The Stress Vortex is a state of mind and being that we are all susceptible to but behaves in a latent and encroaching manner which is why it is such a dangerous threat to our mental well being.

We’ve all been ‘thrown in at the deep end’ or been offered the lead on that fantastic project at the office that everyone was clamouring for, almost crawling over each other just to get to the front of the line and scream “Me first! Me first!” in the face of the manager that was allocating the team lead for the project in question.

The problem with the stress vortex is that it both rewards us and degrades us in a fluid motion that is tough to see, often not until it is far too late or others who know us well are pointing out the extent to which we have changed in our interactions day to day due to the scenario(s) that are impacting us on a daily basis.

The Beginning

As we enter this initial high stress scenario of a new project or other situation (moving country, new job, new promotion, etc.) with extreme rewards on offer and intense workloads we have unknowingly tipped over the leading edge of the stress vortex and started our potential descent.

The danger lies in the emotional rewards on offer – as we complete various stages of the project or overcome challenges we are facing we are rewarded with our body’s natural chemicals of serotonin and dopamine leaving us with feelings of happiness, success and achievement.

The highly motivated and result / success driven among you will all identify with the feelings of reaching these milestones and will simply redouble efforts to achieve the next stages of success, here is where the vortex starts to take hold.

Into the Vortex

As you realise these initial successes and chemical rewards you increase your workload and associated stress levels in an ever increasing chase for the next reward milestone, the milestones become less significant in a relative sense and so you increase your efforts accordingly to achieve greater milestones and rewards.

This inherent chemical reward that you can’t rationalise continues to drive your efforts and you siphon off more and more time to feed the vortex.

Time is a finite resource in our lives and in order to achieve happiness and mental well being, an essential element to sustain our motivation and ability to deliver the good work we require to reach these success milestones, we must balance our time allocation between personal and professional.

The personal and social time we allocate is much like sleep for our mental state – it is what recharges us to go back with our creative batteries recharged to tackle the challenges and reach those reward milestones with renewed vigour.

The depth of the Vortex

When you reach the point of no longer considering where on when your personal time should sit and the professional time is bleeding into all aspects of your life – weekends, evenings, holidays, birthdays – you have reached a point of complete saturation.

Your mind is never truly ‘switched off’ or detached from work and you are not recharging your creative energy. You may not see it or think it yourself, in fact you most likely don’t, because you are still being topped off by the chemical rewards each time you close something off, but you fail to see the negative impacts that are spilling into your personal life and relationships.

This is also impacting your professional capabilities – you’re not performing at your best and not delivering your personal awesome to the tasks you’re involved in. The problem is our drive and result oriented natures prevent us from acknowledging this as we still feel the benefits of minor milestone rewards and associate this with performance levels above our current capabilities.

Stopping the rot

There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to arresting and reversing the effects of the Stress Vortex, however the most important step is recognition and acknowledgement – until you achieve this you will continue to descend, and more often than not you will try increasingly bizarre methods to aid you with little to no results (expensive tea and bizarre herb concoctions designed for ‘wellness diets’ anyone?).

That is not a blanket statement to say these things don’t contribute to a healthier lifestyle, however they are not a magic bean solution – they are ancillary inputs to a healthy mental state.

The most important change is to manage your time allocation and allow for the positive emotional time to recharge your creative energy reserves.

As for acknowledgement and recognition, it takes an incredibly high level of self-awareness to pick yourself as a victim of the Stress Vortex, typically it will be friends or family that give you hints you have “changed the way you communicate” or “you don’t seem like yourself recently”.

If these are becoming common statements when you see close friends or family – people that know you – it is time to step back and take a good, unfiltered look at your routine and time allocation.

If you start to see patterns that don’t make you smile or happy then these are the first steps to regaining control.