November 1, 2011
Part 4: The importance of stress management
Once you have created a list of factors, events and situations that you
recognize as being the primary causes of your stress problem, you are
faced with two options when it comes to what you are going to do about
the problem.
Option one is to remove yourself from any situation where you might
suffer stress. This may be relatively easy to do (although not always
practical) if the primary trigger for your stress can be readily identified.
If for example your own self-analysis indicates that the primary cause
of your stress problem is a boss whom you absolutely loathe, then you
can get rid of your problem in one fell swoop by quitting your job to
work elsewhere. However, this of course assumes that there are other
jobs available and as you have no idea what your new boss is going to
be like if you do change jobs, it might be a case of jumping out of the
frying pan and straight into the fire.
Nevertheless, in a relatively ‘cut and dried’ situation like this, your
solution is fairly clear and obvious.
For most people who suffer stress however, it is far more common for
their problems to be a result of a combination of several different
factors. In this case, taking one action (like quitting your job) is not
going to provide the solution you are looking for. While it might remove
one major source of stress from your life, it still leaves other factors
that you have identified as being a source of stress for you.
In this case, you fall back on the other option, which is learning to
manage your stress levels by changing your attitude or approach to the
stress causing factors that you cannot remove from your every day
existence.
For instance, while you can walk away from a job, you cannot walk
away from an ex-spouse with whom you have joint custody of your
children. In this case, if the ex-spouse is causing you stress and upset,
the ‘flight’ option does not exist and as choosing the ‘fight’ option will
only lead to more tension and upset, you need to learn how to deal with
what you are going through.
In effect, neither ‘flight or fight’ is a realistic alternative here so you
have to seek a third way, which is to teach yourself to deal with the
triggers that have hitherto caused you stress in a way that minimizes
the depth of your emotional reactions.
Turning off the alarm
As previously suggested, stress is as old as mankind itself, a chemical
reaction in your body to real or perceived danger which has been
passed down through the generations for thousands of years.
In effect, in the days of our Neanderthal ancestors, stress was a
warning system or an alarm that told our ancient forebears that urgent
action was imperative, an alarm that suddenly changed their whole
metabolism to prepare for the fight or flight that inevitably followed.
Given that it is very rare indeed for modern man to be in a situation
where such dramatic or drastic actions become imperative, it is a fact
that stress is nowadays something akin to a false alarm. While there
are hazardous situations that need quick and decisive actions (for
example, if you are base jumping, you need to make sure your chute
opens), there is no real need for most of us to get stressed out in
general, everyday situations.
Another thing that you have to understand that might help you deal
with stress is that it is not always the situation or event that we
perceive as causing stress that is the real cause. It is often the way that
we deal with the situation that causes the stress levels to rise, rather
than the situation itself.
This happens because it is a basic feature of human nature that we are
always harder on ourselves than we would be on other people. When
we make a decision or attempt to do something that goes wrong, most
people immediately tend to become super self-critical. They give
themselves a good ‘dressing down’, internally explaining why they
should never have attempted to do what they were trying to do in the
first place, how they have just made a fool of themselves and so on.
If a friend or family member had tried what we have just tried, we
would console them with the thought that these things happen, that if
you never try, you never know and that it is just one of those things.
When we are telling ourselves off however, we tend to be far more
critical and sharp. Hence, most of us have the capability to create a
stressful situation out of something that was not at all inherently
stressful a few brief moments before.
This is effectively a double-false alarm because there was no need to
get stressed in the first place but we did, only to aggravate our stress
levels considerably further by giving ourselves a hard time about it.
Negative thinking of this nature is extremely destructive because not
only does it damage your potential to perform to your maximum
capabilities by undermining your self-confidence, it also distracts your
attention away from the main task of focusing on your internal emotional
strife.
If you can therefore learn or teach yourself how to turn off these false
alarm situations so that you do not react to challenging and difficult
events by getting stressed, you have taken a significant step towards
reducing stress levels in your life. In this way, you have minimized the
possibility of suffering the attendant medical side-effects that can be so
critically dangerous.
So, how do you set about turning off these false alarms when they
occur? There are many different tactics or strategies that you can try
that have been successful for many other sufferers before you, most of
which are focused on learning to relax rather than reacting when faced
with a situation which might otherwise become stressful.
Deep breathing: Whenever you are faced with a situation that has the
potential to become a stress filled moment, it is extremely effective for
reducing the impact if you have mastered the art of breathing deeply
and slowly on command.
Taking slow, deep breaths under complete control rather than the fast
and shallow breaths that we automatically tend to take when we are
stressed is a highly effective way of making sure that stress never gets
its foot into our emotional ‘door’. Teaching yourself to react to stressful
situations by conscious command of your breathing is a superbly
effective way of minimizing the possibility of stress taking control of the
moment.
There are many different ways that you can teach yourself to breathe
deeply and slowly at those moments when stress seems imminent, such
as the classical ‘stand back, count to ten, in and out’ strategy. Anxiety
or stress attacks both tend to hit you quickly and suddenly, so if you
make a conscious effort to take a step back (physically or
metaphorically), slowly count to 10 and force yourself to breathe deeply
and slowly, the stressed moment will almost always pass.
Sometimes however, even though you know what you should do, it can
be difficult to actually physically do what you are supposed to be doing
at those times when stress or anxiety hits hardest and deepest. As this
is obviously the time when controlling your breathing to keep your
stress or panic under control is most critically important, this can be a
major downside of having to make a conscious effort to breathe deeply.
For this reason, my favorite method of learning deep breathing is to
follow a training method that was first used around 100 years ago with
dogs!
You may have heard of Pavlov’s dogs, a phrase which refers to an
experiment carried out by an eminent Russian scientist named Ivan
Pavlov.
He wanted to establish whether it was possible to prompt what might
otherwise be seen to be involuntary reflex reactions on command.
Hence he carried out his experiment into what he called ‘conditioned
reflexes’ with dogs.
After ringing a small bell, he would feed the dogs and he continued this
process of ringing the bell, then feeding them for some time.
One day, he rang the bell but did not feed them. Nevertheless, the dogs
became attentive, began to salivate and Pavlov noted that the digestive
process also seemed to start at the same time.
In effect, by ringing the bell he had conditioned their automatic reflexes
to react in a certain way on command.
By following this adaption of the Pavlov method, you can teach yourself
to do the same thing with deep breathing and stress. Through a process
of self education (which is explained in detail in the article), you can
condition your reflexes so that every time you’re faced with a stressful
situation, you have already trained your metabolism to slow down your
breathing as an automatic response.
In effect therefore, by learning this version of the Pavlov method, you
put yourself in a position where you will automatically avoid almost
every stressed situation without even having to think about doing so.
Not only this but just having the knowledge that whenever stress
appears to be imminent, you are capable of banishing it automatically
has another significant advantage. As you know that your Pavlovian
conditioned reflexes will ‘kick in’ whenever stress raises its ugly head
and that through deep breathing, you have the power to neutralize
stress automatically will make you a far calmer and more relaxed
individual. Hence, by adopting this particular deep breathing training
idea, you reduce the possibility of stress in two different highly effective
ways.
Muscular relaxation: As mentioned before, one of the effects of stress
is to make you tense-up, knotting all of your muscles into a tight ball as
an inadvertent reflex action to the stressful situation you are facing.
Tense muscles release chemicals into your body that exacerbate your
stress levels and ensure that the stressed feeling itself lingers
considerably longer than it might otherwise. Hence, if you can learn to
relax your muscles at times of imminent stress rather than tensing
them, you can reduce the severity of your stress and the length of time
it lasts as well.
One of the best ways of doing this is to consciously move from the top
of your head to the tips of your toes, tensing and then relaxing every
individual muscle group as you go. When you feel stress coming on,
start by tensing and then releasing your forehead and eye muscles,
before moving on to the jaw muscles, then on down to the neck and
shoulder muscles and so on.
For each individual muscle group, tense and relax for a few seconds
before moving on to the next muscle group.
This works well on its own as a way of both relaxing you and turning
your mind to matters other than the one that was just about to start
stressing you out.
However, relaxing your muscles in this way works even better when
used in combination with deep breathing, so try the two at the same
time. Again, you could teach yourself to include muscle relaxation in
your conditioned reflex training so that the whole combined program
becomes automatic.
And if you are a person who suffers stress to a very high level, there
are more advanced muscle relaxation programs that you can learn
about that might be more effective for you than the basic program
highlighted above.
Perhaps the best known of these is Progressive Relaxation (follow the link for a description) while you can learn how to use this particular form of muscle relaxation by following this link.
Visualization: Wherever you are when stress starts to hit you, you can
be as certain as anyone ever could be that you probably don’t want to
be where you are, in that situation at that very moment. Visualization
develops this idea by taking you away from that situation or event
through the power of your imagination.
For example, imagine that you are on a beautiful sunny beach, sitting next
to a wonderfully serene and peaceful harbor or strolling purposefully
across a stunning snow clad hill. It really doesn’t matter what kind of
place you visualize or even if the place that you are visualizing is real or
a figment of your imagination. The point is, you must visualize a place
of wonder and beauty before trying to involve all of your senses in
enjoying and soaking in the atmosphere and experience of ‘being’ in
this marvelous place on both a mental and emotional level.
As suggested by the name, you can see everything in the scene, but
what exactly is it you see? What do you hear or smell? Is it hot or cold,
sunny, raining or snowing? Mentally reach down to touch the earth
beneath your feet or the bench on which you are sitting. What does it
feel like?
The more you can involve all of your senses in visualization, the more
deeply you will be pulled into your visualized world, taking you further
and further away from your potentially stressful reality.
Hence, you should try to master the art of visualization when you are
relaxing, at times when you have a few moments to spare. If you can
teach yourself how to visualize in this way before finding yourself in a
potentially stressful situation, it is going to be far easier to call up your
visualization skills as they are needed.
Learning to visualize ‘on your feet’ is going to be far harder, so learning
visualization skills is something you should start right now.
Other things that help: Deep breathing is an essential element of
both yoga and certain forms of meditation, and learning more about
both of these ancient disciplines will help you to apply a far higher
degree of control to your emotions, thus making it less likely that stress
is going to be a problem for you.
Of course, if you find yourself in a potentially stressful situation on the
way to work or in the office, you are not going to drop down to the floor
to adopt a yogic asana (pose) or sit crossed legged humming! These are
not, therefore, disciplines that you will use to rebuff the onset of stressful
moment as and when it happens.
However, by mastering either yoga and/or meditation, you will acquire
a far higher degree and level of mental control because in both cases,
these disciplines are focused on learning or heightening the levels of
control that you apply to your everyday existence.
For example, as suggested on this eHow yoga page (which is a very
good place to start learning about yoga), it is stated that yoga is all
about ‘disciplining yourself to balance your mind, soul and emotions’,
which is exactly what you need to be able to do if you want to turn off
the false alarms in your head generated by stress.
In a similar fashion, many of the different forms of meditation focus on
positive thinking and how you acquire the ability to think positively each
and every day of your life. As suggested earlier, negative thinking is
one aspect of human nature that tends to elevate the most damaging
effects of stress, so learning to think positive is a very beneficial thing
to do.
For example, if you practice Raja Yoga Meditation, the idea is that you
spend 15 minutes every morning teaching yourself to have only positive
thoughts throughout the coming day. Every morning, you tell yourself
over and over again that you are a peaceful person and that your
objective is to radiate peace to everyone you encounter.
If you can entirely adopt this philosophy by constant training, it really
will make a difference in how many people that you come into contact
with can annoy you or stress you out. You will remain calm, collected
and at peace with yourself, thereby ensuring that the stress alarm
remains wonderfully silent.
Learning to turn off these false alarms is a major step forward, but it is
dealing with the symptoms of stress, not attacking your problem at the
roots. In order to do this, you have to take one further large step into
the unknown.
Don’t turn the alarm on in the first place!
It is all very well learning to turn off the stress alarm once is starts
ringing in your head, but, obviously, it is far more effective if you can
prevent that alarm starting in the first place. In other words, it is more
effective if you can attack the root cause of your stress problem rather
than simply dealing with the symptoms as we have done so far.
Fortunately, once you know how, this is not particularly difficult to do,
with its genesis in the idea of visualization that we looked at in the
previous section.
By learning to visualize, you both increase your ability to relax and take
yourself away from the situation that was threatening to make you
stressed.
This latter point is extremely important, because it highlights a basic
premise of which all cognitive psychologists are aware, the idea that all
of our behavior and also our feelings are largely caused by our own
beliefs and thoughts.
Of course, cognitive psychology is a very complicated and involved
science that focuses on some incredibly complex areas of human
behavior such as problem solving, language and memory. Hence, my
‘snapshot description’ of the connection between feelings and thoughts
in the previous paragraph is massively oversimplified and simplistic but
for the purposes of understanding this concept in relation to stress, this
description is adequate.
In essence, the basic idea is almost an extension of the Raja Yoga
Meditation principle, that by thinking peaceful thoughts, you engender a
feeling of inate calm and peace, whereas by thinking stressful thoughts,
you naturally create stress.
In essence, therefore, the reason that we suffer stress has nothing to do
with what is happening to us, nor is it directly related to what has
happened in the past. On the contrary, stress in this scenario is caused
by how we are currently thinking about what is going on rather than by
events themselves or by memory of previous occurrences of a similar
event.
While any past experience that we have already accumulated
of similar events or situations will influence how we react when it
happens again, it is still our thoughts or beliefs about that
experience and the current situation that makes us react in the way we
do.
A couple of examples may help to illustrate this observation a little
more clearly.
We have already established that the most traumatic experience that
any human being can go through is to lose a spouse but as the vast
majority of us are never going to lose more than one spouse in our
lifetime, few younger people have previous experience in this situation.
And for the majority of us, while we might believe that the unbelievable
shock we feel is directly related to the death of our closest loved one, it
is in fact far more to do with our own confusion, our lack of direction
and understanding allied to a general inability to cope with such a
situation on a mental level. In other words, it is all about our own
feelings and probably also a subconscious belief that we were always
going to stay together forever that causes the stress, rather than the
event itself.
As another example, it is common for adults that were abused as
children to grow up feeling as if they have no value or as if they are
worthless. From this it follows that this adult feels depressed or
stressed because of their feelings of worthlessness and lack of value
rather than because of what happened when they were a youngster.
The strength of this notion is that we are not prisoners to our past
experiences or to our reactions. Because we know that our feelings
control what will happen, we have the power to apply that control in a
positive rather than a negative manner. In effect, whatever happened in
the past to cause stress or what is happening now to do the same
cannot ‘win’ if you apply positive thinking to everything you encounter
on a daily basis.
Instead of being anxious, focus on being concerned because while the
first focuses on taking an idea or a situation and worrying about it, the
latter is all about analyzing that idea or situation in an effort to find a
solution or an answer.
Take care of the real problems in your life by never allowing them to
get you down and instead of getting anxious or stressing about them,
address them head-on and look for solutions and answers.
Learn the strength of positive thinking, adapt this positive thinking to
every situation that you come across and you will go some considerable
way to silencing the stress alarm bells in your head for ever.
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Well, we are nearing the end of this particular series. There is only Part 5 and we are finished.
I hope that you enjoyed this particular series. When this is finished I will begin a new series dealing with anger management.
Have a great week.
Warm regards,
Karen C Groves
BustingStress.com
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