Stress Management for Couples

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]hey there it's tamara today i just wanted to pop in and give you a little tool one of the things that i have noticed that i've seen over and over again it's a consistent pattern if you have trauma if you have triggers that need to be healed there's also a tendency usually to have difficulty handling stress difficulty handling the overwhelm when stuff starts to feel out of control stress is out external events plus the way we think about those external events that creates this this feeling in us that makes things really hard to handle so what i want to do today is i want to help you understand stress how to look at it in a way that will really help you get a handle on it and manage your stress in a way that will make the rest of your life that much more smooth stress basically has five levels there are five levels of stress and so i'm going to write them here on the board and explain them to you as we go so level one is a recovery state but it's a tuned out state okay it's not sleep but level one is a recovery state where your muscles are completely relaxed eyes are usually closed thoughts are peaceful thinking all is well there's no connection to the outside world the environment around you but it's not sleep so what does that mean essentially when i was learning these curriculum decades ago i saw a video of a bunch of monks sitting around on the floor in a cement on a cement surface and each one of them had a bucket of ice water right next to them they were meditating and they weren't you know they just had like the little cloth around their um sitting area and they were in meditation and their eyes were closed and the assistant pulled like a sheet out of the ice water and wrapped it around them and within less than a minute you could see steam coming off of the sheets because these monks were so good at staying completely relaxed and staying so tuned in to themselves and not tuned into the environment around them that they were able to just dry the towel and not have any there was no flinching response at all so bottom line is this recovery state is not a state that most of us can do when we're recovering tuned out we're asleep this is not in a sleep state but i'm telling you about this state of stress because if i said there were four i'd be lying because there is this one which none of us can do so i'm telling you right now don't feel like you have to achieve that because we can't most of us can't anyway that's something that's achieved by people who are in a constant state of studying meditation not people like you and i who have lives okay so second level of stress it's also recovery state but it's a tuned in state so your eyes are open you're aware of your environment but your body feels calm and relaxed your thoughts are peaceful you're not thinking about stresses or to do less you're just really aware that your body is relaxed you're feeling good and at ease there are a lot of things that people do in level two to get them in to this level two tuned in state that includes things like meditation for normal people some people read some people listen to music some people talk to a friend i for myself i just love springtime and summer mornings when i'm lying in bed i don't know if you've experienced this lying in bed the sun comes through the windows the curtains in my bedroom are yellow so it colors my room with this sunshiny feeling i'm relaxed my bed is super comfy i don't have anywhere to go my eyes are open i'm enjoying those first few moments of being awake during the day can hear the birds outside and a little bit of traffic that's a tuned in recovery state where you're kind of just taking a breath relaxing enjoying where you are instead of thinking about the next step this is a really important state to be able to get yourself to on a regular basis and i'm going to tell you about that in a minute there's also a list that i'm going to give you because some people people who have the most difficulty managing their stress have very few of these behaviors in their toolbox so at the end of this training i'm going to give you a list of things that potentially could take you there it's going to be different for every person we want to do recovery states daily because level three is the place to be so level three i'm going to give it more space on this board because level three is a problem-solving state right so if we look if we just make a line here and we pretend that this list is portioned out by how many hours of a day that we're awake that we're spending in each one of these states we want to live most of our time in this problem-solving state so when you're in problem-solving state you have mild tension right you're aware that there's a problem but you have thoughts like oh that's okay i know how to solve it or i can figure it out so one of the things that are in this state like if you take my training and learn about how to reduce a trigger when we're in the triggered state when we're in fight or flight we don't have access to iq because all of the blood that should be in our brain helping us think and problem solve and do the things that we do when they're in this state are in our extremities it's moving away from our bodies in case in the caveman days we get injured into our legs and arms to get us ready to fight also not in our brain so we have full access to iq when we're here people have asked me if our iq changes it doesn't but depending on where you are in stress you can have less access to your smarts when you're stressed out and that's a really important thing to recognize so here you have mild tension in your body you're well aware of a problem but you've you're saying things to yourself like i got this like your thoughts are um i'll figure it out right here you have confidence your feelings are confident you're feeling a sense of self-esteem and well-being well you're also aware that there's a problem we want to live in this place but unfortunately most people you know when you ask someone how are you and they go i'm fine but you know from their facial expression or from their tone of voice or from whatever's just been happening that they're not fine they're usually this is what most of us do in the next stage saying that they're here and if you're a person who's lived with trauma your person who has triggers and ptsd symptoms you likely spend a lot of time in level four pretending you're at level three okay one of the things about level four is that you can be in that state telling yourself you're okay but you're telling yourself you're okay like this i'm okay i'm okay i'm okay and that's not an okay state you're not relaxed you're not calm because there's a sense of panic so level four is losing control okay so in a losing control state you're saying to yourself things like this isn't fair if you're in relationship you're thinking how can i get away how can i make this stop what do i need to do to to change the situation and it's with this state of panic also you have an increasing sense of body tension this might be the state where you're starting to feel pain right pain and panic anxiety happens here anger happens in this state thoughts like this is those times when you start when you're talking to a friend or you've talked to a co-worker or you're talking to your partner in a relationship and you start listening to them but you're creating the argument in your head before anything comes out of your mouth that's level four the last level is level five level five is out of control now there are two feelings there are only two feelings in the out of control control state and it's terror and rage in terror when you're in the out of control state you're feeling terror enraged this is where you do damage this is damage to yourself damage to others damage to property this is where you say things in relationship that you can't take back because your partner is not going to forget or your child is not going to forget this is where you do things to harm yourself because maybe there was a pattern of being harmed before and so you go that place your brain is in total fight flight so here you are actually just doing the knee-jerk reaction you're in complete fight or flight you have to get away and do something desperate to survive and that's the stuff that happens here in losing control stage i talked here about having full access to iq in this state you're starting to have less access to your iq in this state you're really not using iq at all you're actually full on fight flight there are only there are a couple of things that you can do that that take you to a level four that are good for you two of them one of them is um exercise and the other is orgasm right so these two things you don't want to be in an out of control state and then jump into sex with your partner because it's usually not going to be good sex when that happens but when you are in a good relaxed state either in a recovery state or in a problem-solving state and then you engage with your partner in sexual activity and it takes you to orgasm orgasm is an out of control state it's an out of control state and if you're exercising right when you get to the state where you have spent all of your energy and you're thinking oh my gosh i can't do any more this has to stop and then it's time to stop what happens at the end of these two activities is they drop you right back to a level two so those are the only two activities that actually work really well to take you to a level two that's why exercise is really great for managing stress because it it helps you to increase your buffer zone so what we want to do on a day-to-day basis is pay attention if you're spending too much time in this losing control state and like face it many of my clients who have to deal with trauma who are trying to learn how to heal themselves they live right here they're constantly an argument they're trying constantly trying to figure out how to get out of situations they're constantly anticipating negative situations and when that's the case you're in a losing control state so here's the formula the more often you find yourself here when you find yourself at a four do a level two activity to get you back in level three it's that simple when you notice in your body that you're in an out of control state find a level two activity to do to help you get back into level three the ideal is to do enough level two activities often enough to increase that buffer zone so your level three problem solving buffer zone is really nice and wide so that when you're in problem-solving state something can come in that causes mild tension but you've got it because you've been able to manage the stress well enough with these level two activities that you can actually take a hit stay cool figure it out and move on without going to a level four that's the goal that's what we want to be able to do so in order to implement this what you have to be able to do is have a regular practice a daily sometimes hourly practice of checking in with yourself to ask yourself where am i what level am i at right now so there's this little tool and the reason i color code this is because i want you to associate level one is purple level two is blue level three problem solving where you wanna be is green losing control is four out of control is five because i want you to make i made this one out of the markers i have i don't know if you can see it this is a post-it note with level one two three four and five color coded to match this system that i've just given you so what i want you to do is get some post-it notes make them for yourself color-coded nobody has to know what this is but put it on your bathroom mirror put it on the dashboard of your car put it on your refrigerator put them everywhere that you are regularly finding yourself to remind yourself to check in what is my stress level if you find yourself out of four find some level two activities that you can do and there's some that you can do right on the spot including breathing that will help you get back into a problem-solving state so with this little training i'm making a couple of handouts for you one is i want you to keep a log of where you're at when you're at each one of these stress levels what your thoughts and feelings are because the more you get connected with what you think and feel when you're feeling stressed you'll be able better to identify that pattern and deconstruct it so you can really heal yourself the second thing that i'm going to do is these recovery state level 2 activities i'm going to put them in the download below as well so that you have a list at the ready look through the list identify what things would feel like a hug to you what would feel like nurturing self-loving things that you know kind of take you down to a more relaxed state have those ready whenever you need them so you can go okay wait what are my level two activities until these level act two activities become regular things that are part of your routine so we want to use level two for maintenance prevention and crisis management so look through the list identify three or four things that work for you and start putting them in your life regularly so you can start managing stress instead of it managing you thanks for watching download let's get started i hope you enjoy let me know how it goes