Pep Talk!

I have had cause to think quite a lot about stress lately, having reviewed with interest Catrin Mills’ new book (Effective Stress Management Techniques for Lawyers - see book reviews) and finding “stress” as a theme cropping up time and again with my coaching client’s, particularly those clients working in the legal field.  I’ve also become more and more interested in the way we use language and how its use can affect our thoughts and actions.  Putting the two strands together has led me to some interesting conclusions around stress management.

Part of the answer to the questions, “what is stress?”, and “how we can deal with it?” for me lies in the language we use to describe situations to ourselves, because the language we use affects how we view things.

I believe that stress is the effect of a person’s internal reaction to external events and each internal reaction is likely to be different to the same event.  That is to say, one person can find an event stress inducing whereas someone else might take it in their stride.  So why might that be?

It is partly the language we use (whether in the internal messages we give ourselves or how we describe the event to others) which affects how we view an event and determines whether we feel stressed by the event or not.

At the start of many coaching relationships I often notice how my client’s language effectively ambushes their chances to be all that they can be.  What do I mean by this? 

Well, I often hear clients say things like:

“I should....but...” (I should leave work early but I never seem to be able to”) or

“I must...” (“I must go to the gym after work”) or

“I need to...” (“I need to get all my work finished before I go on holiday”)

“I ought to...” (“I ought to take this work home with me”). 

“I have to...” (I have to delegate work, although it would be quicker to do it myself)

To my way of thinking each of these generalisations suggest that there is some higher power requiring my client to act in this way i.e. my clients are not acting of their own free will.  After all, if they really wanted to do it, they would use words like “I would like to...” or “I want to...” instead of “I should...”, wouldn’t they? 

By using this type of language my clients are effectively cutting down their options, removing their control or will and this can lead to an increase in internal stress feelings.

When I ask my client who is requiring them to stay late or go to the gym or take work home, they are generally not altogether sure.  They sometimes say it might be their boss, their clients, their colleagues or their family.  Occasionally they will say they are.  But when I probe a bit deeper it turns out that the boss has never asked them to stay late on days when they’ve finished their work, or their clients are just as happy to wait for the work when they return from holiday.  And they can’t identify why they would want to do it in the first place.

It’s an interesting phenomena.  Some people might call it a critical inner voice speaking to them telling them what they should be doing.  Some believe it is the values they lead their lives by or how they have been brought up.  It may be that they are responding to the example set by others or what they believe is expected in a given situation or within a particular culture, but it doesn’t mean it’s true!  Just being aware that they are acting on a generalisation and that they have a choice not to can reduce the stress response.

Another set of “generalisation” words which often have a similar internal stress inducing effect are words like always, never, every time, whenever, everyone, no one.  Usually someone experiences an incident and generalises by their use of language that the same thing will always/never happen in the future or everyone/no one will do that or feel like that, although logically if they thought about it they would probably come to the conclusion that this was not necessarily the case. 

For example someone might say, either aloud or to themselves internally:

“I never do the work how she likes it.”

“I always mess up.”

“No one invites me to meetings about things like that.”

“Every time I try to complete a transaction, I fail.”

Just as in the examples where my client has used the ought to or should type language, by generalising using these universal generalisation words (e.g. always, every time, never etc.), my clients are cutting down their options and as a result increasing their internal stressors.  Just think, how different they would feel about the task and themselves if instead of saying:

“I never do the work how she likes it.”, they said instead:

“She liked most of my report last time but wasn’t happy with one part so I will pay attention to doing that part better this time.”

Quite often if I hear my client use the generalisation words I will ask them to reformulate the sentence which they can find hard to do.  For example if they have said:

“I should leave work early” they find it quite hard to change this to:

“I would like to leave work early” and give me a rye smile when they say it!

If it was just words then I don’t think it would be difficult at all.  However, words have meaning and by using new words you change how you view an issue and how you are going to act upon it.  Changing a point of view is quite hard but gets easier the more it is done. 

Most clients I work with find it difficult at first to think about what the alternatives might be to their first stress inducing thoughts.  For example if a client thinks they should have been invited to a meeting, what alternatives can they come up with to that thought?  Sometimes it helps them to think about the situation as if they were someone else, someone whom they admire.  What would that person think in this situation?  How might they view it?  Sometimes they can think of themselves as someone from a different department or a visitor viewing the events almost like a fly on the wall.  Once they start to think in this way it often becomes second nature to come up with alternative ways of seeing things and means that they do not build up the resentments which lead to stress.

Noticing and reflecting on the use of words like ought to or should or always or never in our everyday speech or our internal voice is the first step.  Trying to replace those generalisation words with other words which can put a whole new slant on a situation is the next step.  Thinking about what the alternatives are to how we initially view an event can also make it feel less stressful inside.  Why don’t you try it and let me know how you get on?