According to Stephen Palmer, you are stressed when you perceive that the pressure you are experiencing exceeds your ability to cope. This is different for different people, but there are commonalities: The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale shows the weighting of life...
In stressful times and situations, emotions wash over us. We speak and act before we think, or we completely shut down and retreat into ourselves. Confronted with wild animals, this automatic fight, flight, or freeze response helped the hunter gatherer survive, but today most people rarely ever face life threatening danger.
Nevertheless, under stress, chemical processes in our limbic system – the older part of our brain where emotions reside – lead us to react automatically before going into reflection mode. We can, however, train ourselves to catch that moment before we react, and calm down by going into reflection. In coaching we help our clients to train that muscle.
To thrive in today’s world, we need to use …