DETOXING FROM STRESS

When a giraffe races for its life across the savanna , the lioness giving chase can smell and taste the fear on the air. As she closes in for the kill, the chemicals coursing through the giraffe’s blood, numb it as the lion attacks, and that mercifully, will deaden the sensation of pain as it becomes , well... lunch.

If you have ever been seriously injured, you may have experienced something similar in the moments after the injury, when the injury is apparent, but you are in shock, and the pain is in muted in the background. These stress chemicals are wonderful gifts that help us survive under duress, however, that which protects us can also, in other circumstances, kill us.

Our ancestors experiences real threats to their survival with far more regularity than we do, but, since the wary survived, we have inherited a highly attentive nervous system, which, for some of us, mistakes everything from an opinion we don’t like to a slow driver as a threat. We know this because our adrenaline spikes, and we feel irritated, edgy, and sometimes obsessively unable to unhook from thinking about the irritant. When we live this way, moving from one upset to the next, the chemicals that serve us when we are actually in a life-threatening situation, continue to rise. Over time, we become defensive, easily triggered by everything from the news, or some random post on Facebook. 

When life feels like a bag of hornets, rather than a blow of cherries, we become numb, just like the giraffe, and instead of being able to see, feel, smell and hear the lovely world around us, we rush through our days, head down, as if the lioness is at our back. Most often, we have no idea we are living this way until a stress related illness or an accident caused by our mental exhaustion, stops us dead in our tracks. Hopefully not dead. But yes, unregulated stress will most certainly take us out. 

So, if your life resembles an assembly line of daily stress, now is the time and today is the day to get a grip on what your thoughts are doing to you. Here's more info.

“ The morbidity and mortality due to stress-related illness is alarming. Emotional stress is a major contributing factor to the six leading causes of death in the United States: cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory disorders, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341916

So, here are four things you can do to break the habits that keep you all stressed up with no place to go:

1.Challenge your thoughts. Catch yourself when you go off on a negative tangent or a downward spiral fueled by irritation. Notice, interrupt and revise the train of thought this way: take a breath, perhaps ask ‘how important is this, really, in the big picture of my life?’, and then with another breath, deliberately bring your attention to a counter thought and/or something physical...like the feeling of clothes against your skin, or the color of the sky, or the taste of your coffee. Notice, breathe, redirect, repeat.

2. Another stress reducing practice that greatly reduces overall reactivity is to set aside time (ESPECIALLY if you think you ‘have no time’) to do nothing, mindfully every day. That means not allowing you mind to ruminate, list-make, complain or bully you. Do Nothing, for 20-30 minutes. That Nothing could look like sitting quietly out in nature, meditating in your favorite chair, lying in a hammock, or listening to your favorite music. Look, you have to retrain your mind. That shit’s not going to happen all by itself and more than a new puppy is going to train itself. If you wish and hope that dog will quit taking a dump on your rug, but you don’t regularly and mindfully take the dog out, or interrupt it when you see it squat on your Persian, your success rate will be Zero. Zip. Nada.

So yes, re-training you mind, requires attentive effort, and the results, which include greater clarity, less irritation, better sleep, less illness, fewer accidents, and improved relationships are Worth Every Minute it takes you to unhook from stress making habits.

3. Don’t feed the Beast. Watching the news, focusing on fear and intensity producing TV shows that are about crime, and engaging in complaint-based conversations that offer no solutions about people, and the world are just squirting fuel on the fire...the one in your gut, nervous system and liver! Instead, for kicks, find the comedy channel, try YouTube and watch something you’ve always wanted to know more about, crank up the music, dig out a board game, read an entertaining book, or in all else fails, try cartoons. Add some lightness, p;lay, fun and laughter to you days and that will give you some feel good chemistry.

4. Practice Kindness. Look, it’s a very practical thing. When you cultivate relationships that are reciprocal rather than transactional, you feel safer, connected, included, accepted.

Very simply put, quit score keeping, and start sharing or helping only when you want to. If you are eating something delicious and want someone enjoy the taste of it, that’s reciprocal, but if you grudgingly offer a taste because they gave you a cookie yesterday, that’s transactional. 

At least for the purpose of this conversation, I’d like you to use this distinction, and not overthink it. Kindness not contract. Simply that.

I invite you to develop ways of spreading good news, laughter, positive support, and active solution finding as a new way of moving through your life. I am in no way suggesting that you fake it up and become one of those smiley-faced pretenders. I am asking that you investigate ways to reduce your own stress, and the stress of those you love, by letting go of the thoughts and habits that have you running across the savanna every time you drive to work or sit in a meeting, or hear the news.

Come, dance under the stars with me...and Breathe.

Come, dance under the start with me, and breathe.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE GROWN-UPS GONE

There’s a huge difference between being an adult and trying to ‘act’ like one. Being a functional grown-up is more than being able to balance a checkbook and hold down a job. You can do the ‘things’ that you imagine an adult does, and still be an unhappy, frightened adolescent-at-any-age. Following rules and keeping social contracts might look like adulting, but life is far more than a series of bargains and manipulations in which mutual back scratching is the expected form of relating.

If the majority your decisions are being made with the expectation of payback or reward, it’s only a matter of time before you feel betrayed, confused and angry as others refuse to subscribe to your juvenile version of relating. No matter how much apparent success wanna-be adults  seems to have, what sets them apart is the core feeling if isolation. Those stuck in adolescence become cut off from authentic contact with others, and are too afraid to take off the mask they’ve spent decades creating, perfecting and defending.

A would-be grownup may espouse honesty, but will lie, exaggerate and look away from inconvenient truths. Adults embrace their values for their own inner sense of rightness, not because it will earn them a gold star or a high five. An adult shuns dishonesty not because it would suck to get caught lying, but because acting against one’s core values makes adults feel shitty whether or not anyone else knows what they’ve done.

By this measure, our culture is sadly lacking in the number of genuine grown-ups available to run the important stuff, especially troubling in the current political climate. In other words, without enough functional grown-ups populating society, we are well and truly screwed. The good news is this: We can grow ourselves up, as long as we're not too far gone.

Some people get developmentally stuck when significant neglect or abuse, trauma or war interferes with the conditions required to move into adulthood. Others are simply children of parents who never emotionally developed beyond their own adolecsence.

Lots of people go to their graves never having known the satisfaction of being relaxed, self assured adults who know that they are the authority in their own lives. You probably know a few perpetual drama queens- and kings- who feel victimized by their job, spouse, world or 'whatever', and live small, codependent lives. They alternate between being the good girl/boy and the whiny sarcastic or withdrawn or passive aggressive ‘rebel’. Sound like teenagers? You betcha! The more deeply  stuck people are in their adolescent patterns, the more chaos, gloom, accidents, drama, bad luck, anger, jealousy and general reactivity they carry around.

Some people can ‘adult’ pretty well in one area of life, like work for example, then turn into self-absorbed high school snots in their relationships.So pay attention. You won’t magically ‘grow up’ just because you age. In fact, some people get worse, more dug in, oblivious, delusional, irrational and , well...more like an adolescent as time passes.

You can help yourself (and your kids if you have any) by taking steps that move you closer and closer to adulthood. You will receive all the benefits of owning responsibility for being an active agent in your life. Your relationships will improve, your stress will decrease, you’ll care less about what people think and more about doing what makes you happy. The bonus is, that unlike the dreary picture of adulthood that teenagers envision, you will discover that you are more fun, spontaneous, playful and laid back than you ever were as an adolescent.

What can we do to grow ourselves up?

1. Observe your thoughts and notice how much you are attached to ‘bargaining’ rather than relating.

2. Begin to deliberately trade your ‘rules’ and obligations for your honest preferences.

3. Practice telling the truth about what you want, how you feel, and what you think.

4. Take charge of the noise in your head. Stop believing your habitual compulsive thoughts.

5.Become the kind of person you admire. How? Take an inventory of your habits and actions. Create a plan to interrupt and replace the worst self-defeating , insecurity driven, worry laden thoughts.

6. Stop bargaining for rest, for pleasure, for love. Make time and room for them.

7. Get in touch with your real values. What matters to you? What makes you feel good in the long term, not the quick fix kind of way.

8. Get help if you get stuck. Coaching, therapy, a group of friends that hold each other accountable- whatever it takes, get the support you need to grow up.

Raven

raven@stresswizardcoaching.com

216-526-1667