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.