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The
D-Anger of Stress
WHAT
YOU BELIEVE, AND DON'T EVEN
KNOW IT, IS KILLING YOU!
In
today’s ever-shifting times, I’m amazed to see how much
stress and anger is evident all around us. We now have
road-rage, plane-rage or air rage, que-rage, PC-rage,
phone-rage, and some others too! What is going on? We were
led to believe that technology would make our lives easier,
simpler and more peaceful. But it’s just not like that with
the amount of stress, frustration and anger I see around in
South Africa.
Stress
can be viewed as the result of a delicate, and sometimes
not-so-delicate, imbalance between the demands
presented to us as we grasp and interpret them, and how we
conceive our resources, and our ability to
effectively handle those demands.
It is our perception, beliefs and unconscious
interpretation of these components that activates a
stressful reaction, and this triggers the release of
Cortisol into your body’s system. Cortisol is an important
adrenal gland hormone in your body, and is involved in the
following primary functions and more:
-
Proper glucose metabolism
-
Regulation of blood pressure
-
Insulin release for blood sugar maintenance
-
Immuno function
-
Inflammatory response
Stress
isn’t the only reason that Cortisol’s secreted into your
bloodstream. It’s been labeled “the stress hormone” because
it’s secreted in higher amounts during the body’s ‘fight or
flight’ response to a perceived stressful situation, and
it’s also responsible for several stress-related changes in
the body.
There
are however times when small increases of Cortisol can have
positive effects on your system:
-
A
quick burst of energy for survival reasons
-
Heightened memory functions
-
A
burst of increased immunity
-
Lower sensitivity to pain
-
Helps maintain homeostasis in the body
While
Cortisol is an important and helpful part of the body’s
response to stress, it’s important that the body’s
relaxation response be re-activated after the stressful
situation, so the body’s functions can return to normal
balance once again.
In our
high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated
so often that seldom does your body have a chance to return
to normal balance, and remains in imbalance. And so this
imbalance then produces “chronic stress” in our systems.
Higher
and more prolonged levels of Cortisol in the bloodstream
(like those associated with chronic stress) have been shown
to have negative effects on your system:
-
Impaired cognitive performance
-
Suppressed thyroid functioning
-
Blood sugar imbalances - hyperglycaemia
-
Bone
density decreased
-
Muscle tissue decrease
-
Blood pressure increase
-
Lowered immunity and inflammatory responses in the body
plus other health challenges.
-
Increased abdominal fat, which is associated with a
greater amount of health problems than fat deposited in
other areas of the body.
To keep
cortisol levels under control, the body’s relaxation
response needs to be re-activated each time after the fight
or flight response/stressful situation occurs. It’s just
that in our current society, few people manage to get this
right each time.
With a
coach you can make lifestyle changes and internal mental and
belief shifts in order to keep your body-mind from
over-reacting to stress in the first place. I coach my
clients to learn to relax their minds, and their bodies,
with various resilience building and relaxation/visualisation
techniques that enables them to take charge of their body’s
responses in the face of adversity.
I also
get my clients to reframe the situation or alter certain
beliefs and underlying “though-viruses” that hinder their
ability to build resilience and handle their “self-created”
stress more effectively.
We even work towards not creating stressful responses to
situations by shifting their internal paradigms, energy
levels and personal identities. This enables them to move
from reaction to response.
Your
beliefs may be killing you!
What is
a belief? -
It's
an interpretation of something expressed as feelings,
thoughts and actions.
What is a belief an interpretation of? - IT'S ALWAYS,
100% OF THE TIME, AN INTERNAL PICTURE.
There are 2 kinds of pictures: a memory or a visual image
created through our imagination.
(Please don’t stop until you have also completed the
positive visualisation as well!)
Quickly,
now, imagine or recall a painful memory or a worry you have
about something.
Can you see it? Can you feel it? Can you taste it? Can you
hear it? Now fully Experience it?
If you dwell on the negative image long enough you start to
feel bad again! If you are like 98% of all other people,
your answers are usually “yes” to the above questions.
Incoming
data is encoded in the brain/mind in pictures. When you
recall or re-experience something, you recall it in the form
of full sensory pictures. These pictures have attached to
them, associated sounds, feelings/emotions, beliefs and
judgments. When these pictures are reviewed or created,
whether from past memory or through visual imagination, they
activate a range of body-mind feelings.
Some pictures may activate your stress fire-alarm, which
compromises your nervous system, pumps a whole bunch of
chemicals into your system, and, if unchecked, can lead to
some form of illness.
The
question is…Are you open to see that the threat is not "out
there," but rather “in here”?
Now think of a time when you were totally calm, safe, happy
and at ease. If you can’t remember one create one that could
be awesome. NOW. See it…Feel it… Hear it… Now fully
experience it as if you were really there. How does that
feel?
It’s
your internal activation of your autonomic nervous system,
triggered by an unhealed or energetically charged pictures
or projections. When you heal a picture, everything else
heals around it. In fact, with many people, unhealed
pictures and reduced personal identity, are the primary
things we address when working to reduce levels of stress.
You have
been told, and you probably believe, that the medical
history of your family directly affects your health. You
possibly believe that their cancers will be your cancers,
and that their weaknesses shall become your weaknesses. You
possibly also believe that you are helpless against
inherited genetic issues or the stresses of your everyday
life. Almost every expert says it is either a genetic
tendency, or possibly caused by stress. But that not all
true. You DO have control over your health and you can
prevent the effects of stress.
The
crazy thing is stress doesn’t even exist. Try to bring me a
bucket of stress! Can you? NO!
Research
from the Institute of HeartMath and Stanford University
shows that stress produces genetic changes in your body. 2
people exposed to the same set of circumstances are affected
and “stressed” differently. So what is the root cause of
sickness.
Recent research shows that ALL HEALTH PROBLEMS ARE CAUSED BY
THE SAME SOURCE. Multiple studies reveal that 75-90% of all
patients visited their doctor for illnesses and diseases
that stem from a single origin. In 1998, Dr. Bruce Lipton,
a cellular biologist at Stanford University Medical School,
clinically proved that 95% of all health problems arise from
one thing. It’s the world's #1 killer - STRESS.
It now
seems we have been misinformed about how stress is really
manufactured, and how it really affects and infects us.
What may be stressful to one person may not create stress at
all in another person. The stress, which we create, affects
us internally, which can later manifest itself externally.
Essentially stress is a form of unconscious self-mutilation,
which if left unchecked can lead to all kinds of symptoms
and ill health!
Our challenge is this…we have 100 million receptors directed
to sensing our external environment, but we have 10 thousand
billion brain receptors assessing our internal state. These
receptors power the TV screen of the heart that our
autonomic nervous system constantly monitors. The autonomic
nervous system is the body's control/reaction centre for
stress.
When the Hypothalamus Pituitary Adrenal is stimulated, the
autonomic nervous system activates the "fight or flight"
mechanism and shifts all of your billions of cells from
“growth-mode” to self-protection “lock-down mode.
The reaction is rapid, preparing the body's available
physical resources, and perceived mental resources, for
immediate activity and protection. The alarm/stress reaction
pumps massive amounts of glucose, oxygen and blood to the
areas most active in preparing to ward off the threat.
This results in increased energy to large muscles, and a
decrease in non-emergency activities. During the
alarm/stress reaction, immune, digestive, cardiovascular,
neurological, reproductive and other non-essential
activities are inhibited. When the real or perceived threat
is over, your mind-body should automatically shift your
cells back into safe balance, or growth mode.
We become sick when the body doesn't return to a state of
rest, or balance/growth mode, after an emergency, or when
the body's emergency response system is constantly
re-activated because the phone rings, or we look at our
check book, or we have to wait in traffic or we feel
constantly under threat or pressure
This
enables us to create the stress that kills, or at worst,
creates and accelerates our illness!
Increased levels of stress also causes decreased learning
ability, inhibits the immune system and increases and
bad cholesterol levels. Chronic stress actually ages
your brain. From some people I’ve observed, it also ages
them physically.
It is
evident that the increasing complexity of society causes us
to create ever increasing levels of stress, which inevitably
affects your behavior, health and well-being. Most of us
have more anxiety, frustration, anger and stress than we
realize. One of the worst prices of our advanced technology
is increasing levels of stress. High tech – low touch!
Become
acquainted with the common ingredients of stress, and
investigate what are your own stressors. The average
education included little or no reference to stress or
stress reduction or management. So it’s time to take control
yourself.
We know
that your attitude has a strong bearing on how you behave
and how we think about ourselves under pressure. If we are
in good health and generally good physical condition you
will most likely behave in a confident, resilient, and
in-control manner. This enables you to approach pressure and
demands with a positive, powerful and enthusiastically
resilient attitude. Conversely, illness, run-down physical
condition and low-energy levels can lead to uncertain,
procrastinating and unproductive behaviors and thoughts.
In
building resilience we know that self-esteem
and how you feel about yourself is also a core building
block of the positive stress response. If you have a poor
self-image, and a large amount of “static” (unproductive
mental thoughts, vocalisation, beliefs and negative
perspectives) it can easily result in us feeling bad about
ourselves, and lead to ineffective behaviors (such as
postponing actions that we really ought to do immediately).
A person
with low self-esteem has been shown to have higher levels of
cortisol in their blood stream. Research seems to indicate
that increasingly many jobs, due to task-overload, are
deemed to be more stressful than is healthy for the
employee. This is especially true of increased competition,
organizational accountability and ever-increasing
shareholder expectations. Maybe this is why we have so much
frustration anger around today. When will business begin to
value people as much as they value profits?! Maybe it’s
time for a change of heart.
In your
home there can be domestic/relationship overload resulting
from the increasing cost of living, crowding, child rearing,
and relationship challenges, chores, financial pressure,
house repairs, a multiplicity of ever-more complex
appliances and gadgets to be operated with the inherent
intrinsic noise pollution. Many of us are unaware that one
of the general areas of stress is frustration.
Stress
occurs when natural or desired behaviours or goals are
inhibited or thwarted, and you are blocked from doing
something you want to do. In an external way we respond
emotionally to frustration with anger or aggression or maybe
sometime we even just give-up! Especially if we are the
repressive type who internalizes emotion, we may become
self-destructive, take up addictive bad habits, or become
ill.
Dr. Bruce Lipton and others have learned that our
cells cannot be in “growth” AND “protection” modes at the
same time. Too much stress can bring about increased blood
pressure, hypertension, which may lead to increased
incidents of cardiovascular diseases; increased occurrence
of gastrointestinal problems; increased instances of
sleeping disorders; symptoms of irritability, restlessness,
depression, higher levels of anxiety, as well as
diminishing sexual drive, and various other serious health
problems.
Thomas
H.Holmes and Richard H. Rahe, at the University of
Washington School Of Medicine, developed a Social Readjustment Rating
Scale correlating life events with illness in
more than 5,000 patients. The conclusion was that stress
from problems with money, relationships, and living
conditions directly increased serious illness.
Our
perception acts as an imaginary, yet distorting, lens
through which we view both the Demands presented, as
well as the Resources available, to us. What we
perceive is interpreted automatically and unconsciously in
our brain and translated to our thoughts, behaviors and
feelings.
It is our perception that holds the key to the way in which
we filter the demands we face, and how we evaluate our
available resources to fend them off. In fact, it is
actually the perceived level of stess
rather than the actual level that your body responds to.
Demands
that are perceived as overwhelming may cause us to enter
into a vicious negative feedback loop. Our thoughts play
tricks on us, leading to anxiety, which in turn brings about
a new wave of disturbing thoughts. This leads to erratic
behavior, causing unfulfilled demands, which leads to a new
wave of disturbing thoughts, etc.
If we stop, intentionally change our thoughts, reframe our
perception of the demands or of our resources we can break
this loop and engage the much needed relaxation response.
The body-mind required to regain equilibrium. Otherwise we
are in d-anger of building more chronic stress and anger.
You can
engage in various stress management techniques, and you
could also make some important lifestyle changes in order to
keep your body from reacting to stress in the first place.
The following are some of the activities I suggest to my
coaching clients as ways of relaxing the body and mind,
aiding the body in maintaining healthy cortisol levels:
-
Guided Imagery
-
Journaling
-
Self-Hypnosis
-
Physical Exercise
-
Yoga
-
Listening to certain Music
-
Deep
Breathing Exercises
-
Meditation / Visualisation
-
Sex
-
NLP
Reframing
-
Taming their inner Dragon
D-anger
Warning : At the end of the day, stress can create serious
illness and even kill you. Stop behaving like an ostrich
with your head in the soil, do something to begin to reduce
your stress levels today. At most get yourself a coach. At
least, start one of the above activities 2 or 3 times a day
for a few minutes. You’re worth it…aren’t you?
Namaste’
Tony
Dovale – 083-447-6300
Life Masters Coaching |
