3 Steps to Reduce Stress. Part Two: Know the Cause
Previously – Part One: Read the Signals.
Identifying that you are suffering the effects of excessive stress is the first step on the path to healing its negative effects in your life.
Once you have done that then you can look for what conditions in your life might be causing it.
Most of the time we know what situations and circumstances are causing us to feel stressed. We feel it.
Having a means to break it down can present us with a little bit of distance from the actual event, a little bit of objectivity, a perspective that can help us to see things more clearly and prepare our next step in finding the resolution we seek.
In regard to gaining more clarity we can say that there are 4 different conditions to stressful situations, and that these conditions can occur in isolation and in combination.
The 4 conditions are as follows:
Overstimulation – You receive more signals or messages than you have the ability to process. For example, this could show up in the loud music played by a constantly noisy neighbour or as chronic physical pain, such as a headache or toothache.
Expectation – You have an expectation around some event or condition that is wanted or needed and that isn’t met. E.g. Hunger or Thirst without water or food when sustained over a period of time. Promises continually broken. An important meeting happening in a location you seem unable to reach in time. etc.
Conflict – Someone or something that is opposing you, either mentally or physically, in such a way as to prevent you from acting freely. Conflictcould be someone or something in your physical environment, or something in you – a conflict of interest, or instinct, or both.
Exhaustion – You are depleted of energy to the state that you could not act even if you wanted to. There is a sliding scale to this. Generally speaking as tiredness grows, so too does our ability to cope with the other types of stress.
When left unresolved the cumulative negative effects of stress can be a killer.
Given time, stressful situations, will commonly become somaticised – meaning that what was originally experienced as emotional, mental, and physical states of discomfort or pain get locked into the body as physical symptoms. I mentioned previously symptoms such as heart palpitations, high blood pressure, and brain fog. Irritable bowl syndrome and other digestive issues are not uncommon in cases of prolonged stress. Nor are chronic auto immune disorders. Is it out of the realms of possibility that what begins as a natural response to potentially threatening situations, if left unresolved or unchecked, might even end up as heart attack or as cancer?
The good news is that as a biological organism you are made to adapt.
The bad news is that you can learn to adapt to stressful situations in ways that will keep you alive in the short term but that, over time, can have cumulative effects that might end up shortening your life – or, at the very least, inhibiting your quality of life.
The second bit of good news is that by becoming aware of it, and by taking actions that either lead you away from those situations and conditions that cause you stress – or shift your perspective to realise that they are no real threat to you, you can heal.
AND, not only can you heal, but you can begin to thrive in situations you previously felt compelled to avoid – not because you have removed a fear of such situations, but because you have developed an ability to recognise the signals, to know the cause, and then to adapt for the best.
Another way of saying this is that you have learnt to reason with unreasonable fears and in doing so have developed the courage to live a fuller life.
NEXT – Part Three: Adapt for the Best