Stress driving you towards burnout? Time to go green

Stressed people rarely know they’re speeding towards the edge of a cliff until they’re about to drive off.

At least that was Monique Ross’ experience. After nearly 13 years in the media, commuting into South Brisbane most days and working senior roles in a high-pressure environment, she unexpectedly reached the end of her tether at the onset of the pandemic.

“I don’t think I was properly acknowledging how stressed I was,” Ross says. “It just became the norm, which, I think, is true for a lot of people. You just get stuck on that hamster wheel running and running.”

Former journalist Monique Ross worked in the media for 13 years before burnout triggered a major overhaul of her life.Credit: Britt Spring

Ross’ stress started to manifest in anxiety and interrupted sleep. “I was thinking about work all the time, even on the weekends,” she says.

“It had bled into my other life.”

An unexpected epiphany arrived courtesy of an Instagram post detailing signs of burnout.

“I had this moment of going, ‘oh my God, that’s actually me’. It was the first time I recognised that it wasn’t normal [to feel like that all the time].”

She took long service leave before deciding to quit the media altogether. It led her to find forest bathing, a practice popularised in Japan during the 1980s involving mindful, connective time in nature.

“During my recovery, I was spending heaps of time outside in nature, and I found that really healing and restorative,” she says.

“When I read about forest bathing, I had this instant gut reaction of [knowing] that this is my thing. That’s what I want to do.”

Ross is now a certified nature and forest therapy guide, taking small groups – many working professionals – on slow immersive walks around Brisbane. While most of them take place at Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens, other favourite spots include Yeronga Park, Orleigh Park, Toohey Forest, Sherwood Arboretum, and the City Botanic Gardens.

“There’s this idea that you have to go out into the wilderness to benefit from being in nature, but we’re really lucky in Brisbane. It’s such a green city.”

Many of Ross’ clients want to find time for themselves and detach from everyday stressors.

“We live in a society with a productivity bias … my job as a guide is to help people slow down and to get out of their heads and back into their bodies.”

An acupuncturist recently suggested my long-suffering battle with pain is the result of stress. I was taken aback. I considered stress to be a factor, not the crux of the issue.

What’s worse, few were surprised by this diagnosis. One friend swiftly described me as “a massive stress head”. Another shrugged and said, “checks out”.

Now I’m stressing about being stressed. But it’s helpful to know there are ways, even in the inner-city, to manage it.

Psychologist and stress expert Dr Jemma King says time in nature has been scientifically proven to reduce stress. “Just looking at greenery can reduce your cortisol by 15 to 20 per cent,” she says. “It has an enormously calming effect.”

Dr Jemma King says time in nature can reduce the stress hormone cortisol by 15 to 20 per cent. Credit: Jemma King

King – who has worked with special operations teams, Olympic athletes and global consultancy companies – researches how stress, sleep and recovery can affect performance.

She recently started running stress-management workshops at Razorback Homestead, a farm in Fordsdale, about 90 minutes from Brisbane.

Bringing people into nature, she says, is an important part of the offering. “Particularly for corporates. When you’re in a work environment, it’s very hard to down-regulate.”

King works with many individuals who mirror Ross’ experience of unchecked stress. “We’re on all the time, and that’s not how our bodies are meant to be,” she says.

While we aren’t faced with the kind of life-or-death threats we were hundreds of thousands of years ago, hunting prey and fighting for survival, King says modern pressures – work, technology and busy lifestyles – cause our bodies to experience stress in the same way.

“We still have this ancient hardware inside our modern bodies … our physiology does not differentiate.”

One of King’s top recommendations for managing stress, particularly for people in the CBD, is to find something green: “Your primitive brain loves green because it signals that there are resources.”

And if you really want to step it up, she suggests this approach: “Walk near water, where you can see green, preferably with a friend with a shared goal. Those things in combination have been shown to drop cortisol quickly.”

Since my reality check, I’ve started driving to Cedar Creek most weekends, walking by the river after work, and taking lunch in Anzac Square. A work in progress, but one way to avoid catapulting off that cliff.

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