[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #17 WHEN YOU'RE STRESSED OUT AT HOME

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall 

2020 Neurons #17

April 9, 2020

Living through 

the Coronavirus Pandemic #2

 

WHEN YOU'RE STRESSED OUT AT HOME

 

In addition to mastering the art of being "stuck at home," (Neurons #16),
you could be stuck at home - stressed out about health, finances, kids,
career, etc. and constantly seduced to get into arguments and fights.  It
happens.  Being locked up and in close proximity with anyone for an extended
period of time challenges our patience, tolerance, state management,
compassion, personal discipline, etc.

 

It also challenges your stress management skills.  In the end, it is not
just a matter of having good stress releasers, it is a matter of being able
to manage your mind regarding your thinking and framing about the stressors.
When it comes to stress releasers- there are a great many ways and methods
for getting the built-up energy (e.g., anxiety, distress, frustration, fear,
sense of danger, etc.) out of your body.  

You can talk it out if you have someone who will just listen and let you
download or vent.  In that way you can use conversation to release what you
have been building up inside.  By articulating and expressing the internal
energy and emotions that have accumulated, you let it go.

You can do the same by writing it out.  This utilizes the neuro-muscular
activity that translates from mind to paper.  Of course, once you've done
that- burn it!  Or shred it.  By all means, if it involves others, do not
send it! 

You can also act it out.  This is especially true of anything
cardio-vascular.  You can walk, jog, run, dance, bounce on a trampoline, or
do almost anything physical to release the stressful emotions and thoughts.
A long time ago Jim Fixx who started the running craze in the United States
wrote that you cannot run mad for thirty minutes. 

Finally, you can also think it out.  That is a possibility, but it requires
a lot of cognitive skill.  Here you think out and get distance from your
thinking, which is what actually creates the stressful emotions.

 

One form of stress release that also involves thinking it out involves
eliciting a calm and relaxing trance state.  While it is easiest to let
someone use do the induction, you can learn to do your own self-inductions.

 

Yet more important that the stress reducers is the ability to catch and
change the stress creators in the first place.  While tension is in the body
and refers to how we tense our muscles to create muscular tension resulting
in headaches, backaches, etc., stress is in the mind.  Stress is
psychological.  And if it is psychological, it is self-induced,
self-created.  Others are not and do not cause your stress regardless of how
intensely you might accuse them of doing so.  All they are doing is offering
a stimulus.  What you do with that stimulus- that is how you create your
stress.

 

Stimulus-Response.  There are external stimuli that make up the factors and
variables to which you are responding.  What you think and believe about
those factors and variables (the stimulus) is your psychological response
which, in turn, leads to your emotional, verbal, behavioral responses.  Here
every Cognitive Distortion (childish thinking patterns), Cognitive Biases,
and Cognitive Fallacies set you up for psychological stress.  

 

This calls for some high level thinking skills so that you can catch the
thinking that's stressing you, cranking up your blood-pressure and inducing
you into a state where you are less effective than usual.  

Are you exaggerating, over-generalizing, and blowing things out of
proportion?

              Are you negatively framing things, discounting good things,
and/or awfulizing?

              Are you personalizing, emotionalizing, and/or
over-identifying?

              Are you engaged in all-or-nothing thinking, either-or
thinking, dichotomizing?

 

These are the key cognitive distortions that amplify stress and unless this
kind of thinking is changed (or challenged), the stress will not go away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com   

 

 

 

 

 

 

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