The Prevention and Control
of Stress
The prevention of stress presented by Roger Macdivitt
This is often said to be “So easy to say, but, harder than that to do” but is it?
The following statement may seem obvious, in fact it is so much so that it is often overlooked. Stress situations should be avoided.
If you are suffering from stress can you escape the cause? Often we put up with things that do have solutions but ones that we can’t face because they perhaps impact upon others. Sometimes a sense of duty means that we feel trapped and then we just accept it.
I once helped a lady who was spending a small fortune on stress-busting cures and pills and taking frequent visits to doctors, spas, therapists etc. I was just the latest therapist. After talking with her I discovered that most of her stress came from looking after her elderly mother who suffered from a form of dementia. It wasn’t just dealing with the everyday problems that dementia impacts on a carer but the knowledge that it might continue for years and that she couldn’t get quality time away. Her sense of duty said that she had to do everything herself. Even while talking to me she was aware that a friend was having to mother-sit.
I asked her how much she was spending financially to deal with her stress. The amount was HUGE. I then enquired about the cost of a carer. She told me. It was half the cost of what she was spending already. We worked upon her duty issue. She is now NOT CURED but has enough time off to reveal to me that she is sleeping better, enjoying renewing friendships and doing a little part-time job and NOT feeling guilty. Her mother had helped choose her helper herself.
I am not claiming that all stress situations can be relieved in this way but it really is the first question to ask.
Behavioural problems can cause stress too. If you keep doing things that get you into stress situations you need to seek help in changing your behaviour. You may, for example, offer to do things for others which you then find over-stretches you. You don’t learn by your mistake. You do it again. Ask for help in moderating your offers. Involve another, say “I’ll check with..... first and let you know. Create a thought holiday.
It may be that your stress cause IS UNAVOIDABLE. Perhaps a difficult break-up or a death or something that undermines your self-respect or even threatens something near and dear. Do check if there is help available to support or remove the cause. DO NOT AVOID THE OBVIOUS.
If, and only if, you are convinced that you cannot escape the cause then seek a solution that feels right for you. If you don’t want to fill yourself with tablets then don’t. Join a gym, exercise, meditate, concentrating upon healthy things, paint, and most of all learn the art of relaxation. I promise, two four hour comfortable sleeps are quite preferable to eight hours of worry sleep. Why fight for hours, not sleeping but worrying about being fit for work?
The control of Stress.
Control is not elimination. If you cannot REMOVE the cause then you cannot eliminate it’s effects. So what should you do?
Having convinced yourself that you are stuck with the cause, you have to accept that this THING has to be accommodated . This acknowledgement is an important step in control.
Have you ever had what I often refer to as “Running disease”?
You can’t sit still, you fidget and tap and just feel that the only thing that would help would be to run at full speed or jump or even drive like a thing possessed? If you were to do so you would find that you couldn’t. Energy would disappear and you would feel lethargic and defeated. CLASSIC STRESS symptom.
A good fight is not acceptable BUT it would probably help. Not acceptable. The trouble is, your stress is telling you fight the enemy, hit him, kill him, get rid of the threat OR run for your life, run, run, run. The trouble is in today’s world or your community it isn’t acceptable to fight or run. It won’t help, it will make things worse.
Action is still the best way to overcome stress or depression. I won’t get into the area of depression other than to say that the tendency to just want to sit in a corner and do nothing is common and strong. If you can find an outlet for your aggression that harms nobody then grab it.
Go punch a punch bag. Go swimming, go jogging. Be serious about it, not obsessive but try to beat your own score or time etc. Chop some logs, clear out your loft-space. Do you get the message?
The horrible fight or flight chemicals that your body produced can be released, burned up, if not they build up and cause a myriad health problems, both physical and mentally.
The best CONTROL of stress is controlled aggression. If you are a gentle soul then you are just going to have to learn to get angry. Imagine somebody is threatening your children/partner/mother/father. Hear what you would hear, see what you would see, feel what you would feel, smell what you would smell. Get a picture and get angry.
This is the ONLY time that you will hear me advocate violence.
Controlled violence, healthy aggression can be releasing, after all, that stress is far more violent to your nervous system than any baseball bat. Go get angry. If you are a religious person, ask your God to help you to feel an anger that will release your soul. He will understand. He made you, anger and all. There’s a time and a place.
This does not represent the views of everyone.
My lovely friend Sheila gives her additions or different views on these two matters here. Read and welcome her. We can all learn so much.
Roger
Preventing and Controlling stress
Stress, It’s a word we are in the main familiar with, it is used in many instances of our daily life, and as a part of general conversation.
So do we really understand stress? How do we know that we are stressed? And is stress more prevalent now than it was in our parents of grandparents day?
The answers to these question and others like them can be either yes or no, we are all individual and as Roger has already explained so well, we all deal with the ‘stressors’ in our lives differently. What is a stressful situation to one person may have little or no effect on another, and the ways of preventing and controlling those stresses will be different for each individual.
For example some people may use meditation, others physical exercise, walk, run, swim or jog as Roger has recommended and a good standby is to thump a pillow and if you feel the need to yell.
As a teenager with a very difficult mother/ family life I attacked the wood heap with an axe, splitting the large blocks of wood which were delivered for the stove into burnable pieces. A very physical however extremely satisfying process of stress release as I not only burnt off my frustration and aggressions, I also had the satisfaction of seeing the pile of logs become a neat stack of split wood.
As a much older adult and physically incapacitated I turned to more gentle ways of coping with life’s issues and stresses and used meditation, in the main guided imagery, and a tape of a chant that I particularly liked. My ex partner who dealt with his own stresses quite differently used to refer to my ‘time out’ with headphones on as my ‘communing with the Baghwan and the Baghwanettes’ should my children call to speak to me.
The fight or flight chemicals Roger spoke of have been with us since the days of the cave man, and may be describes as Adrenalin. Adrenalin is that chemical rush which gave our ancestors the ability to either stand firm and fight, or to run away from danger, and we still have it today. The reasons are somewhat different, no lurking Brontosauruses these days unless it is on the movies, however the reactions can be just as powerful
Stress often it becomes a habit or a pattern that we follow or ‘slip’ into given a certain set of circumstances, it may affect our breathing, heart rate, temperature, and our thinking processes, as well as sleep patterns and coping mechanisms.
Over the time ahead Roger and I will share many interesting ideas with you and you will be able to if you wish come to understand why and how we have stress in our lives, even from in many instances the moment of our conception or our birth process, and how we can assist ourselves to release those stresses and prevent them from controlling our lives.
Until next time, thank you for joining us.
Peace Love and Light
Sheila