The perils of stress
Many of us feel that stress is an inevitable part of life. We feel as if we have no choice in the matter. When stress appears in life, it is always on its own terms and we can do nothing about it.
We become victims to stress. We become its hostages.
Stress is linked to the 6 major causes of death. It is a serious problem.
Most treatments for stress are symptomatic. That is, they try and relieve the symptoms of stress, rather than the cause.
Examples would be:
- Exercise
- Breathing & meditation
- Medication
- Distractions and many others
Many people find themselves self-medicating when they are highly stressed, and they tend towards the use of drugs and alcohol.
All of these provide temporary relief from the symptoms of stress, they never take away the cause.
If you think carefully, you notice that there is a vast global spend on stress relief. And all our expenditure is targeted towards the relief of symptoms of stress.
In a way, that’s insane. It is like trying to stop a fire by blowing out the smoke!
stop blaming external factors
What if we had a method that could help us overcome stress for good? How much would that be worth?
Well, in order to treat the cause of stress, we first need to find what it is. What is it that is causing stress in our lives?
Usually, we know the symptoms of stress quite well. We understand that we are stressed, we know how to recognise it.
And when we start to ask for the reason we are stressed, we usually find it is something to do with the outside world. For instance, a relationship issue, an event, debt, death, divorce, losing a job and other such causes.
For non-chronic stress, we think the causes are milder versions of the circumstances and events in our life - usually to do with other people or institutions.
For instance, I could say I am stressed today because my Boss treated me unfairly.
Now, as soon as I have stated that my Boss and what he or she did is the cause of my stress, I have created a problem.
I have said that the cause of stress is external to me. That it is due to something outside of me. And therefore, I have relinquished my own ability to do anything about it.
Essentially, I have blamed a circumstance for my stress, and in doing so I have made myself powerless. Now I cannot do anything about it - the cause of my stress is external to me so I don’t have the ability to change it.
This is our biggest error when it comes to stress, we become the victims of stress when we assign the cause of stress to something external to us.
accountability for your stress
The cure for stress is the opposite. And here is how it works…listen carefully…
In order to overcome stress, we need to first take responsibility for it. In the past, we may have blamed events, people and circumstances outside of us for our stress.
Our freedom from stress begins when we first say to ourselves - stress is my responsibility and I need to do something about it.
By taking responsibility, we take ourselves out of the blame game that we have been playing. When we become responsible, we cannot blame another for our problems.
Taking responsibility has an amazing effect on us, which we don’t often realise when we are stuck in the blame game. Taking responsibility is highly empowering!
When we take responsibility, we give ourselves the power to make the changes we want to see. When we blame, we have no power.
Sure, events, circumstances and people have been causing us stress, but they are not the real cause of our stress. The real cause of our stress is the frame of reference we have created around our interaction with these people, these events and these circumstances.
We have allowed ourselves to create the expectation that certain events will cause us stress.
In simple terms we have told ourselves - when “X” happens - become stressed.
And then we blame “X” for the stress - not the association we have made between X and stress.
This is important.
Overcoming stress
It may be useful to take a few moments now and recollect to see if and how you have been doing this in your own life.
Once we become acutely aware of how we have created the stressful association, and we continue to do so, we are then able to free ourselves from stress.
We learn to break the association between ‘X” and the command we give ourselves - “get stressed”.
This is how we break the hold of stress over ourselves. We stop the trigger (X) from causing us to become stressed. We no longer blame the trigger for our stress, and we no longer need to keep treating the symptoms of our stress.
We have effectively treated the cause of stress and eliminated it.
Using this clarity, it is possible to become free from stress and make friends with it!
I hope you enjoyed this tip - I would appreciate any feedback or comments.
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