The Stress Recovery Cycle
While the
physiological response to stress takes only seconds, recovery to
equilibrium requires about thirty minutes. Time is needed for:
Far too often
the scenario is something like this: you awake a few minutes late,
have children to get off to school, can't find the car keys, have to
cope with traffic driving to work, arrive late for work and can't
find a parking space. In the space of the first one hour of the day,
you may have confronted six to twelve stressful events, with only a
few minutes between them, not nearly enough time for restoration of
equilibrium. And the day is only beginning.
When there
are too many stressors back to back, your body never has a chance to
through the recovery cycle. What is needed is a comprehensive plan
for daily coping with stress.
There is no
quick cure. A day off? A week off? Both may help, however, a better
approach is to reduce the accumulation of overwhelming stress by
becoming more stress-resistant. Identifying sources of stress helps,
but it is more important to identify your own responses to stress
and learn how to modify them.
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