Stress is usually seen as something we need to avoid. This is not true. We need stress, and we need our body's stress hormone cortisol to rise and fall throughout the day.
Stress helps us wake up in the morning, helps us focus, learn, and remember new things. It's when people experience too much stress and start having difficulties coping that stress becomes a problem. High levels of stress can disrupt the natural changes in the body's stress response system and start to affect our physical and mental health.
Over time, accumulated stress can result in false FFF response activations. When trying to measure our stress tolerance, the bucket analogy can be helpful. Our stress tolerance, or the size of our bucket, is a product of our genes, personality and life experiences, and its size varies from person to person. The water in this analogy is the combination of all the stress in your life.
We use the coping strategies we have available to keep our bucket from overflowing. They are like taps that allow water to drain from the bucket. Stress can include training, work, school, relationships, finances, moving, changing jobs or the loss of a loved one.
Both positive and negative experiences will affect the water level. A big bucket can hold more water or stress before it overflows. With a smaller bucket, less water is required for the water or stress level to become critical. While you can't change the size of your bucket, you can make life adjustments to reduce water coming in. You can also learn new coping strategies and stress management techniques to allow water to drain out.
Mind tools, exercise, quality sleep, relaxation and sharing your feelings with friends are some examples of effective water taps. Staying up late, sleeping in, drugs, inactivity, procrastination, suppressing or ignoring problems are examples of unhelpful coping strategies or false taps. They might give temporary relief, but actually result in water flowing back into your bucket.