We all experience stress during the course of our lives. It seems as though there is no escape from it.
There are a million and one things that are just ready and waiting to “stress you out”. However, it’s important to realise that there is no such monster called Stress out there that is going to attack you and eat you alive. In other words, stress is not a real phenomenon that exists “out there” in the real world.
The cause of stress is you. That might not be easy to hear, or sound very nice, but it is in fact one of the most empowering realisations that you can come to in your life. In this article, we will explore the dangers of stress and some techniques you can employ to reduce and eradicate stress in your life. Does this sound valuable to you? Okay, then let’s move on!
How Stress is Harmful
There is no doubt that stress is harmful. If you’re experiencing stress on a continuous basis, it will take its toll on you physically. The stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline and epinephrine are released by your central nervous system when you perceive a threat of some sort. This triggers what is known as the fight or flight response.
This fight or flight response has its roots in the reptilian brain and comes from a time when human beings faced real life threatening dangers on a daily basis. They lived in caves and for most of their lives it was kill or be killed. So they were on constant danger alert because of the very real threats they faced all the time.
Today, our lives in the developed world are safer. Most of us have safe, warm houses to live in, modern conveniences that make us take for granted most of the essential things that our ancestors could only have dreamed of having.
In short, we have evolved, but our brain hasn’t. In the distant past, a stress trigger may have been a pack of wolves or a man-eating tiger. Today, a stress trigger may be a big job interview, or too many bills and not enough money.
Most of the things that stress us out today are not immediately life threatening in the way that facing down a pack of wolves is, but the challenge is that the brain responds in the same way and goes into overdrive producing those stress hormones. Your conscious mind knows you’re not in real danger, but your reptilian brain can’t tell the difference, so the physical result is the same.
Here’s how it works: A danger is perceived – either a pack of wolves or an important job interview. Your hypothalamus springs to life, stimulating, in turn, your pituitary and adrenal glands, causing the production of cortisol and epinephrine, which causes a rise in both blood pressure and heart rate.
The blood vessels leading to your larger muscles, heart and brain dilate to concentrate blood flow to those areas to make you ready for a fight or a long, fast run away from the danger. Your metabolism and rate of breathing also increase, giving you more energy and pumping more oxygen into your system to facilitate either the fight or flight.
Your immune system is dampened down by the cortisol so that any wounds you might receive in your battle will not become inflamed. Your body is extremely tense and intensely focused now. These physical stress responses are designed to keep you safe, alive.
When you’re facing that pack of wolves, these physical responses are useful, essential even. But when you’re facing an important job interview, they’re not so useful, and in fact can largely work against you.
What about trying to make ends meet every month? You stress out about whether or not you’ll be able to pay the rent or mortgage, get everything the kids need for going back to school, make the car payments, the insurance, the electricity, credit cards, etc. These thoughts cause the very same physiological stress response that facing down a pack of wolves causes, but the threat is not the same. You will not be torn to pieces if the electricity bill is paid 2 weeks late. But your body responds as though you would.
And to make matters worse, the thoughts that cause the stresses we face in the modern world are ongoing, chronic. Facing the wolves is a brief thing. If you survive, your body calms back down to normal, and you can sit around the fire and regale your friends with the story of how you faced down 12 hungry wolves!
Chronic Stress
When you’re worrying about money every night, or whether you’ll ever find your soul mate, or how you’ll deal with your demon of a boss, or if you’ll ever find a job that you don’t hate, the stress response is ongoing. Your body doesn’t get a proper break from it, and as a result doesn’t have the opportunity to naturally repair itself.
This is how chronic production of those stress hormones will eventually lead to disease. We naturally produce cancer cells every day, and if we’re in a healthy state, our immune system eradicates them. But if we’ve been suffering from the stress of modern living for the past 10 or 20 years, the body loses the ability to fight off these cells, and they are allowed to multiply and develop into cancer.
Continuous increased blood pressure, heart rate and tension from the physiological responses to stress causes wear and tear on the system. Is it any wonder that heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer are on the increase?
This is not to say that diet is not a factor – it most certainly is. Diet is part of the story, but certainly not the whole story. And there is evidence to suggest that even those with a poor diet who have a very positive mental attitude are less likely to suffer from disease, although this outside the scope of this article.
So we’ve got this situation where our brain is causing our body to respond continuously as though its life is in danger, which is causing it to break down over time. What can we do? How can we fix this?
You are in Control
Well, the first step is to realise that you are in control – you are responsible. That is, you are response-able. You have the ability to choose how to respond. Much of the stress is caused because of knee-jerk reactions based on how we have been taught to think as we’ve grown up.
Money is tight, it’s hard to come by, there’s never enough, it’s something you need to worry about constantly just in order to survive. This is just an example, but this might be the way you’ve been taught to think about money. And if it is, then money, or lack of it, is causing you to think thoughts and feel feelings that are stressing you out. The important point to understand here is that it’s not the money or lack of it that’s stressing you out – it’s how you’re processing that situation that’s stressing you out. In other words, you are stressing yourself out.
Now you might say, “But it’s true! I don’t have enough money, and it is really hard to come by! How could I not stress about it?!”
Consider this: Imagine someone you love dearly is very ill. Does this stress you out? You might respond by saying, “Of course it stresses me out! What a stupid question!”
Okay, now imagine that this same person is still very ill, but they haven’t told anyone, so you don’t know about it. Does it stress you out now? And you might respond by saying, “Well, how could it when I don’t even know about it?”
Really think about this now. The situation is exactly the same. The person you love is very ill. When you know about it, you’re stressed, and when you don’t, you’re not stressed. What does this tell you?
It tells you that it is not the situation itself that causes the stress – it is your processing of it, the way you think and feel about it, that causes you stress. And the way you think and feel is totally, 100% under your control.
Who thinks your thoughts? When you love someone, where does the love come from? Take a moment and think about it.
The answer is obvious. You think your thoughts – no one else but you. And you create your feelings with your thoughts. The love you feel for someone is created by the thoughts you think about them. You are in total control if you realise and accept this. Once you understand this, you’re no longer at the mercy of your circumstances or the people in your life.
A storm might destroy your house, but you get to decide what that will mean to you, how you will deal with it. Will you say, “Great, I survived, and I have insurance so I can rebuild.”, or will you say, “My house and everything in it is gone, my life is over.” The choice is yours. The power is yours. The second one is a knee-jerk reaction. The first one is a considered response to the event. And there is a massive difference between the two.
Example: Stress About Money
So now you’re aware that it is your thoughts and feelings, which are totally under your control, that are the cause of the stress in your life. This knowledge empowers you. What can you do with it when faced with a “stressful” situation? Maybe a situation like the one we mentioned above like lack of money – one which affects many people.
First of all, if you’re someone who spends time stressing and worrying about money, let me ask you – how well does that pay? You might spend 8 or 10 hours a day stressing about money. How much does it pay you per hour to do this? Nothing? So, it’s not likely to help you solve your problem, is it?
Remember, those stressful thoughts of worry are ones that you are choosing yourself, whether consciously or unconsciously. In fact, it’s mostly unconscious because it’s the result of a habitual thought process built up over years that has become conditioned into you. But because you now know that you’re the one choosing the thoughts, you can choose to change them.
Try this out: For one day, check in with your thoughts periodically and write down whatever comes up. Become aware of the kinds of thoughts you’re thinking. Awareness is the first step in changing your habitual thoughts from unsupportive ones to helpful ones.
After you’ve done this, look at the results and ask yourself what things you would like to think instead. Write this down as well. Then as you notice yourself thinking stressful thoughts, catch yourself out and replace the thought with whatever else you chose to substitute it with.
Here’s an example:
Stressful thought: “I don’t have enough money.”
Replacement thought: “Money is abundant and I have the ability to bring as much as I want into my life.”
Which thought makes you more resourceful and may actually help you bring more money into your life? Which thought makes you feel better? Which thought makes you feel less stress?
Or if that replacement thought is too much of a leap for you, you can say something like, “I can choose peace instead of this.”
It’s a process, like going to the gym. It doesn’t happen overnight, but if you do this for long enough, eventually, you will begin to change your habitual thought patterns into supportive ones which will allow you to see more opportunities in your life.
Also, make sure that you take time out for yourself to do something that relaxes you so that you give your body an opportunity to take a break from the stress your mind has been putting it under. Take a yoga class, take long walks through nature, meditate, listen to some peaceful, soothing music, take a long, luxurious bath, do some deep breathing exercises, read or watch something that inspires you or makes you laugh. Whatever activity appeals most to you, that allows you to forget about the stuff that you think stressful thoughts about, you want to spend more time doing that.
I would advise against drugs and alcohol for de-stressing as the negative side effects far outweigh any positive stress relief you may perceive that they give you.
The central point of this whole article is that stress is all about your thoughts. Your thoughts, which you have absolute control over, are what cause you stress – period. Change those thoughts, and you can eradicate the stress. The first step is awareness, and after that it’s about choosing and substituting supportive thoughts. And you simply must give yourself time for activities that allow your body to recover from stress.
If you think that’s too difficult, tedious or will take too long, then you are, of course, free to continue to think stressful thoughts. But keep in mind the implications this has to your overall physical and mental health. The choice is yours.