Reaching your breaking point

A “stress trigger” is something that really makes you feel upset- mad, sad, frustrated, annoyed, etc. Each of us have different stress triggers. Once we are triggered, we can cope appropriately to calm down or we might experience a crisis. Common stress triggers are lack of time to complete something, having to do something unpleasant, sensory concerns (sound, touch, lights, etc.), working with others, being in a large crowd, etc. “Cope” means appropriately and safely dealing with our stress and returning to a stable, calm state. Stress triggers

Reaching Your breaking point Stress triggers “add up” over time in us. When we have too many stress triggers, we can reach our breaking point– the point at which we are so upset that we act in irrational, unsafe, or unpredictable ways. Our stress level can reset after a short period of time, but some people don’t always go back to a “zero” level. We can use strategies to increase our tolerance of stressors and avoid our breaking point! On this slide, get out the plastic cup with no markings and fill with water until it is full. Then, add one drop at a time. The water tension will keep the water in the cup up until a certain point, and then each drop will spill over. This show us an example of a breaking point. At a certain point, the cup can’t take any more. Then, after that, each thing added causes a spill– just like in our lives, when we tolerate many things, but eventually we hit our breaking point. For a period of time after that, every little thing that happens can make us feel more upset. We don’t have a high tolerance for even a small stress trigger. We can tolerate more if our cup is more empty. Even if we don’t like loud noises, if we are in a great mood and excited, loud noises will bother us less. If we don’t like touch but are in a great mood or excited, touch will bother us less. If we are in a bad mood or have had a rough day, those things will quickly bother us. Our cup gets emptied when we feel stable and calm for long enough– an hour, a day, etc. If we are going through a rough time, feel sick, or have a history of trauma in our lives (don’t have students share examples of this, but you can share that examples of trauma are not having enough food, not having enough money, experiencing or witnessing violence in the home, etc.), our cup stays a little bit full. This means that even one stress trigger in a day can make us hit our breaking point. Reaching Your breaking point

“Tolerance” is our ability to deal with stress triggers and still feel calm. Lots of things in life are outside of our control. We can’t stop them or fix them. We can learn to tolerate them. We should increase our tolerance to be more predictable, easier to be around (make and keep friends!), and to be more successful at school, home, and work Increasing Tolerance

We can predict when we are likely to encounter our stress triggers and prepare to tolerate them. When we know or think a trigger is coming, we can: Avoid: Sometime, we can avoid a stress trigger by sitting in a different seat or politely asking someone to stop doing a frustrating action. When this isn’t an option, we can ask for help and cope. Ask for help: Make a plan with a teacher or your family to deal with situations in a positive way. Adults can support you as you learn to cope! Cope: Use coping strategies to help us “let it go” and feel calm again Teacher hands out cut-out coping cards and shares some pro/cons of each strategy. Students pick at least one to tape to the inside of their planner. They will use this strategy this week. Emphasize that as they use these strategies, they should communicate to teachers/parents what they are trying to do. A teacher or parent might get angry if someone completely ignores them and starts reading, but if the student communicates that they are very stressed and need to practice coping through reading for 3 minutes, this will almost always be ok. Example of pros/cons: Coloring is a great strategy for coping with stress triggers, but only works if you have time to color and the supplies. Teachers: I’ve uploaded some coloring pages on the website if you want to have them available in class. Increasing tolerance