Female Stress Signatures
Agency
Role
Collaborators
Press
Context
Based on a combination of bench research and clinical practice, Dr. McClellan has found that women tend to fall into one of four categories (or "stress signatures") when it comes to how their brains and bodies respond to chronic stress: the vigilant sprinter, the vigilant pacer, the reluctant sprinter, and the reluctant pacer.
Female Stress Signatures
A quiz to identify stress archetypes and help women learn how to better combat it.
Context
Based on a combination of bench research and clinical practice, Dr. McClellan has found that women tend to fall into one of four categories (or "stress signatures") when it comes to how their brains and bodies respond to chronic stress: the vigilant sprinter, the vigilant pacer, the reluctant sprinter, and the reluctant pacer. The 82-question quiz, which feels similar to a Myers-Briggs test, presents a range of statements like, "I retain fluid when I'm stressed" or "I like to start my day with intense exercise," and has you choose whether that is never, rarely, sometimes, usually, or almost always true for you. At the end, you are matched with your stress signature and sent recommendations on tips to help with it.
Agency
Tia, The Modern Medical Home for Women, NYC
Role
Art Direction
Website Design
Editorial Design
Print Production
Collaborators
VP of Creative: Allison Ball
Web Design: Dani Belson
Writer: Megan Baldwin
Press
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Approach
With the help of Dr. Stephanie Mcclellan, our inhouse team at Tia created a way for women to understand how stress manifests in their body, and that it can be used in a meaningful way. The quiz allows women to enter a set of responses on 82 questions assessing the energy and arousal metrics, that together define their stress signature and provide tips on how to "use" your stress for the better. The point of outlining the stress signatures is so that women can recognize these broad-stroke clinical guidelines and actually intervene in a way with intention, whether it's the food they eat, or their sleep patterns, or their exercise, or how much they choose to drink or not—they can actually reverse and reduce allostatic load.
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Approach
Everybody reacts differently when their stress pathway is activated; these can be classified into four broad signatures—vigilant sprinter, vigilant pacer, reluctant sprinter, and reluctant pacer. The sprinter/pacer part of the signature (think of it as the X axis in a graph) refers to how quickly and how easily you mobilize energy as a result of your cortisol signaling. Meanwhile, the vigilant/reluctant part of the signature (the Y axis on a graph) deals with what happens neurologically when your stress pathway is activated. Vigilants, she says, tend to be more outwardly focused and actively engaged in the world whereas the reluctants tend to be more internal. We represented these ideas visually using abstracts shapes, illustrations and myriad colours to represent the spectrum of stress, which can differ at an individual level.
Akansha Kukreja
Operations
New York City, USA
Melbourne, Australia
Mumbai, India
©
Akansha Kukreja
Operations
New York City, USA
Melbourne, Australia
Mumbai, India
