Reducing Stress in the Family
What is it about stress that we like so much, I wonder? We must if we keep inviting it into our psyches and our lives.
Stress can be good. Athletes will describe how stress can actually enhance performance and medical researchers are finding that stress can strengthen the immune system and fight against diseases like Alzheimer’s, because it causes brain cells to work at peak capacities. Patients who experience moderate levels of stress recover faster after surgery than patients experiencing higher or lower levels of stress.
But there’s the rub.
It’s moderate amounts of stress that can help. It’s our old friend balance rearing its head once more. We see stress as a force with a life of its own rather than an alert system giving us valuable feedback about how our day is going, and by extension, how we are doing. We lose awareness that we, ultimately are the ones that get to choose, not how we feel necessarily (maybe we can choose how we feel…), but how we are going to behave.
Once again, I think it’s our early life lessons that makes stress so powerful. The knots in my stomach over traffic are uncannily like the knots that were there when I was fearful about failing a test and somehow reducing my value to those I loved. There are good ways to manage stress: exercise can be good, meditation can be good, music can be good, humor can be good. But it all starts with listening to your body and recognizing that you have choices. Knowing that you have no need to be fearful about who you are, loving yourself and giving yourself permission to navigate through life as you see fit, may be one of the best first steps in keeping stress in a positive balance.
Until next time…
