The Stress of Joy
Summer term was upon us. A term full of school trips, sports days, award assemblies and lots of fun!
Henry was so excited for all of the events. He would list the dates to you and tell you how many days to each event. However, when the day came Henry would either only be able to take part in small amounts of the day or not be able to take part in anything. He would either meltdown over something small or shutdown. We spent a long time trying to figure out what was happening - was he overstimulated, did he find it overwhelming, was it anxiety fueled?
Lisa was so excited for her trip to Disney. She adored everything disney. Her family had planned and prepared for the whole event. She had the best day, however towards the end Lisa was so upset and couldn’t stop crying.
Every year the birthday was the same. Ryan was so excited, he would wake up early ready for presents and a day full of celebrations and fun. He involved himself in everything and loved it. But in the afternoon, the cake would come out and the tears started.
For Henry, Lisa and Ryan there was a complexity of answers to what was going on. But one part of the puzzle was they were all experiencing the stress of joy.
Stress and joy are words you don’t expect to find together. However, they are emotions that are felt really close to each other and for children and young people it is part of healthy development. We, as adults, need to help them through this stage especially children and young people who find this particularly difficult.
When we experience joy, whether that is a peaceful, content joy, a giddy excitement or wondrous joy our body releases a ‘cocktail’ of brain chemicals. Oxytocin, Endorphins and Dopamine. This release of chemicals in our body makes us feel alive and gives us a rush of energy!
However, the feeling of joy is a state of high physiological arousal which releases adrenaline which is also a stress hormone! The capacity to experience and cope with states of joy and excitement requires an effective stress regulation system. Without this the brain and body can become uncomfortably over - aroused.
For many of our children and young people the crash can come because they are still developing a stress regulation system and continuing to widen their window of tolerances through experience. We might see the upset or ‘come down’ after something they really love doing, or have been looking forward to doing because their bodies have reached the capacity of arousal and need to be regulated. For others it might be that their body mistakes the release of adrenaline as a threat experience not a joyful experience.
This is particularly true for our neurodiverse children, children who struggle with anxiety or children and young people who have experienced any kind of trauma. Their bodies experience release of cortisol and adrenaline constantly throughout their days. The threat of sensory overload, social situations, unpredictable environments or environments that trigger memories are seen as a constant threat. Therefore their bodies can mistake the rush of chemicals associated with joy as stress.
The great thing is we can really help with this. Whether you are a parent/carer, teacher or youth working it is important to extend joy in any situation.
We can do this by introducing short bursts of joyful moments and then moments of regulation. For example when I would lead class sessions in schools we would start each session with a game, a silly game! Whether that was ‘move around the room’ game where you get children to move around the room like an animal or vehicle etc or silly faces game where the children draw portraits of each other without looking at the paper - any games that invoke laughter and the ‘cocktail’ of joy chemicals in brains. We would then pause as I started to see children dysregulated and take three deep breaths with our breathing ball, to help bring them back into their window of tolerance. As a teacher it also meant at the end of a school trip day or sports day we made sure we had ‘regulation time’ before the end of the school day. This might have been ipad time, yoga, sensory room, massage or watching postman pat together! Joy is important, but regulating children during or after big joyful moments is also very important
For Henry, that would be making sure that during days like sports days he had scheduled ‘chill time’ where he could go to a quiet space and regulate from all the excitement. It would mean having lunch in the same place and at the same time for familiarity.
For Lisa, it meant little pockets of calm moments throughout the excitement of disney day, it also meant ending the day slightly earlier to allow regulation and rest time before the next day of fun!
For Ryan, it would be limiting activities that would be experienced in one day as at times this would be too much for Ryan. For all of them, it meant throughout the year creating exciting experiences through fun games and then bringing them back to states of regulation!
Fun is important! Joy is important. Actually it is vital for us to experience as a human being. However, through this we need to help continue to build resilient stress regulation systems for our children and young people by giving them time to regulate and teaching them how to regulate even in moments of joy!