Week Four: Stress and Anxiety

Just as we’ve learned that thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations will come and go throughout our days, for our entire lives, we must come to grasp that stress will also come and go.

We need a certain amount of “stress” activation so that we can get out of bed in the morning and take on some of the challenging work we must do.

Stress is about biology and nervous system stuff. Being stressed out is entirely about perception!

When we are “stressed out,” it is essentially an overwhelm of emotion. That’s why we have spent a lot of time on thoughts and emotions before diving in to the topic of stress.

If you are stressed out, you’re emotional.

If we’re going to help you reduce your levels of stress and anxiety, what we need to do is transform the way you THINK about stress and anxiety (and the way you think in general). Everything we’ve been practicing so far is helping us develop this skill.

If someone is a compulsive over-eater, we don’t ask them to stop eating entirely. The person needs to learn to eat in a new way, and develop a new relationship with food.

If someone is a compulsive thinker-worrier-catastrophizer, they need to learn to think in a new way, and develop a new relationship with thoughts.

Enter mindfulness!

Shinzen Young (who likes to make all of this really mathematical) even has an equation for this!

Our discomfort, divided by mindful awareness, equals suffering. The greater the denominator (our mindful awareness), the less the quotient (suffering). Who knew math could be so enlightening?

So how do we do this? How do we change the way we think about stress and how we relate to stressors?

You’ll learn that in the video below – enjoy!

After watching the video, you can download the funsheets to try the practices I mentioned, and to reflect on your resources and demands.

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Shakespeare, Hamlet

The previous lesson on stress focused on identifying what stress is and how we can more carefully identify the things that trigger our experiences of stress. We began this work in week three as we started tracking our positive and negative experiences.

In this lesson we will explore our responses to stress. Before we do that, I want you to download and complete the questions in this funsheet.

You already have ways of coping with stress right now. Some of them are likely helpful and skillful, and others could probably be labeled “maladaptive.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn identifies several ways that we often respond to stress that are maladaptive. These are some of the ones that he identifies:

1. Suppression. We don’t allow the stress to manifest. Perhaps we tell ourselves, “I shouldn’t feel stressed, other people have it so much harder than I do.” We don’t talk about the stress, or the anger, or the sadness. We internalize it. I probably don’t have to belabor the point of how this isn’t very helpful, but the key thing is that when an emotion is suppressed or internalized, it’s never released. Compare this to animals in the wild – when they have a stress response, they recognize it, and act on it immediately. Then they quickly return to a calm baseline. When we acknowledge our stress, we can activate our calming, parasympathetic nervous system to resolve the stress, not suppress it.
2. Denial. We pretend it’s not there. “I’m not stressed, I’m just [tired, busy, highly-driven, etc.].”  Remember the equation from the previous lesson – awareness of our discomfort will alleviate its intensity.
3. Avoidance. We distract ourselves from it. This may show up as workaholism, or spending excessive time on social media, or doing lots of “things” to keep ourselves busy. It’s finding ways to distract ourselves … from ourselves. This is why meditation — particularly extended retreats — can be so powerful. It removes all the distractions!
4. Chemicals and food. We may eat, or drink, or medicate our stress. While once in a while this can help, I also probably don’t need to explain how these can be problematic, too. Jon Kabat-Zinn argues that these chemicals only treat the symptoms, and not the underlying causes, of our stress.

Many of these maladaptive coping strategies are “addictive,” certainly so in the case of alcohol or chemicals. We may find temporary relief in distracting ourselves with Facebook, or pretending a problem doesn’t exist. We’re then likely to repeat that behavior in the future because it made us feel a little better. And that’s how habits are born!

The exercises in these lessons are helping you identify your patterns (triggers and responses) so you can find more effective ways to deal with “the full catastrophe.”

Healthy Ways to Cope With Stress

1. Breathe. Count to 10 – the act of counting helps take you out of the stress cycle. And the breathing, well, you know by now why that’s good for you!
2. Gain perspective. Look at the whole context – how big is this stressor really? How much will this matter tomorrow, or even in an hour? If someone else has upset you, can you try to see things from their perspective? I try to remind myself that we are all doing the best we can, with the resources we have available. I try to presume positive intentions, realizing that we all generally act in ways that we think will make us happy.
3. Practice retroactively. As explained in the previous video, take time to mentally rehearse situations in which you were triggered, and identify how you could have responded after a mindful pause.
4. Build the muscle of mindfulness. You may not see the stress-reduction benefits of mindfulness after a single session. But keep it up over time, and you will build your resiliency!
5. Finally, recognize that sometimes, denial or distraction IS the best available option! One of my mindfulness teachers tells us that “not now” is ALWAYS an acceptable option for dealing with an overwhelming emotion. Standing in line at Target probably isn’t the best time to investigate all the reasons why your child’s whining triggers your anger. Recognizing “anger is here,” taking a deep breath, and then tending to your child and packing up your groceries is still a skillful response! This isn’t ignoring or suppressing the pain, it’s simply a recognition that you are not ready to process this emotion on a deeper level. And that’s okay.

Take a moment to return to your list of the ways you commonly respond to stress. Which ones are helpful, and which ones are possibly maladaptive? What tools or skills can you add to your available resources?

{You can get some ideas for self-care in my recent post that lists 30 simple self-care practices}.

“Anxiety is … a kind of fear gone wild, a generalized sense of dread about something out there that seems menacing – but that in truth is not menacing, and may not even be out there. If you’re anxious, you find it difficult to talk yourself out of this foreboding; you become trapped in an endless loop of what-ifs.”

Robin Marantz Henig

Mark Twain supposedly quipped,

“I’ve been through a lot of terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

It’s so true! I once read that 95% of the things we worry about never actually materialize. I’m sure that’s a completely made up statistic, but if I sat down and analyzed all of the things I’ve ever worried about, I imagine I’d find that very few of them actually came to pass.

So we’re back to the mind. As we continue to deepen our mindfulness practice, we’re becoming more aware of our patterns of thinking. We may be discovering that some of our mental habits are not serving us well, and are contributing to our stress. Bob Stahl and Elisha Goldstein have developed this list of the habitual “mind traps” that we get stuck in, and make our stress more intense. Do you do any of these?

Mind Traps That Keep Us Stuck in Stress

Negative self-talk. Call it the inner critic, your stream-of-consciousness, or give it a name and call it “Bob,” but we all have it. We all talk to ourselves – and we probably speak to ourselves in ways that we wouldn’t tolerate anyone else speaking to us! “I’m so clumsy,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m such a loser,” “I’m such a terrible parent,” …. I could go on and on. Here’s what I know: WORDS MATTER. THE WORDS WE SPEAK TO OURSELVES MATTER. Speak kindly to yourself. You deserve it.

Catastrophizing. We jump immediately to the worse-case scenario. “I’m going to get this report in late and then I’m going to lose my job and we’ll be living in a box.” NOT HELPFUL.

Discounting the positive. We tend to downplay compliments, even the ones we give to ourselves. “I’m losing some weight, but I still have so far to go!” As we talked about in week 2, it’s important to acknowledge the positive.

Mind-reading. We often assume we know what someone else is thinking, or what their intention is. “She didn’t even look at me! She clearly doesn’t like me.” This is another made up statistic, but I’m just going to guess that 95% of the time, other peoples’ actions are NOT about us. {And, FYI, we’re not really good at diagnosing other people: psychologists tell us that we often misattribute other people’s behavior to character flaws (e.g., “she’s so arrogant,” “he’s so lazy,” etc.), while explaining our own behavior in terms of context and situation (e.g.,“I just had to share my exciting news!,” “I worked a 12-hour shift and just needed some down time.”)}

Always needing to be right. We can’t always be the expert. We have to allow ourselves to make mistakes. Constantly being on guard to solve every problem and answer every question (without a flaw) is overwhelming and exhausting.

“Shoulding” all over yourself. “I should keep the house cleaner,” “I should run 45 minutes every day,” “I should volunteer more…” Stop shoulding all over yourself! Intentions and goals are fine, but “should” almost always involves feeling guilty and/or resentful.

Blaming others. We can’t control other people’s behavior, but we CAN control our responses to their behaviors. This doesn’t mean we blame ourselves; it simply means we focus on what we can actually control.

Black and white thinking. Sometimes we think things have to go completely perfectly to be considered a “success,” and that one small misstep means “disaster.” Life is complicated. Last summer, we took our children to Paris, and we had a meltdown at the Palace of Versailles that, to this history teacher, felt like the worst disaster at Versailles since 1919 (the year the devastating treaty that ended WWI was signed). My daughter threw a fit and tossed her ice cream into the meticulously tended gardens. My son ran off down the Grand Canal to pout behind the trees. But you know what? We laugh about it now and I still look back on that trip as AN AMAZING SUCCESS.

Psychologist Christopher Willard provides this list of words to watch out for – notice when you’re using the following:

• All
• Always
• Every
• Everyone
• Everything
• Have to
• Must
• Never
• No one
• None
• Should

 Those words usually mean you’re caught in mind trap.

Think – Practice – Reflect

Set an intention for today to pay attention to your words (including thoughts AND spoken words).  Do you notice yourself using the words on the list above? When? How does it make you feel when you use them?

Do you find yourself in any of the “mind traps” listed above? When? How does it make you feel?

As you pay attention to your words today, ask yourself, “Are they true? Do I have enough information? Am I assuming I know what someone else is thinking? Have I seen things in a larger context?”

A Chinese farmer buys a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbor says, “That’s bad news.”
The farmer replies, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”

The next day, the horse returns, accompanied by three wild horses. His neighbor remarks on his good fortune.
“Good news, bad news, who can say?” is the farmer’s reply.

The farmer’s son works to tame the three new horses, and is thrown from one and badly breaks his leg.

“I’m so sorry for your bad news,” says the concerned neighbor.
“Good news, bad news, who can say?” the farmer once again replies.

The next week, the emperor’s men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer’s injured son is spared.

When the neighbor expresses joy at his good fortune, the farmer, of course, asks him, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”

Taoist parable

Thousands of years of eastern wisdom, and a little over one hundred years of western psychotherapy are now telling us much the same thing — with our mind, we make our world. Stoic philosopher, and Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it.”

His Stoic contemporary Epictetus agreed: “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.”

In the previous lesson we reviewed the mindsets and patterns of thinking that can keep us trapped in stress. Now we’re looking at the habits of mind that promote well-being and resilience. As you become more mindful of your thoughts, you can begin to “catch” the unhelpful thought loops and develop more skillful mental habits.

Download the funsheet here to do some deep thinking and reflecting on the following…

Healthy Habits of Mind

1. A sense of meaning. Having a lot to do each day can be overwhelming when we don’t see, or even know, the purpose behind it. Research tells us that people who are stress-hardy have a sense of meaning in their lives. They know their gifts and they share them with the world. Brene Brown encourages all of us to dig deep and find our talents and passions, the things that make us feel alive. To do that, we need to overcome some of the mind traps we reviewed in the last lesson, specifically self-doubt and “supposed to.” Spend some time thinking about your “have to”s and “supposed to”s. What are your desires?

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Howard Thurman

Do you have a personal mission statement? A list of the values and ideals that are meaningful to you? A proclamation of what you are here to do? I strongly encourage you to reflect on this! When we know that paying bills and cooking meals and making beds and wiping noses and filing reports at work are all done in service to our larger purpose — to care for our family or to make a difference at work, for example — they take on greater meaning. We can transform our relationship to the activities that fill our days.

2. Reframing. In cognitive psychology, patients are taught to identify their patterns of thought, and often learn how to reframe them. In any moment of our day, we have a choice about how we are going to perceive an event — is it threatening, or is it something we can learn from? Like the farmer in the parable above, we learn quickly that fortunes change, and “good” and “bad” are relative terms.

3. The Serenity Prayer. I can’t tell you how many times a day I ask myself, “What can I control?” If I realize I’m stressing out about something I have no control over (for example, someone else’s behavior), I let it go. If I realize I’m stressing over something that I have the power to change, I can use my mindful pause to respond to the situation, and consider alternatives. A sense of autonomy is important to our well-being, and the more we cultivate our mindful awareness, the better we’ll become at discerning which situations we can control, and which ones we cannot.

4. A growth mindset. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset is fascinating. Essentially, her research tells us if we believe we can improve, then we can improve! (Obviously, there are limits to this — no matter how hard I try, I’m not likely to run a 3-minute mile). But I can get faster and stronger. In the previous lesson I shared the words we should watch out for. Now, I’m giving you a powerful word to add — “YET.” Such a tiny but oh-so-helpful word! “I’m not very good at this… YET.” “I haven’t been able to meditate for 20 minutes a day … YET.” People who are stress-hardy know that setbacks are learning opportunities. They know setbacks provide valuable feedback. And they know that if they haven’t done something, it’s because they haven’t done it YET.

5. Expect stress. Studies show that people who are taught that stress is a normal part of life are actually less stressed than control groups who don’t receive that message. When we know stress is going to show up, we learn to live in wise relationship with it. We don’t fight it. We don’t try to suppress it. We find stillness in the midst of the stress. (See the guided meditation below for an exercise in practicing this!)

6. Explanatory style. Chade-Meng Tan writes, “What distinguishes successful people is their attitude toward failure, and specifically, how they explain their own failures to themselves.” Do you see setbacks as temporary, or do you assume they mean you are helpless to change? Do you see setbacks in the larger context of their circumstances, or do you conclude that they reveal something innate about you? Do you see failure as something to be overcome by effort and education, or as a sign that you should just give up?

A recent study asked college freshmen what they would do if they received a poor grade on their first college paper. The students whose responses indicated a growth mindset and a skillful explanatory style (“I’d go talk to my professor to learn what I could do better,” “I’d get help from a tutor,” etc.) were far more likely to successfully complete their year, and earned better grades, than those who internalized their failure (“I’d probably think about dropping out,” “I’d quit the class,” “I guess it means I’m not a good writer,” etc.) In fact, how they responded to this question was a better predictor of their first-year college performance than SAT scores! Our explanatory style matters!

The Buddha said, “What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.”

An African proverb says, “We cannot change the wind, but we can adjust our sails.”

So much of our stress and anxiety is literally “in our heads.” Download the funsheet here to reflect on your thought patterns, explore how you can cultivate healthy habits of mind, and craft your personal mission statement!

There’s also a new guided meditation for you on dealing with stress. You can click here to listen.

Autobiography In Five Short Chapters

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit… but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

– Portia Nelson

As we’ve explored stress and anxiety this week, we’ve started to identify the “deep holes” that we often fall into. We’ve explored ways for walking around those holes, and, possibly, finding new paths to travel.

Today, I’m going to introduce you to another mindfulness practice that is particularly helpful for dealing with strong emotions, anxiety, and stress.

Back in week 2, we talked about how we could break down pretty much any emotion into the following components:

Mindfulness teacher Shinzen Young says that without mindful awareness of what’s happening, each one of those factors (valence, thoughts, bodily sensations) are multiplied — so if (for simplicity’s sake) each of those elements had a value of “10” in terms of intensity and suffering, you end up with a suffering level of 1000! (I love how Shinzen reduces mindfulness to equations ?).

Without mindfulness, multiply each factor:

Suffering = 1000

Once we bring our mindful awareness to what is happening, the thoughts and sensations and valence are all still there, but now they are simply additive — our suffering level is 30, instead of 1000.

Suffering = 30

As I’ve said all week, the emotion and stress are already there — by bringing awareness to them, we reduce our suffering.

So how do we do this?

There are two basic forms of mindfulness meditation. We have been primarily practicing what is called focused attention — during our practice, we select an object (anchor) to be the focus of our attention (breath, body, sound). Each time the mind wanders, we gently bring our attention back to our anchor.

Another type of mindfulness meditation is open awareness. With open awareness, there is no set anchor or focal point for your attention. Instead, your attention/focus is on whatever happens to be in your conscious awareness at the time. (To an extent, we did a little bit of this when we investigated our emotions back in week 2).

The diagram below shows what open awareness meditation might look like:

So, as you sit in meditation, a stimulus (thought, sounds, memories, etc.) occurs, and instead of thinking, “Oh, it’s just a passing cloud,” and watching it drift by, you spend some time investigating it. Eventually, a new stimulus enters your awareness, and you investigate that as well.

With open awareness meditation, the feeling itself becomes the object of meditation (instead of the breath or body). We recognize our awareness of anxiety is not anxious. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes it like this: “Your awareness of the anger is not angry. Nor is your awareness fearful. Nor is it sad.”

In truth, you’re probably doing a bit of both types of meditation in your practice. This open awareness is especially helpful for dealing with stress because it allows us to break down a powerful emotion into manageable parts, instead of being overwhelmed by the intensity of our feelings.

Ultimately, you are coming to recognize that you can make awareness your default mode of being in the world. You are coming to realize that you are not anxious, or sad, or overwhelmed, or [insert one of a bajillion other emotions here]…. YOU ARE AWARENESS ITSELF.

Wowzers. This is powerful stuff.

Click here to listen to a guided open awareness meditation.

As a bonus for this week, you can download the following image to print and post anywhere you need it — a list of the best, research-supported practices for managing stress and anxiety!