4 Steps to Stress and What You Can Do About It

Stress we all now is not good. Yes, you say, I have stress in my life but what the heck, everyone has it. Well, perhaps you are underestimating the effects of stress and, once you understand its power, you may want to do more to reduce your stressors.

• Stress levels predict mortality. That’s right, the greater stress you feel, the more likely you are to die in the coming years.
• Stress levels predict disease progression. If you any serious ailment, the greater the stress, the more the ailment will progress.
• Stress levels predict susceptibility to disease. Forget the N1H1 influenza shot (just kidding). Instead, reduce your stress because your stress levels predict if you will get sick or not.
• Job strain predicts heart disease. The more stressful you find your work place, the more likely you are to develop heart disease.

Then where does all the stress come from?

Stress is caused by a four step process.

1 – Something upsetting occurs in your environment.

I know, things are always happening in our lives but the major issue is whether you feel the event was stressful or not. For example, my wife’s father recently died but my wife was not stressed by it. She will miss her father, certainly, but this change was, in a sense, a relief.

2 – The event blocks you.

This means that some event enters your life and affects your ability to reach a desired goal.

3 – You feel unable to cope with it.

The event appears (to you) to be beyond your abilities to cope with it. You also feel that you do not have the resources to go around the problem or to find a solution to the problem. In fact, the event feels very threatening.

4 – Your body responds as if this is a “true” stressor.

Yes, I know that many things make us stressed. However, almost all of them are not equivalent of being chased down the street by a hungry lion. If we are chased by a hungry lion, our lives are threatened. If we see an event as very threatening, our lives are not threatened. Instead, our body reacts “as if” our lives are threatened.

This is what stress really is – our bodies are reacting “as if’ we are being threatened but we are only coping with life events.

So, how can you cope with stress or stressors. Several steps come to mind.

1 – Exercise.

Exercise helps us cope physiologically with stress and gives us greater resilience.

2 – Ask for help.

Getting others to help us not only allows us to release some of the stress, we may find that someone has a solution that is workable, which can remove the stress either quickly or in the near future.

3 – Get perspective.

Every day, I think my world is very demanding. Then, one of my clients walks in, relates his/her story, and, suddenly, I realize that I have it made. By listening to their problems, I get perspective on mine. Likewise, if you think about your issues or problems, you can probably begin to realize that your problem will be gone sometime in the future or that others have coped with it. Reading books like Chicken Soup for the Soul are perfect for this too because the stories allow us to get perspective.

4 – Write it out.

Research has shown for a number of years that if we write about our problems every day, then the stress is reduced.