More Answers... (03/16/26): Discouragement Management

Hi Everyone, 

Here are More Answers... to help you head into the work week. Remember, you can see previous newsletters at askchrista.com/MoreAnswers.

Today’s topic: Discouragement Management

We spend a lot of time talking about what stress does to us: our minds, our hearts (figuratively and literally), our overall health, our ambitions, our life balance... and we only ever talk about stress when it's bad stress. Wait-- no, not just bad stress, but super toxic stress that is destructive, distuprive, and feels like a gut punch to us, usually over a prolonged period of time and way after we feel we can do anything to manage it.

As a result, we focus on LIVING with stress. Overcoming stress without ever working on removing stress, as if removing stress means we couldn't overcome it (and yet, why would we want to try overcoming it if removing it is easier???). Stress has somehow become a bad neighbor we simply have to learn how to deal with.

But I completely disagree with that notion...

What if We Managed Pre-Stress?

As a society, we've cozied-up to stress and maintained it as a bed fellow when in fact we can decide to do away with it, or at least we SHOULD decide to do away with it when we can. 

What I mean to say is: there's no need to live with that deeply toxic, incredibly destructive stress. You can find and deserve to find greener pastures. 

At the same time, HOW we identify stress signals is really important, so this week's More Answers is about managing discouragement as a key signal to stress. My thesis is if we got better at managing and deflecting or feeling and then acting on discouragements, we may in fact have to deal with less stress. 

At the very least, we might deflect a sense that stress has to LIVE with us day in and day out. 

Perhaps by noticing discouragements earlier and not feeling we have to overcome them in record time, or at least gaining the tools to face discouragement head on and not let it eat at our confidence and sense of competence, perhaps we can deflect at least SOME of the stressors in our lives.

Discouragement as an Early Signal

Stress rarely appears out of nowhere, although it can feel like that. But... it often grows through smaller experiences that accumulate over time. And... one of the most common signals of early stress is discouragement (especially chronic discouragement when it becomes hard to see our way out of a cycle of stress).

The thing with discouragement is it can appear in slow, unidentifiable ways. First you try, and maybe something doesn't work. That causes stress, right? But then you try something else, then maybe something else... 

If you start feeling like NOTHING will work, well... yeah. You got it.

None of these single moments may feel overwhelming, and the first "hm... that didn't work" can even feel motivating. But repeated discouragement can slowly erode motivation, confidence, and persistence (Bandura, 1997).

Research on self-efficacy (grossly simplified: how much control we believe we have to achieve a goal) shows that people are far more hardy and adaptable when they believe their efforts can influence the outcomes. 

SO... it makes sense that discouragement can chip away at that belief, right? And repeated discouragement can feel like nothing is gaining traction: we're stuck between our effort and any progress (Bandura, 1997).

This is how discouragement can be an early signal that intense stress is right under our noses, and if we learn to recognize it sooner, we may have more opportunity to respond before stress takes over.

Discouragement Management in Practice

Yup! We say "stress management," so I'm leading with the phrase "Discouragement Management." 

I'm not sure people use the word "discourage" as much as they should, but I'm asking everyone to start. "I'm discouraged." "I feel discouraged." Those are very specific phrases in the English language that very few would misinterpret, and yet, those phrases often elicit a very different knee-jerk response than "I'm stressed." "I feel stressed."

We've become an instant diagnosis / action / fix it society when someone says how stressed they are, but it's not the same if someone says they are discouraged, and that's useful to know. Often people ask questions and seek to understand more about someone who reports feeling discouraged versus someone who feels stressed.

And as such, most times people will engage in a different conversation about feeling discouraged. This is helpful, especially when it comes to a deeper understanding of how to cope with discouragement. Psychological research shows that identifying those feelings of discouragement, then proactively coping (or ways to recognize discouragement before it escalates and leads to losing self-efficacy), can significantly what might become long-term stress (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997).

That is the heart of what I'm calling "discouragement management."

Talk about feeling discouraged so it doesn't subtly sneak up on you after accumulating as a "never" statement later on ("I'll never find a new job," "I'll never win," "It will never work").

When we respond to those early signals, we have a chance to manage the stress in different ways, including whether we want to accept the stress or not.

(yes, we can do that...)

Booster for the Week!

Those of you who know me well know two things most do not: 

1) I'm a nerd, and 

2) I'm a big Steve Harvey fan (the man, not the celebrity / game show host). I could listen to him talk about life for hours and hours and hours.

With that, I have a five minute clip from 2020 where Mr. Steve Harvey talks about "How to Fight Discouragement." 

"The road to success is always under construction," he says, and whoooooooah... take a listen. He talks about gratitude like a lot of people do when it comes to discouragement, but he never talks about mainstream topics the way everyone else does.

And he doesn't with this one, either.

Take. A. Listen.

I strongly believe if we get in front of discouragement BEFORE it takes us over in the form of stress, our lives can and will be better. 

Enjoy!! 

With kindness,

Christa

(Helpful? Interesting? Please feel free to forward and invite others to subscribe at askchrista.com/newsletter.)

References

Aspinwall, L. G., & Taylor, S. E. (1997). A stitch in time: Self-regulation and proactive coping. Psychological Bulletin, 121(3), 417–436. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.121.3.417

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.

(remember: most public libraries in the USA offer access to academic papers; however, if yours does not, then Google these papers to see where they are listed, how you can learn more about them, and how you can find similar papers to learn more about conflict management and conflict resolution in the workplace)