3 Stress Reducers . . .
to help you stay sane
Holidays seem to inevitably include, for many, feelings of overwhelm, fatigue, and stress. The very time that is “supposed” to be joyful, fun, memorable and meaningful — bringing family members together with love and good food and good will — often become a time of dread, conflict, overwhelm and not enough time. Not to mention often complete loss of one’s sense of humor.
Some turn to drinking or substances to not feel the uncomfortable feelings of pain, anger, frustration — but inevitably the feelings return amplified, and what was supposed to be the “cure” becomes the “cause.”
Some turn to distraction — video games, TV watching, — but these can just as easily become as addictive as substances and usually result in feelings of discomfort, non-productiveness, uselessness.
There are strategies, however, we can use that can mitigate many of these feelings of overwhelm, stress, and helplessness, and transform us into Zen-like calm creatures that will provide a hub of order and peace for our families, and convey the sense of “all’s well with the universe.”
One -
Stop. Just stop. Right now, whatever it is you’re doing. Go outside if you can. Take a deep breath. Another. Find a leaf, or a blade of grass, or a flower. Look at it closely. Notice the minute veins in it, how the leaf or blossom gets its nourishment by having a circulatory system. Smell it. Notice how it feels to the touch. Now look around, notice what is in your field of vision, the shapes, colors textures. Take another deep breath. Notice any smells. Are they pleasant smells or not? See if you can smell without judgment. Do you hear anything? Birds? Traffic? The dog barking. Notice everything you can see, touch, smell, hear. If you’ve eaten anything lately, see if there’s a residue of taste in your mouth. Don’t let your mind be pulled into the future with everything that “needs” to get done. Don’t let your mind be pushed by the past remembering all things you forgot! Drop into this moment. Be right here. Right now. Breathe. When you feel that you’ve returned to your body, go back to what you were doing, moving more slowly, and notice how your calm becomes contagious.
TWO -
This practice is more internal, less “doing” than reflecting.
Recently many people have felt overwhelmed and stressed out not so much by what’s going on in their immediate environment as by what they learn from the news about what’s going on in the world. Every day seems to bring new announcements of disaster, suffering, atrocities, climate change, extinctions, eruptions, earthquakes, wars, illnesses that become epidemic. Collectively we might just want to go to bed and pull the covers over our heads. We feel helpless and, at times, hopeless. What can we do? We are asked for money at every turn which might allow us to feel that we’re at least doing something, but we’re still left with the sense that we’re all doomed.
The first thing we can do is limit our intake of news. If it’s important enough, you will eventually find out about it. Don’t let yourself become addicted to knowing everything that’s going on unless you’re a newscaster or journalist. Cultivate “not knowing.”
With the information that you do take in that’s distressing, imagine putting it in a little box and putting the little box aside internally. You can go to the box whenever you want (if you want), but when it’s put aside, you can pay attention to what’s here, in your immediate experience. Being able to sequester information, keeping it separate from other information and experience is called “compartmentalization.” Sometimes compartmentalizing works against us, keeping us from having a more integrated experience, and it’s been described as “a defense mechanism in which people mentally separate conflicting thoughts, emotions, or experiences to avoid the discomfort of contradiction.” But actually compartmentalizing can be in the service of allowing ourselves to not be overwhelmed, non-functional, stressed-out. Defenses exist for a reason, to protect us, so they are not all pathological.
THREE -
Watch what you allow into your consciousness. I know some who love “True Crime” programs on TV, who are fascinated with horror movies, seek out scary experiences to get the adrenaline going. There is a useful aspect to these activities, that by exposing ourselves to what we fear, we may get a sense of “mastery” over the feelings. We seek out that which frightens us out of a “counter-phobic” desire, a drive to have control and not have our behavior ruled by fear. In behavioral therapy often phobias are treated by “exposure therapy,” a therapy in which a person who has an out-of-proportion fear — say of spiders, flying, or leaving the house (a kind of agoraphobia). One way of overcoming the latter might be to be accompanied by the therapist to first open the front door. Then close it. Then open the door, and take three steps outside. Come back in. Close the door. Then walk as far as the mailbox, and so forth, slowly taking steps into the fearful territory until the fear dissipates with the experiences of venturing into what one fears and having the experience of being safe. When people allow fearful information into their consciousness, such as daily disasters, illnesses, natural disasters etc. — to the exclusion of good news, uplifting stories, experiences of connection — it will have a lasting effect on their mood and sense of well-being. The false belief that by “knowing” they can control a situation sometimes leads to an emotionally paralyzed state of being, of seeing danger at every turn. So be aware of what you watch, read and voluntarily let into your consciousness. Know that you are programming yourself. And you can just as easily program yourself with uplifting, joyful, inspiring material that will have a beneficial effect on your mood and your sense of well-being. Guaranteed.
One last word on control. A lot of the above “strategies” are designed to give us a sense of having more “control,” having what might be called an “internal locus of control.” Which is a good thing. Unless it’s not because there are certainly things over which we have no control. And it would be useful for us to know what these are so we don’t waste energy trying to control or change them.
Nobody has put it more succinctly than the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr who used a prayer that was later adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, The Serenity Prayer:
“God, give me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
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