Do you need a plumber?

Getting rid of the destructive effects of stress on your life is not that difficult. It does require knowing what actions to take and a commitment to taking those actions. Stress is a little like having a bathtub with a clogged drain and the faucet is on full blast. If you don’t do something immediately water will be running over the sides. Eventually the structure of the floor will be compromised and if the tub was on the second floor, you may find yourself taking a bath on the first floor.

Stress affects your ability to think, focus, problem solve and so can interfere with your productivity and success. Just think about your last stressful incident. How productive and creative were you? Were you able to think or were your thoughts like a runaway train. Your emotions are run ragged and this affects your perceptions of joy and happiness. Do you become sad, depressed, feel frustrated or angry when you get stressed? Each of us is different and, but each of us loses our ability to control our emotions.

I refer to one of the best remedies for turning off your internal faucet and stopping the increase of unwanted hormones coursing through your veins as the Attitude Adjustment Routine. I call it this because it stops the downward spiral of losing control and turning you into a victim of the situation. The steps taken in the Attitude Adjustment Routine include closing your eyes, taking several Breaths of Life, massaging, stretching, or shaking any tense areas in your body, smiling, and then committing yourself to the task at hand.

Seventy-five percent of the stimuli we respond to on a daily basis is visual in nature. Stress dilates the pupils and so unconsciously adds unnecessary information to be processed. Closing your eyes re-constricts the pupils. Slow, deep, rhythmical breathing can remove up to ninety percent of stress hormones and their toxic by-products from the body. A deliberate focus on your breath also stops you from mentally thinking about the cause or consequences of the stressful situation. This step helps you get back into the present so you can focus on appropriate information.

Energy can become blocked as a result of the stress response and this creates tension in different areas of the body. Massaging, stretching, and shaking the affected parts releases that energy and the deep breathing will remove the toxic chemicals that caused the tension. Where do you experience stress? Is it in the back of your neck or shoulders and lower back? Do you grit your teeth? Do your legs feel heavy or feet become sore? Or do you experience stress in other parts of your body?

The simple act of smiling releases chemicals that counter the effects of the stress hormones and puts your nervous system back into a non-stressed state. You don’t have to be happy to smile. Smiling when you’re stressed out is quite difficult (and probably something you don’t want to be doing at the time) but very important if you don’t want to give in to stress. With the stress controlled you can open your eyes and get back to the important things that must be taken care of. Worrying about the causes or consequences of the stressful situation does not help you alleviate the situation that caused your stress in the first place. In fact, it only stresses you out further.

You won’t need a plumber if you use the Attitude Adjustment Routine every time you find yourself in a stressful or adverse situation. You will be simply turning off your internal stress faucet. With practice you will be able to change your attitude from that of a victim to one of control. You may not be able to do anything about the situation that caused you stress, but you can do something about how you respond to it.

This is just one remedy for the immediate response to threat. There are more. We also must do something to our internal drains that have become clogged with toxic chemicals from log-term exposure to unresolved stress. But that’s another day. I hope this helps. You can live Stress Free.

Physician Heal Thyself

Our bodies are designed to heal themselves, but not without our help. Unfortunately most of us do not know what’s causing the illness or don’t know what to do to assist the healing process. And we get sicker and sicker as is evidenced by the fact that 86-95% of our population suffers from long-term exposure to unresolved stress. That was true for me up until about 7 years ago. The nineties were an extremely stressful period in my life and slowly my body starting to show the ravages of all that stress as I experienced symptoms (high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, high cholesterol, unexplained weight gain, depression) that if not checked could lead to serious, even life-threatening illnesses. Even though I was a Performance Psychologist helping people overcome performance issues related to stress I did what most people do when they experience stress. I ignored, suppressed, and repressed it. I kept a stiff upper lip as the British would say.

My physician prescribed medications to deal with the symptoms without ever telling me what their cause was. At the suggestion of a friend I sought a second opinion from an M.D. who also had a Ph.D. in Natural Medicine, Dr. Rita Ellithorpe. After an exhaustive battery of tests she told me that my symptoms were all stress related. I raised my eye brows, shook my head, and smiled, then told her that I was a Performance Psychologist and helped people deal with stress-related performance issues. She shook her finger at me and said, “Physician heal thyself.”

After that I began doing all the things I prescribed for my clients as well as all of the interventions (no pills) suggested by Dr. Ellithorpe. In Less than six months all of my symptoms had abated and was told by my traditional physician that I now had the blood chemistry of a healthy 25-year old. Since then I spent several years researching all the causes and ramifications of exposure to unresolved stress. My academic education only taught me about performance issues related to stress, not health issues. From this research I have put together plans to not only assist my clients perform better but to help them live healthier and happier. The plans include all the actions referred to in my last blog like deep breathing, exercise, and rest. These actions help remove the toxic by-products of the hormones released into your bloodstream to help you survive the threat. Remember, your body thinks your life is in danger and releases these hormones to save you. However, in social situations, the hormones interfere with your performance and remain in your body until you deliberately remove them.

There are other actions you can take at the time of any stressful event which will help remove the hormones from your body. I will describe these in future blogs. If you’ve been exposed to unresolved stress for any length time these harmful chemicals have already began accumulating in your body. And if you’re not yet experiencing illness or symptoms of more serious conditions, you will be. So it’s imperative that you take actions that alter your physical, psychological, and emotional responses to stress. You must also eliminate the build-up of toxic waste resulting from all these hormones accumulating in your body. In addition, there are environmental factors and lifestyle choices adding to the stress you may experience in your everyday life that need attention. Don’t worry. You don’t have to completely change your lifestyle or live on some secluded mountain top and meditate all day, but you will have to make some changes. It could be fun.

What is Stress

Stress is just a signal that we are being threatened in some way. So how do you spell relief when you get stressed out? Most people prefer to take a pill. It’s easy and quick. Not me, especially since the side effects of all anti-anxiety and anti depression (depression is a side effect of long term exposure to unresolved stress) medications include deeper depression, suicidal thoughts and death. Just watch TV commercials for these products. They’re scary and enlightening. Besides, once you understand stress, controlling it without medication is not much more difficult than taking pills. So let’s look at what happens when we get stressed out.

In fact, let’s look at how stress evolved in the human species. Our early ancestors lived in very hostile environments. Danger lurked around every corner. Our ancestors survived because, at the first hint of danger, their nervous systems automatically increased the supply of specific chemicals (hormones) to help them respond to the threat. These hormones increased the supply of oxygen to their brain, arms, and legs, dilated their pupils, and increased their blood pressure. These same hormones also shut down their reproductive and digestive systems. I guess one doesn’t need to think about romance or what’s for dinner when being chased by a saber-toothed tiger. This made them stronger and faster, able to see the danger better, helped them react to the danger quicker, and improved their stamina.

So how does that help us understand what to do when we get stressed out? In the process of responding to the threat our ancestors exerted a lot of energy either in physically confronting the threat or fleeing from it. Because all of our systems speed up when we engage in intense physical activity they probably had to urinate shortly after surviving the threat. And then they either took a nap to recover from the intense exercise or slept really well that night. Experts state that ninety percent of stress hormones and their byproducts are eliminated from the body through the breath. The other 10% is eliminated through urination and sweat. Rest then helps the nervous system go back to a normal state and recover from fright and intense physical activity. In a moment you’ll see why that’s important.

Today we face very few life-threatening events yet experience stress on an almost constant basis. Now, the threat is to our life-style, happiness, or sense of security. This is known as mental or psycho-social stress. The same hormones released in the case of life-threatening events flood our bodies when our life-style, happiness, or sense of security are deemed threatened. Unfortunately, the chemicals that signify any type of threat are not naturally or easily eliminated from the body. They must be deliberately forced out. Now what did our ancestors do when their lives where threatened? They exercised, sweated, breathed deeply, and rested. I’ll give you three guesses what we have to do when we get stressed out at home, work, school, or in any social situation and the first two don’t count.

Next time we’ll look at some options for eliminating the destructive effects of stress immediately and over the long-term and why these actions are important. For now, get some exercise, breathe deeply, and get sufficient rest.

Stress

Have you experienced any stress this week? Today? How about right now? If so, you are not alone. Nearly one-half of all American adults are prescribed anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication. In 2002 over 3 hundred million prescriptions were written for these drugs in the US alone. Stress is so pervasive that most of us don’t even know when we are stressed-out or accept it as a normal part of living in a fast-paced, hectic, and demanding world. Driving in rush hour traffic or dealing with unreasonable supervisors or co-workers, the possibility of losing your job, income, or home, or just too much to do with too little time to do it can produce a lot of stress. What stresses you out?

Stress, anxiety, nervousness, uncertainty, confusion, and chaos shatter your attention and interfere with your energy flow. Energy that could be available to better coordinate thoughts or movements is often wasted on fruitless mental agitation. Many times we can’t think straight. Thoughts flow through our minds at hyper-speed and it’s impossible to focus on just one. Some people refer to this as having a “monkey mind.” Does this sound like you?

Stress also shatters our nerves. Our emotions may run rampant from edginess to frustration, to anger, to disappointment, despair, sadness, and depression. We start to feel helpless and hopeless. It becomes an ever-downward cycle of negative thoughts and emotions.

Long-term exposure to unresolved stress is debilitating and destroys our health. It is now estimated that stress is responsible for 86-95% of all diseases in the US. Consequences of long-term exposure to stress include high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, susceptibility to infections, disorders of the immune system, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, peptic ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, excessive and unexplained weight gain or loss, chronic pain, especially in the back, neck, head, and shoulders, tension and sinus headaches, migraines, sleep disorders, diminished sexual desire, erectile dysfunction in men, more severe pms in women, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, an inability to manage emotions, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, ADD/ADHD, nightmares, flashbacks, excessive fear, prolonged sadness, rage, test anxiety, stage fright, and performance anxiety. Stress has also been linked to allergies, asthma, skin disorders, unexplained hair loss, and periodontal disease. Even alcoholism and drug abuse have been linked to prolonged consistent exposure to stress. And the list goes on. Has your health been affected by stress? Do you suffer from any of the maladies listed here? Don’t despair. You can do something about it.

While we may not be able to eliminate the situations that cause stress we can learn to react differently and keep stress from destroying our health, happiness, productivity, and success in all life endeavors. To do so we must first learn what stress is, how we respond to stressful situations, and how it affects us. Then we must use methods and techniques that deal with stress as it is occurring and over the long term. Because stress affects all aspects of the human experience, we must take a holistic approach to combating its destructive effects.

In future blogs I will discuss each of the factors listed above and provide information and methods for eliminating stress’s destructive effects. Until next time, just breathe as deeply and as slowly as you can for several minutes when stress rears its ugly head.