By Arnie Kozak | Last updated Aug 22, 2010, 5:30 pm
The first principle to handling stress is to know your self. You must be able to monitor your body’s responses to a situation to know when you are becoming stressed and remaining stressed.
The body registers characteristic stress “signatures” such as increased heart rate, sweating, or muscle tension. The exact signatures are individual.
For some people, stress shows up in the body as headache, jaw clenching, or gastrointestinal distress. What are your stress signatures? Noticing when these are happening let’s you know that stress is present. Their presence can also be a reminder to work with the stressful circumstance in a way that can help to reduce the stress.
Mindfulness, or present moment awareness is integral for this self-knowledge because it helps you to monitor your body’s reactions (this will be discussed in another entry).
Avoiding stressful circumstances in the first place is, perhaps, the most efficient way to deal with them. You can examine your current circumstances to see if there are any changes you can make.
For example, shifting your commute time to avoid the height of rush hour or make that commute time an adventure by listening to books on tape, or even making it a meditation.
Another key component is examining your attitudes and perceptions. Put ten people in the same situation and some will experience it as stressful and distressing whereas as others will see it as a challenge, and perhaps even fun. What’s the difference? Attitude is key.
What we tell ourselves about a situation and our ability to cope with it can make all the difference. If we think the situation outstrips our ability to cope we will feel stressed. Cognitive psychologists call this process “appraisal” and we can modify our appraisals of any situation.
To modify does not mean to deny the situation but to recognize that any given situation can have multiple interpretations. We can call this process “reframing.” For example, when your child is screaming, rather than saying to yourself, “I can’t take this any more,” you could say to yourself, “Patience in this situation will make me a better parent; remember to breathe.” Same situation; different experience, and more importantly, different physiology.
Reframing a situation can help to avoid chronic stress because a situation that is previously seen as an overwhelming threat is now seen as something that can be handled. Reframing helps us to turn adversity into growth.
However, there will be many situations that cannot be re-arranged or reframed and must be accepted. This is where mindfulness, again, becomes a crucial coping strategy. Stress often arises when we wish a situation to be different and it is not within our power to change it. This resistance to what is so causes tension and elevates levels of stress hormones.
We always have choices in how we respond to a situation and this ability to choose may need to be cultivated. Initially it may seem as if we are just reacting automatically to every difficult situation that arises with a stress response. With practice, these reactions can become responses. We’ll explore this further in the next entry.
Arnie Kozak, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, meditation instructor, and author of Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness(Wisdom, 2009). He also the founder of the Exquisite Mind in Burlington, Vermont and writes a daily blog entitled Mindfulness Matters: Tools for Living Now!
As an expert in stress reduction, wellness, and mindfulness, Arnie will present weekly practical wisdom for transforming stress. His award-winning writing will help you to lead a richer and happier life.
From ctwatchdog.com published on Aug 22, 2010, 5:30 pm