Moving within the same country is stressful enough, but moving to a new country can take your stress level to entirely new heights - new language, new culture, new demands, while at the same time you’re trying to make a new home and create a new safe space for yourself and maybe even a family.
This is where Jessica Silis from Wunderfitzig Stressberatung – Coaching for Everyday Heroes can lend a hand: she is a certified stress coach, an emTrace emotions coach, and a child, youth & family coach. She offers online coaching as well as in-person coaching sessions or workshops, depending on your location.
“I feel irritated easily“, “I know what I need to do, but I just can’t get it done“ and “I just feel overwhelmed” are just some of the feelings people share with Jessica when they contact her for the first time. What keeps many people from contacting a stress coach in the first place is the assumption that all a coach does is tell them to meditate or do more yoga. Jessica has a different approach, however.
Working out, practising yoga or meditation can be an integral part of your daily stress management. What this course of action is lacking, however, is focusing on where your stress originates and working on the causes of stress. Wouldn’t it be way more sustainable to eliminate some of the root causes of stress, so that the amount of stress that you need to manage in the first place is reduced?
“Let’s be real: With all the things that come at us on a day-to-day basis, most of us would need to spend half the day meditating or doing yoga to get on top of our stress. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have time for this!” Jessica says. Does this sound familiar?
In Jessica’s experience, most people only focus on changing their behaviour and then get frustrated when they can only stick with it for a few weeks or months. Spoiler alert: The key to changing your behaviour is not working on your behaviour! Your behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg.
Here’s why: You develop a particular pattern of behaviour and test it during various experiences over the course of your life. Most of these patterns form during childhood. When said behaviour has proven to be beneficial to you (i.e. it fulfils a need), you keep it and repeat it when similar experiences come up.
Read that again: only when it has proven to be beneficial to you do you keep it. That means that, no matter how annoyed you may feel about some of your behaviours, you wouldn’t have kept them in the first place if they hadn’t been beneficial to you on some level. And that’s exactly where Jessica and her clients start digging and get curious.
Why do certain things stress you out and others don‘t? Negative stress (distress) generally develops when your expectations meet reality and there’s a discrepancy between the two.
In order to be able to change your behaviour, you need to first identify your expectations, which go back to e.g. your stress parts, your values, needs and your belief systems. For most people, these are not part of their conscious awareness and one of Jessica‘s jobs as a coach is to make the unconscious conscious. This gives you clarity and the first step to reaching your goals is clarity. Mindfulness and self-awareness are integral parts of this process – your superhero sidekicks, if you will.
“Well, that sounds easy enough!“ If it weren’t for your brain, it could be.
From an evolutionary standpoint, your brain has but one job: securing your survival. One way of doing that during times of stress is to preserve energy, especially in the gut (digestion needs an incredible amount of energy) and the prefrontal cortex of your brain (that’s where logic and rational thinking are at home).
During periods of stress, you are on autopilot for the most part (saves energy!) and the unconscious parts of your brain are in the driver’s seat. That is exactly why it is so hard to question and change behaviour and routines - especially when these are buried in the unconscious.
Allowing and then implementing change uses up an extraordinary amount of energy and your brain will try almost anything to keep you from spending said energy. You’re literally standing in your own way and blocking yourself from reaching your goals.
That’s when it can be incredibly beneficial to work with a coach. Why? Well, why do you go to a barber or hair stylist to have your hair cut? Don’t you know how to work a pair of scissors? You can surely try to cut your own hair and it might even look presentable in the front and on the sides. Cutting your own hair on the back of your head, however, can be quite the challenge, when you can’t see what you are doing back there.
That’s where having a good coach comes in handy. A coach provides an objective view and can intervene when your own brain is standing in your way, trying to shift your focus away from your goals. Working with a stress coach increases the chances of you reaching your goals and it helps you reach your goals faster.
Perhaps you can’t even come up with any goals yet, you just know that the status quo needs to change. A good coach can also lend you a hand in identifying your authentic goals, so you can finally start walking towards the life you deserve.
Choosing the right coach is a crucial decision, one that can significantly impact your mental wellbeing. With Jessica Silis, you’re getting a coach who understands that your current day-to-day lives do not allow for hours of stress management every day, on top of everything else.
Whether you’re just interested in learning more about stress and emotions or you’re at the point where you’re struggling to keep up with your everyday demands, Jessica Silis can help you unlock your super powers. Schedule your appointment now.