The concept of the stress bucket, introduced by Professor Alison Brabban and Dr. Douglas Turkington in 2002, provides a simple yet powerful way to understand and manage anxiety. It’s a practical tool for recognising how stress impacts mental health and discovering ways to build emotional resilience.

Picture a bucket where all your stress and worries collect. The size of your bucket varies from person to person, some have larger, deeper buckets that signify a greater capacity to handle stress, while others may have smaller, shallower buckets, making them more vulnerable to feeling overwhelmed. At the bottom of the bucket is a tap, representing the coping mechanisms that allow stress to drain away.

The stress bucket model also categorises emotional states into four levels: calm and relaxed; coping well; feeling stressed or anxious; and overflowing or overwhelmed. When the bucket fills faster than stress can be released through the tap, it overflows, this is when issues like anxiety or burnout can arise.

This is where therapy comes in. Counselling and other therapeutic approaches can help individuals identify the factors filling their bucket and explore ways to widen it or improve the flow through the tap. Therapy provides tools and strategies to enhance coping mechanisms, build resilience, and reduce the pressure in the bucket. It’s a supportive space to gain insight into your stressors and create personalised ways to manage them, helping to prevent the bucket from overflowing in the future.