Much of the intolerable stress that we experience in our lives does not come from within, it comes from outside of us. It does not stem from the pressures and challenges we face personally; instead we catch it from others who can no longer manage the tension of the challenges they face and so get rid of their stress by throwing it over to us.
The social nervous system (shortened to SoNS which is pronounced sons) describes the clusters of behaviours we use to pass stress on. Originally these actions were vital to our existence, their contagiousness acted as an ancient tribal survival system, enabling a shared experience of threat and danger so that the group could escape together as one.
But now these behaviours are a hindrance. In our hectic, hyper-connected world we constantly catch stress that doesn’t belong to us and the weight of the overload creates it’s own problems: secondary relational stress which wears down our relationships, our mental health and our well-being.
Thankfully our social nervous system is predictable. As we learn to spot how others throw their stress to us and develop the ability to let go of other people’s stress, so we find that we experience far less stress, anxiety, tension and irritability and the quality of our relationships both at work and at home dramatically improves.
Introducing our social brain and how in order to lower our stress for thriving well-being we need to integrate solo self-care practices with social brain insights and skills.
Understand how contagious social stress was our ancient tribal survival system, but now how it's efficiency at passing stress across a group makes it the major threat to your health and well-being.
![How Stress becomes Contagious: Our Social Nervous System Behaviours [*hyperlink] Discover the 10 clusters of relational styles we automatically adopt under threat, stress and pressure and recognise when you have contagious stress.](https://drkathrynkissell.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/stress-1371491045.jpg)
Discover the 10 clusters of relational styles we automatically adopt under threat, stress and pressure and recognise when you have contagious stress.
Within our relationships we throw stress between us as if it was a hot potato. Discover the destructive co-created patterns that emerge and how to improve the atmosphere for everyone.
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