[progressally_objectives]
We’ve arrived at our week on STRESS!
Do you feel stressed out? Overwhelmed?
(perhaps those questions really should be, are you human?)
Here’s what we’ll learn this week:
Stress is a given, but being stressed out is optional!
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.