what worked and what didn't, and why. You might want to give each activity a score out of ten for how successful it was in terms of relaxing. This way, you can gradually learn what works for you and get better and better at it. So you might write, ‘Monday 8 p.m. Bath for half an hour with book. 7/10.
Enjoyed book, but kept getting interrupted by children with their homework. Next time do later once children in bed.' Or, ‘Friday 1–2. Played tennis over lunch with colleague. 3/10. Nice to have the exercise but was very wound up by work so kept hitting balls out. Got very frustrated. Next time maybe play squash as it is a bit more forgiving.'

Record of relaxation experiments

Once you have tried all the things on your list, you can start to fine-tune it. Gradually aim to get a good idea of what works for you – then practise it! Remember, relaxation is a skill you will learn, so it does take time. Even the perfect relaxing activity for you might not work brilliantly at first. You have to give it time! These tools are your main weapon
against stress, so be determined!

Relaxation exercises

A final word on relaxation exercises before we finish. They can be tricky and take some learning but they are excellent ways to relax physically. They can be particularly helpful if you struggle with anxiety or specific problems such as insomnia or panic attacks. So do not rule them out. Perhaps include them as part of your list and give them a go once you have started to get better at relaxing. Or set yourself the task of doing a relaxation exercise, but make sure you persist with it! Don't forget that at first you will find it hard; it is a skill just like anything else. You might be able to learn a technique, so look into local lessons. Whatever you do, practise, and remember that the more you do practise, the more effective it is likely to be.

It is worth learning a short and simple relaxation exercise. This is one I recommend and it is something you can do wherever you are, whatever is going on. It is short, simple and quick and will help you to regain your cool if things are stressing you out. It can also help to settle anxiety or hold off symptoms of panic and help you to stop your head from exploding on those days when things just seem to keep coming at you non-stop.

At first, like all things relaxing, this will take some practice, so bear with me. You need to find a song or piece of music that you like and find relaxing. If it has words, choose one with words that are comforting, soothing or calming. You might want to choose something that reminds you of a time or place where you felt safe or calm or of people who care about you and give you lots of support. Find a
quiet place where you won't be disturbed. You need to put that song/piece of music on repeat on your CD player or mp3 player. Put it on, sit (or lie if you prefer) comfortably and either close your eyes or let yourself stare into space (some people don't like to close their eyes but it does help to block distractions). Listen to the song and either sing along quietly or hum the words. This may feel odd to you, but it is important as it helps you to regulate your breathing and stops you from over-breathing, which is something that makes the symptoms of anxiety and panic worse. Sing or hum your way through the song two or three times. As you do this, imagine that every time you breathe in you take in clean, calm air. As you hum and breathe out, the stress is blown away, to be replaced by that clean air. Try to focus on the song or tune and forget what is around you.

Repeat the exercise as often as you can – at first a few times each day – with the same song. The more you practise this when you are feeling relatively calm, the more effective it will be. The key is that you will begin to associate that song with being relaxed. Eventually, once you have practised it enough, just hearing the song will help you to start de-stressing. The breathing exercise will also help to calm you down. If you are out and about, or at work or wherever, and start to feel stress rising and threatening to overwhelm you, you can find somewhere where you can have a few minutes of peace (even popping to the loo can work!). Sit and close your eyes and hear the song or tune in your head. If you are somewhere private, you can hum along; if not, then breathe as though you were humming with nice long breaths out. If you have an iPod or mp3 player, you can even keep the song with you and actually play it to yourself. Repeat the song a couple of times until you feel able to go
back into your day.

Of course, you can do this with more than one song (the first might start to drive you mad after a while), but keep it to two or three. Remember, you need to associate the songs with those times when you are somewhere safe and secure, and totally relaxed and chilled out.

Before we finish, I must mention problems with sleep. Of all the problems most commonly associated with stress, sleep is the one that most of the people I support struggle with. In fact, most people I know admit that they are usually tired. The most common response I get to the query ‘How are you?' is ‘Tired'! Many people, living in a 24/7 society and often frantically juggling many different responsibilities as well as trying to fit in a social life, find that sleep is the thing that gets squeezed out. The problem is that sleep is very important – more so than we might think – to both our physical and emotional well-being. In recent years, as we have come to understand more about sleep, there have been many studies looking at the effect of lack of sleep on our physical and mental health. Most studies seem to find that that the ideal amount of sleep health-wise is between seven and eight hours each night but that only one in five of us manage to achieve this. It isn't just the adults struggling, either. A third of teenagers (often maligned for sleeping too much!) admitted that they only slept for an average of between four and seven hours per night, and, of course, sleep problems in younger children are one of the most common behavioural issues that parents seek help for.

What if you don't manage to get that level of sleep each night?

Apart from being a bit drowsy, what might it do to you? Just like stress, the impact lack of sleep can have is quite surprising – alarmingly so if you are one of the millions of people who tend to burn the candle at both ends. If we sleep less than recommended, there are studies suggesting we might be more susceptible to a whole variety of health problems, including colds and other infections, hardening of the arteries, heart problems, even Type 2 diabetes. In fact, if we get very little sleep – around five hours or fewer a night on average – we might even be risking our life. Studies suggest that the risk of death from heart problems is doubled if we exist on this little sleep in the long term.

Meanwhile, of course, not sleeping affects the way we react to things and the way our brain works the next day. So, if we are sleep deprived for whatever reason, although we will find we have some periods of time when we operate reasonably well (almost as well as if we had slept properly), the chances are that in between those moments of clear thinking we are likely to struggle with issues such as poor concentration, slow responding (that classic effect where we feel as if we are operating on a time lag!) and, of course, drowsiness. This is a serious risk if your job is potentially dangerous or requires good concentration for long periods of time – for example, if you do a lot of driving or operate machinery as part of your job, or if you are caring for other people. There have been well-documented reports of exhausted doctors and nurses making potentially fatal errors with drug prescriptions, measuring doses or just not picking up on important signs and symptoms. Sleep deprivation has been blamed for several major incidents, from car and rail
accidents to major disasters such as the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl. If sleep deprivation carries on for too long, it can lead to hallucinations and serious problems. People who have tried to stay awake for as long as possible find it harder than you might think, and
Guinness World Records
has actually taken the ‘staying awake' class out because of health risks. (If you are interested, the record before they removed the class stood at just over eleven days and nights without any sleep!)

Of course, it's not just about how well you will work if you are not sleeping. Poor sleep also seems to affect the way we see the world and react to it, affecting the way we interact with other people, react to circumstances and challenges during the day, and how we feel in ourselves. Lack of sleep has been shown to make people more likely to respond in very emotional ways to certain situations or images, with emotions such as anger and sadness in particular much more likely if they are very tired. Most of us have been there and recognize how much less well we deal with things and control our emotions and reactions, and how much more prone we are to blowing things up in our own minds (slipping in to some of those common thinking errors discussed in Chapter 10) and overreacting. So our lack of sleep can very often affect other people as well as ourselves!

Why exactly is sleep so important?

It has been something of an enigma to scientists for a long time, but recently our understanding of its role has been developing. In fact, various significant roles, purposes and processes are now proposed and debated by professionals from different specialities and backgrounds. Sleep certainly
does much more than just rest our bodies physically. Although we may not understand exactly what its purpose is, what we do understand is that it is very important and plays a role in keeping our bodies and minds healthy. Sleep seems to be important for rest and repair, and for other important processes that need some time when they can happen ‘in the background'. Although some parts of the brain switch off almost completely while we are asleep, others remain remarkably active, and sleep seems to have a role in strengthening connections between some nerve cells in these regions. This evidence has backed up those theories that have long since suggested that sleep helps with processes such as the consolidation of memories or things we have learned. A good night's sleep really does affect the way our brain works the next day, and people who have had a good night's sleep perform better on tests of memory and reasoning or logic skills. This is particularly important, therefore, at times when you are learning a lot, and, predictably, lack of sleep seems to adversely affect academic performance.

So, if you are sleep deprived, what is the most likely thing to be causing your problem? First of all, of course, there are some things that simply don't let you sleep. Anyone with small children (or sometimes even older children!) might find that this is significantly limiting the number of hours they might be able to sleep; at the times they feel able to sleep (at night), their children don't seem to find themselves in the same position and therefore keep them awake. Other things can keep us awake, of course. Anyone who has a partner who snores will be able to sympathize with this plight. In fact, three-quarters of British adults snore and one in three snores so badly that it keeps their partner awake.
¹

Aside from these things, if there is one thing that affects our sleep, it is stress. Having a difficult time at work or in another area of our life is often something that can leave us lying awake many hours after we have gone to bed, struggling to turn our mind off. Anxiety is a particular bad guy where sleep is concerned. It's probably not surprising that Sunday is the most common night for people to say they have slept badly, and Friday night, with the weekend offering a rest from work thoughts, is the most common time for people to have a good night's sleep. Research suggests that as many as 23 million people working in Britain lose sleep because they are worried about work the next day. Issues such as dealing with a difficult boss or challenging colleagues, having to give a presentation or lead a meeting the next day, or missing a deadline are all common causes of lost sleep.

It is unfortunate that stress is so prone to affecting our sleep because in fact sleep is a very important part of our arsenal against stress. If we tend to push ourselves and work under quite stressful conditions, sleep is one of the golden opportunities we have to recuperate and try to avoid that stress having a long-term impact. It seems that sleep has a role in counteracting the stresses of our day. So, for example, our blood pressure naturally falls when we are asleep, as do the levels of some of the stress hormones. Sleep seems to offer a natural chance to rest, unwind and bring that stress baseline down ready for the next day. Sleep also helps to counteract some of the metabolic impact of stress. This means that if we do not get enough sleep, we are at a greater risk of weight gain and even of obesity as a result of stress. This isn't anything to do with how many calories we use up (because, in fact, we use fewer when sleeping); it is because sleep is one of the natural systems that rebalances some of the changes stress brings into
our system. Even young children seem to be affected by this, with those who are poor sleepers more likely to have problems with gaining weight and risking childhood obesity. Lack of sleep causes a rise in the hormones and processes triggering stress… which means that it is harder to sleep… which can mean another rise in stress – it's easy to see how the vicious cycle of insomnia develops.

So, sleep is very important and we should all make time to have our recommended seven or eight hours a night. Of course, it is not as simple as just making sure we are in bed for that length of time! Quality of sleep is also important and it is only those who say that they spend over 90 per cent of the time they are in bed actually asleep who seem to reap the health benefits. Some of the studies looking at the health impact of lack of sleep have found that even if you did have
enough
sleep, if you lacked a certain kind of sleep – the deep sleep that seems to give time for those restorative processes to occur – the health risks persisted. We need to learn to sleep in order to protect our health from the impact of stress – but we also need to learn how to sleep
well
.

Sleep problems are one of the most frustrating things to suffer with. We all know how easy it is to start to find sleep difficult, because it is such a psychological thing as well as a physical phenomenon. Very often, as soon as we start to find ourselves thinking, ‘I bet I won't get to sleep for ages tonight,' it comes true. This is why, on the whole, doctors advise against using sleeping tablets too often: it is very easy to come to depend on them, physically or psychologically, and then to find sleeping without them really difficult, particularly when, as happens with most sleeping tablets, they start to become less effective as time goes on.

Improving your sleep

So if you are one of the 10–15 per cent of the adult population suffering with long-term or chronic insomnia, what can you do to try to improve your sleep? The most important thing is to try to harness the natural systems in your body that control your sleep–wake cycle. Your brain controls this natural rhythm with a group of cells that automatically ‘tick' and seem to operate roughly on a 24-or 25-hour cycle. This, along with changes in certain hormone levels, controls when you would normally wake up naturally or feel sleepy. Your body works to a natural, predictable rhythm: you start to feel sleepy, so go to bed and to sleep at roughly the same time each evening, then, due to hormones released at the right time, you naturally start to become more wakeful at a certain time, hopefully when you want to get up! This is why if you usually get up at seven for work in the week, you might find yourself irritatingly alert by half past seven or eight o'clock in the morning even on those weekends when you plan to lie in. Your body is primed to get up at that time!
²

This means that we benefit from having a sleep cycle that is as regular as possible. Your body does naturally sleep reasonably well, so if you are finding it hard, work with it and use its natural systems to help you sleep. Try to go to bed and to get up at the same time each day. This is particularly important if you are not sleeping well. Many people get into a pattern of going to bed at a certain time, but find they cannot drop off until the small hours and so often sleep late in the morning to catch up on lost hours. What this means is that initially frustration is keeping you awake, but gradually your sleep–wake cycle shifts so that your natural sleeping time is, say, from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. Although this might feel as if you have had a dreadful night – and it would certainly
be pretty frustrating if you went to bed at 11 p.m. and spent five hours awake – you actually slept for a reasonably good six hours. Solving this kind of sleep problem is often about making yourself get up in the morning so that you avoid shifting your cycle later and getting your sleep at the wrong end of the night. Experts advise that you look at how long you successfully sleep (in this case those six hours), then go to bed at an appropriate time that allows you just those six hours (plus a bit of time to drop off) in bed. At first, for example, you might go to bed at midnight and set the alarm for six. If you make yourself get up – even though you will still struggle to get to sleep and may actually get very little sleep for the first few nights – gradually you will find that your natural sleep pattern moves back to a more helpful time. Once that has happened, you may well find that you can extend the time and allow yourself to sleep in a bit more, meaning you spend more time asleep.

Of course, the biggest problem affecting sleep is often those incessant thoughts that just keep buzzing round your head. If you struggle with stress, or anxiety in particular, this is likely to be something that contributes towards your problems with sleeping, and once you have started to find sleep elusive, thoughts and worries about whether you will manage to sleep are added to those and make things worse. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, already mentioned in relation to unhelpful thinking patterns in Chapter 10, has been shown to be very effective in dealing with this kind of problem. In fact, one clinic claims that if CBT is done well, about 80 per cent of people suffering with insomnia will see an improvement after just five sessions. Don't be afraid to go to your doctor and ask for a referral to a psychologist or CBT practitioner for help with your sleep problems. The
sooner you start to tackle the problem, the sooner you will find yourself more able to get back to sleep!

More practical tips to help you sleep

• Think about how and when you are going to fit sleep time in and give yourself some time to prepare for sleep. Don't expect to go straight to bed from that lively work meeting that finished late. Give yourself an hour or so to wind down, perhaps reading, taking a bath or doing something else you find relaxing. This will help you drop off when you do eventually go to bed.
  
• Avoid alcohol and caffeine if you want a good night's sleep! Although alcohol might help you to drop off, it stops you from having those all-important deep sleeps, meaning that you wake more and end up feeling much less refreshed the next day. Caffeine makes it much more difficult to drop off and can stay in your bloodstream for a surprisingly long time. If you struggle with sleep, avoid caffeine for several hours before bedtime. People who are very sensitive might find that they need to cut it out all together for the sake of their sleep.
  
• Banish mobile phones from your room or at least switch them off! Apart from the chance that someone will text you in the middle of the night and wake you up, research suggests that something from the radiation released by mobiles can affect your sleep, disrupting deep sleep or simply keeping you awake.
  
• Tempting as it is, try to avoid going to sleep with the TV or radio on. Although you will be sleeping, you will not go into the proper deep sleep you need. This results in what some experts call ‘junk sleep', when you are
  sleeping but not in the way that is good for you!
  
• Avoid napping in the day if you possibly can. If you must nap, keep it short and try to grab what are called ‘power naps' – 20-minute quick naps or periods of ‘shut eye' that some claim can be as effective as sleeping for several hours!
  
• Try to keep your bedroom quiet, not too hot or cold, and nice and dark. One thing that changes as we get older is that we tend to sleep more lightly, meaning we are more easily disturbed by noise or light. This can lead to more waking in the night, which, if you are feeling under stress, can then give you the chance to get your brain going again, making it very difficult to fall back to sleep!
  
• If you cannot sleep, don't lie in bed for ages waiting to drop off. No, it's true: no matter how counterproductive this might seem, all research shows that if you do this, you are likely to get frustrated and this will in itself hold off sleep. It is tempting to think that if you stay there, you might just drop off, but most experts suggest you give it perhaps 15 minutes to half an hour. If you still don't feel sleepy, get up, go somewhere quiet and do something restful such as reading until you feel drowsy, then return to bed when you feel as though you might drop off.
  
• If there are any other problems affecting your sleep, such as recurrent nightmares, serious snoring (sometimes called sleep apnoea), other physical health problems or practical things such as having to get up to pee a lot in the night, do go to your doctor and discuss them. There might be something else affecting your sleep that can be treated.