Chapter 6

Managing Stress, Triggers & Unhelpful Thinking

Resilience is important for good mental health. Resilience is how you bounce back or manage difficulties that you experience in life.

Knowing your strengths and using the tools you have, builds confidence in your ability to manage. We all experience stress in our daily lives and this can bring on or contribute to an unwanted emotional or behavioural response.

This is often called a “trigger”. Identifying the causes of your personal triggers can improve your self-awareness of what to look out for.

Triggers differ from person to person and can include:

External triggers: Which are identified by your senses — sounds, smells, sights, noises, or textures.

Symptom triggers: A physical change can trigger anxiety and worry which can build into bigger mental health issues.

Trauma triggers: Significant feelings arise based on memories of past experiences or events.

Learn to Identify Triggers

It is helpful to look at past triggers and the related situation. When doing this, break them down into How, When, Why, Who, What, and Where.

Triggers can be places, people, images, emotions, anniversaries, and thoughts which can cause you distress. Look for any patterns and signs that may help you prevent a similar situation. For example: specific types of movies, news and TV bulletins, or social media may include content warnings.

Negative life situations and events can hit you, like a wave. They may take the form of a broken promise, a misunderstanding, or an argument.

Every person manages their challenges differently. Your experience of any event will depend on how you deal with it. You can ride the wave or you can be swallowed by it.

Understanding Self-Talk

Self-talk and unhelpful thinking may get in the way of coping with stress or difficult situations. Your self-talk drives your thoughts, behaviours, and outcomes.

Examples of unhelpful thinking

Identifying when you have unhelpful thinking and running them through a filter of fact checking may help reframe them so you can move forward.

APMHA’s Fact Check Checklist

• What evidence do I have of this thought?
• Am I thinking in Black & White?
• Am I jumping to conclusions?
• Am I only thinking about the negative of the situation?
• Is there another explanation?
• Am I overestimating how responsible I am?
• How would someone else think about this?Are my judgments based on what I felt or what I did?
• Am I setting myself unrealistic or unobtainable standards?
• Did I forget relevant facts or over-focus on irrelevant ones?
• What if it happens? What would be so bad about that?
• How bad will this seem in a few weeks, months, or years?
• Am I underestimating what I can do to deal with it?
• Why should you? Who said you should? Prove it!

Tips to Create a Low Stress Environment

• Create a space or room where you can relax. This might include choosing colours you find calming, indoor plants, fairy lights, using tools like weighted blanket or fidget gadgets, holding your pet, or using an oil diffuser or scented cream.
• Unplug from time to time. Most people spend a lot of time with technology and looking at screens. Minimise your screen time, silence alerts and put your phone on “do not disturb” or remove your phone from your bedroom at night.
• Plan breaks and quiet times. Planning breaks throughout the day like going for a walk, sit under a tree, having a bath, sit in the park, listen to soothing music, or go for a weekend away.
• Practice mindfulness, meditation or deep breathing (You can find e options on this page or in Chapter 12: Resource Directory and Helpful Tools).
• Practice turning negative self-talk into positive self-talk (refer to Chapter 5: Wellness Tools)
• Practice self care.
• Avoid alcohol or drugs.
• Get more physical activity and maybe spend time in nature.
• Eat a balanced diet and reduce caffeine intake.

Coping Skills

There is a lot of evidence that living in a low stress environment supports good mental health. Thinking ahead and understanding yourself more, will help you recognise and plan how to respond to stressful situations more positively and reduce its overall impact on you.

Coping strategies are ways to manage and reduce the impact and the strength of your emotional reactions.

Worksheet 6: Identifying Your Triggers

Worksheet 6 will help you “Identifying your triggers or negative thoughts”. Please list your coping strategy for each trigger or reframed wording for any negative thoughts.

Resources

Websites

• SANE: Men, Mates and Mental Health
• BlackDogInstitute: myCompass – an online tool that can help you identify unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and learn strategies to deal with them.
• RaisingChildren: Stress and Stress Management: Grown-Ups

Smart Phone Apps

• MoodMission – Helps you learn new ways of coping with low moods and anxiety
• Smiling Mind – Meditation Made Simple
• 1 Giant Mind
• Calm
• YourCrew  – Connects people seeking help to those they know and trust.
• ReachOut WorryTime – A reflective, interactive and fun way to prevent small issues from becoming big ones.

More information on the ‘Lets Talk About Mental Health’ podcast can be found here