Stress Management - What is Your Natural Strategy for Managing Stress?

With all the stress management information floating around, do you ever wonder why you arenÂ’t doing a better job of managing your stress? I have one answer, and it isnÂ’t lack of effort. In fact, trying too hard to manage your stress can actually backfire and make the situation worse. Why? Because every person has a natural stress strategy - a way they feel most competent in approaching a problem.

Natural stress strategies fall into four categories.

• Creative
• Grounded
• Logical
• Relationship-focused

One of the first things I do with my clients is help them identify their personal stress strategy profile. Once we fully develop the profile, they know what situations are likely to be most stressful for them, where their strengths (and weaknesses) are, and exactly how to build on their strengths while developing their weaker skills. Highlights of the four strategies -

Creative Strategy - You are intuitive and future-oriented. You easily handle several projects at once. You are a dreamer and you thrive on change. In the fact of a problem, you will think of many options to solve it, but you may have difficulty settling on one option and actually putting it into practice.

Grounded Strategy - You do one thing at a time, with close attention to detail. You focus on the present and people describe you as down-to-earth, practical, and action-oriented. When the situation calls for new ideas, you may experience stress.

Logical Strategy - You make decisions based on objective facts, and compare the present to the past quantitatively. You are comfortable with numbers and formulas. When the situation calls for attention to relationship dynamics, you may experience stress.

Relationship-focused strategy - You value relationships and make decisions based on the emotional impact your decision will have on others. You tune in to the seasons and have a cyclical sense of time.. Teamwork is important to you. When the situation calls for logical action with little focus on relationships, you may experience stress.

So, what’s the problem? Nothing, except that sometimes your natural stress strategy isnÂ’t the best one for the particular problem you are facing. An example might help here. LetÂ’s say you are an auto mechanic and one day you go to work and your boss says, “Today you are going to build a house instead. You have a full set of great tools and you are an expert in using them. ThereÂ’s no time pressure here - take all the time you need to do a really professional job.”

Would you have a little stress? Of course you would! Why? Because you wouldnÂ’t have the tools or skills you needed. Trying to make the tools you had work would only cause stress, and the harder your tried to make them work the more stress you would have. It would help that there was no time pressure, because the only way to do a great job would be to go get some carpentry tools and learn how to use them.

The same thing happens with stress strategies. If you are a creative type, your natural reaction to a problem is to think of options. You may think of more options than anyone else on the planet, but if the problem at hand requires carefully following a set of rules already in place, your natural approach to the problem is not going to help you reach a solution. What is needed is some new tools and some training in using them.

Every person possesses a unique combination of these strategies. There is no ideal strategy, and no one is likely to be completely balanced between the four. Even when you are weak in a strategy, it doesnÂ’t mean you canÂ’t use those skills, just that they require more energy from you.

Even the most creative person CAN balance their checkbook, it just seems like a much bigger task to them than it does to a person whose natural strategy is a logical approach. Improving your weak strategies will enable you to respond to stress in a healthier and more effective way, which will allow you to spend more time doing what you want to do and less time managing stress.

To learn more about me, you are invited to visit my blog and follow my coaching path   From Sherrie St. Cyr, LCSW, Life Coach and Stress Management Specialist. Sherrie has been teaching people how to manage stress for over 20 years. Through individual coaching, classes, workshops, and retreats she offers unique insight into what works for real people who need to manage stress.

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