The Everything Stress Management Book

Practical Ways to Relax, Be Healthy, and Maintain Your Sanity

Eve Adamson

• Publisher: Everything
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781440522277
• Topic: Développement personnel
• Subtopic: Santé mentale et bien-être

Let's face it: We're all stressed out. No matter how hard we work or how much time we spend on burdensome tasks, it seems our deadlines only get tighter and we're barely catching our breaths before new obstacles arise causing even greater tension. Will it ever end? The Everything Stress Management Book shows that it is possible to achieve your life goals and keep your physical and mental health intact. Beginning with an easy-to-follow quiz that helps you identify your vulnerable areas, the book then takes you step-by-step through the safest, most effective ways to relax, avoid stressors, keep perspective, and live a longer, happier life. The Everything Stress Management Book also gives you the lowdown on the most popular stress-reduction methods, including:

• Aromatherapy
• Exercise
• Massage
• Meditation
• Proper nutrition
• Tai Chi
• Yoga
• And more

Whether you're frazzled and frustrated at work or at home - or are just plain stressed out - The Everything Stress Management Book helps you regain control, find your balance, and face the world with optimism and confidence.

CHAPTER 1

Stress Unmasked

You know you’re under stress when you rear-end the car in front of you on the way to work (oops!), make it to work three hours late and get fired (no!), then have your wallet stolen on the bus ride home (oh, that’s just perfect!).

But what about when you get engaged to the love of your life? Or, when you finally get the promotion of your dreams? What about when you have hay fever, or move into a new home, or adopt a dog? Is it stressful to graduate from college, or start an exercise program, or binge on chocolate chip cookies? You bet it is.

What Is Stress?

What’s so stressful about a few chocolate chip cookies? Nothing, if you eat two chocolate chip cookies every day as part of a well-balanced diet. Plenty, if you deprive yourself of desserts for a month, then eat an entire bag of double fudge chocolate chunk. You aren’t used to all those cookies. Your body isn’t used to all that sugar. That’s stressful. Not stressful like totaling your car or getting transferred to Siberia, but stressful nonetheless.

According to the American Institute of Stress in Yonkers, New York, 43 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects due to stress, and 75 percent to 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints or disorders.

In the same way, anything out of the ordinary that happens to you is stressful on your body. Some of that stress feels good. Even great. Without any stress at all, life would be a big bore. Stress isn’t, by definition, something bad, but it certainly isn’t always good, either. In fact, it can cause dramatic health problems if it happens to you too much and for too long.

Stress isn’t just out-of-the-ordinary stuff, however. Stress can also be hidden and deeply imbedded in your life. What if you can’t stand your job in middle management but continue to go there every day because you’re afraid of starting your own business and giving up the regular paycheck? What if your family has serious communication problems, or if you live in a place where you don’t feel safe? Maybe everything seems just fine, but nevertheless you feel deeply unhappy. Even when you are accustomed to certain things in your life — dirty dishes in the sink, family members that don’t help you out, twelve-hour days at the office — those things can be stressful. You might even get stressed out when something goes right. Maybe someone is nice to you and you become suspicious, or you feel uncomfortable if your house is too clean. You are so used to things being difficult that you don’t know how to adjust. Stress is a strange and highly individual phenomena.

Unless you live in a cave without a television (actually, not a bad way to eliminate stress in your life), you’ve probably heard quite a bit about stress in the media, around the coffee machine at work, or in the magazines and newspapers you read. Most people have a preconceived notion of what stress is in general, as well as what stress is to them. What does stress mean to you?

• Discomfort?

• Pain?

• Worry?

• Anxiety?

• Excitement?

• Fear?

• Uncertainty?

These things cause people stress and are mostly conditions stemming from stress. But what is stress itself? Stress is such a broad term, and there are so many different kinds of stress affecting so many people in so many different ways that the word stress may seem to defy definition. What is stressful to one person might be exhilarating to another. So, what exactly is stress?

Stress comes in several guises, some more obvious than others. Some stress is acute, some is episodic, and some is chronic. Let’s take a closer look at each kind of stress and how it affects you.

When Life Changes: Acute Stress

Acute stress is the most obvious kind of stress, and it’s pretty easy to spot if you associate it with one thing:

ACUTE STRESS = CHANGE

Yep, that’s all it is. Change. Stuff you’re not used to. And that can include anything, from a change in your diet to a change in your exercise habits to a change in your job to a change in the people involved in your life, whether you’ve lost them or gained them.

In other words, acute stress is something that disturbs your body’s equilibrium. You get used to things being a certain way, physically, mentally, emotionally, even chemically. Your body clock is set to sleep at certain times, your energy rises and falls at certain times, and your blood sugar changes in response to the meals you eat at certain times each day. As you go along your merry way in life, entrenched in your routines and habits and “normal” way of living, your body and your mind know pretty much what to expect.

All of the following are stressful to your mind and body: serious illness (either yours or that of a loved one), divorce, bankruptcy, too much overtime at work, a promotion, the loss of a job, marriage, college graduation, and a winning lottery ticket.

But when something happens to change our existence, whether that something is a physical change (like a cold virus or a sprained ankle), a chemical change (like the side effects of a medication or the hormonal fluctuations following childbirth), or an emotional change (like a marriage, a child leaving the nest, or the death of a loved one), our equilibrium is altered. Our life changes. Our bodies and minds are thrown out of the routine they’ve come to expect. We’ve experienced change, and with that comes stress.

Acute stress is hard on our bodies and our minds because people tend to be creatures of habit. Even the most spontaneous and schedule resistant among us have our habits, and habits don’t just mean enjoying that morning cup of coffee or sleeping on that favorite side of the bed. Habits include minute, complex, intricate interworkings of physical, chemical, and emotional factors on our bodies.

Say you get up and go to work five days each week, rising at 6:00 A.M., downing a bagel and a cup of coffee, then hopping on the subway. Once a year, you go on vacation, and, for two weeks, you sleep until 11:00 A.M., then wake up and eat a staggering brunch. That’s stressful, too, because you’ve changed your habits. You probably enjoy it, and in some ways, a vacation can mediate the chronic stress of sleep deprivation. But if you are suddenly sleeping different hours and eating different things than usual, your body clock will have to readjust, your blood chemistry will have to readjust, and just when you’ve readjusted, you’ll probably have to go back to waking up at 6:00 A.M. and foregoing the daily bacon and cheese omelets for that good old bagel, again.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t go on vacation. You certainly shouldn’t avoid all change. Without change, life wouldn’t be much fun. Humans desire and need a certain degree of change. Change makes life exciting and memorable. Change can be fun . . . up to a point.

Here’s the tricky part: How much change you can stand before the changes start to have a negative effect on you is a completely individual issue. A certain amount of stress is good, but too much will start to become unhealthy, unsettling, and unbalancing. No single formula will calculate what “too much stress” is for everyone because the level of acute stress you can stand is likely to be completely different than the level of stress your friends and relatives can stand (although a low level of stress tolerance does appear to be inheritable).

Pushing yourself to work too hard, staying up too late, eating too much (or too little), or worrying constantly is not only stressful on your mind but also stressful on your body. Many medical professionals believe that stress can contribute to heart disease, cancer, and an increased chance of accidents.

When Life Is a Roller Coaster:
Episodic Stress

Episodic stress is like lots of acute stress — in other words, lots of life changes — all at once and over a period of time. People who suffer from episodic stress always seem to be in the throes of some tragedy. They tend to be overwrought, sometimes intense, often irritable, angry, or anxious.

If you’ve ever been through a week, a month, even a year when you seemed to suffer personal disaster after personal disaster, you know what it’s like to be in the throes of episodic stress. First, your furnace breaks down, then you bounce a check, then you get a speeding ticket, then your entire extended family decides to stay with you for four weeks, then your sister-in-law smashes into your garage with her car, and then you get the flu. For some people, episodic stress becomes so drawn out a process that they become used to it; to others, the stress state is obvious. “Oh, that poor woman. She has terrible luck!” “Did you hear what happened to Jerry this time?”

Episodic stress, like acute stress, can also come in more positive forms. First, a whirlwind courtship, a huge wedding, a honeymoon in Bali, buying a new home, and moving in with your new spouse for the first time, all in the same year, is an incredibly stressful sequence of events. Fun, sure. Romantic, yes. Even thrilling. But still an excellent example of episodic stress in its sunnier, though no less stressful, manifestation.

Sometimes, episodic stress comes in a more subtle form — such as “worry.” Worry is like inventing stress, or change, before it happens, even when it has little chance of happening. Excessive worry could be linked to an anxiety disorder, but even when worry is less chronic than that, it saps the body’s energy, usually for no good reason.

Worry doesn’t solve problems. Worry is usually just the contemplation of horrible things that are extremely unlikely to happen. Worry puts your body under stress by creating or imagining changes in the equilibrium of life — changes that haven’t even happened!

Are you a worrywart? How many of the following describe you?

• You find yourself worrying about things that are extremely unlikely, such as suffering from a freak accident or developing an illness you have no reason to believe you would develop. (Think Woody Allen and his imaginary brain tumor.)

• You often lose sleep worrying about what would happen to you if you lost a loved one, or what would happen to your loved ones if he or she lost you.

• You have trouble falling asleep because you can’t slow down your frantic worrying process as you lie still in bed at night.

• When the phone rings or the mail arrives, you immediately imagine what kind of bad news you are about to receive.

• You feel compelled to control the behaviors of others because you worry that they can’t take care of themselves.

• You are overly cautious about engaging in any behavior that could possible result in harm or hurt to you or to those around you, even if the risk is small (such as driving a car, flying in an airplane, or visiting a big city).

If even just one of the worrywart characteristics describes you, you probably worry more than you have to. If most or all of these statements apply to you, worry is probably having a distinctly negative effect on you. Worry and the anxiety it can produce can cause specific physical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms, from heart palpitations, dry mouth, hyperventilation, muscle pain, and fatigue to fear, panic, anger, and depression. Worry is stressful.

Like many other behaviors we think we can’t control, worry is largely a matter of habit. So, how do you stop worrying? By retraining your brain! The next time you catch yourself worrying, get moving. It’s hard to worry when your energy is directed toward following that exercise video or breathing in the fresh air as you run through the park.

When Life Stinks: Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is much different from acute stress, although its l...