Changing the Way You Think About Stress

In previous columns, I described stress as a combination of three things: a potential stressor, what your mind tells you about your ability to cope with it, and a stress response that kicks in if you feel unable to cope with it.

Viewing stress this way is revolutionary and it changes the way you think about stress in the following ways:

• You start viewing stress as something more than just "bills, traffic, hurricanes, Democrats, Republicans,” or a million other things that you are exposed to every day. These now just become potential stressors.
• You start accepting that what your mind tells you about these potential stressors and your ability to cope with them is the key to managing your stress.
• You start accepting that the jump from potential stressor to stress response does not have to automatically happen because you can intervene in all three components and stop the stress response dead in its tracks.

Let me explain.

When it comes to stress, words are everything. Just substituting the words “potential stressors” for stressors begins to defuse their power to trigger a stress response in your body.

By calling things potential stressors, you stop accepting the outdated belief that certain things are universally stressful for everyone under all circumstances. It helps you realize that the whole notion of universal stressors is nonsense and outdated.

Let me give you an example of a universal stressor that doesn’t always hold up. In their original studies of life events, Holmes & Rahe (1967), pioneer stress researchers, identified the death of a loved one as the most universal of all stressors. They gave this life event a score of 100 points and gave it the most weight in determining if someone would suffer from a stress-related illness in the coming year.

Since then, countless studies have disproven their findings regarding the universality of Life Events. The reason is that the death of a loved one is not always viewed by people as a stressor.

Step back and try to think about this objectively for a second. I know this is difficult because death of a loved one hits all of us hard. If you lost a child or a friend in their teens or 20s to an unexpected accident, injury, or violent crime would you view it the same way that would view the loss of your mom or dad who was in their 90s, had been suffering from a painful, debilitating illness, and had been constrained to a sick bed for months or even years?

While you might feel guilty or ashamed admitting it, you could feel that the latter death was a blessing in disguise. In fact, if you are totally objective about it, the reality is that the death of your mom or dad actually ended their pain and suffering and reduced your stress.

I faced this with the death of my mom who suffered for years with painful, debilitating illnesses that had her in and out of emergency rooms, hospitals, and rehabilitation facilities. On many occasions, she asked me to promise her that I would not let doctors or others keep her alive against her will when it was her time to pass. I watched her waste away in a nursing home and ultimately in hospice care. When she finally passed, I must admit that I felt relief and a reduction in my stress because I knew that her suffering had ended and her wishes had been granted.

When you can categorize something as powerful as the death of a loved one as a potential stressor, you can begin to view most other things as trivial and not even worth getting stressed out over.

When you realize that the determining factor in triggering the stress response is what your mind tells you about potential stressors and your ability to cope with them, it opens up a whole new world of coping possibilities.

One of the reasons I asked you to start keeping a stressor journal in the last column was to help you begin to look more objectively at your potential stressors. You’ll know when that starts to happen because you’ll start asking yourself questions such as:” Is that really threatening?”, ” Is this really worth getting stressed out about?” “Is that such a big loss that I am going to let myself get all stressed out over it?” or “Did what she say really harm me in some way?”

If you’re like the majority of folks I’ve worked with, after a few months of keeping your journal, you’ll learn that when you first started, you tended to overestimate the threat, harm, and loss posed by potential stressors and underestimate your ability to cope with it. You’ll see that your mind tended to blow potential stressors out of proportion while not giving yourself enough credit for being able to cope with them.

As you continue to keep your journal and practice rational thinking, you’ll see that trend reverse.

Part of the change comes from learning that sometimes what your mind tells you about potential stressors, and your ability to cope with them, is not very accurate or helpful. The other part comes from your increased ability to cope. Over a few months, you’ll learn new and effective coping skills. This newfound skills help foster a more positive outlook regarding your coping. Stress experts call this your perceived ability to cope.

In other words your mind starts telling you, "I can cope with that" when confronted with the same potential stressor that used to trigger a stress response. Once this happens, the power of your mind stops the stress response dead in its tracks.

Lastly, there are several ways to short-circuit the stress response even after it is triggered. Face it, sometimes potential stressors are real threats that you can’t do anything about. In this case, your mind signals the alarm and your body mobilizes energy to fight or flee.

Even after this happens you can minimize the harmful effects of this response by triggering a relaxation response that has the power to cancel out the stress response. In other words, even when you do get stressed, you can keep the effects of this response to a minimum by not letting it continue any longer than necessary. There are many ways to induce a relaxation response but they all start with you recognizing that you are stressed and making the commitment to do something about it as soon as possible.

In my next column, I'll introduce you to my multi-level defense system against stress called The Five R's of Coping.

In the meantime, keep journaling!