The Cause of Stress

 

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

William James 

Clenching Up In Stress

I clench my teeth when I am stressed.  I have really been clenching over the last eight months...I mean big time.  So much so that the last dental Xray I had done showed several cracked teeth and being that I can not afford a dental plate, there will more until I deal with my body's instinctive reaction to stress.  I am sooo stressed...to the point my experience with it  is breaking my teeth and making me sick. What I really need, though, is not a  sedative, not a dental plate nor a diagnosis for what is causing the pelvic pain...but an elimination of or at least a reduction in the amount of stress I am living through. Stress is the culprit and the body is just reacting to it. 

The Cause? 

What is really causing my stress? Is the fact that I have all these challenging  external circumstances and events taking place at once the cause of  my stress? Is Life and other people to blame? No! I have learned enough to know that it is not the circumstances that are causing this expereince of "stress" in me but my mind.  There is no problem except in the mind. 

Not the External Circumstances

Sure there has been a lot in the last eight months: having someone with a life threatening addiction come into my home and have to witness (and occassionally be target for) the neurological damage, the psychosis, the tremendous struggle with addiction itself that plays out in front of me; witnessing damaging enabling; the sense that a relationship is falling apart because of it;  having a child who is so, so unwell in other ways(life threateningly)  and not being able to help her;  my son's broken relationship and the unfair way he was treated in regards to his paternal rights by people who were lifelong friends; having him move back in; another daughter losing her baby; the unexpected death of a sister-in -law; my own sister's heart attack in December and her struggle with even bigger things that I am powerless in helping her with; the struggles my youngest has on  a daily basis with her anxiety; having my deeply invested source for potential and much needed income ( yoga studio) be taken away by COVID; the monthly struggle to pay the mortgage so I can keep my finacial independence in this relationship in an attempt to cling to this idea of "my" home; debt and bills I cannot pay; the waiting to find out if I had breast cancer or not; the pelvic issue that keeps me up at night and leads me on yet another "wait" to find out what that is; just having to "health seek" in any way and how that reopens old wounds in me; the new genetic possibility and another potential big decision I might have to make in the future; wanting it all over with but having to wait for my sister to participate when her situation right now makes her ability to do so unpredictable; feeling sick; menopause; a loss of healing space in my own home; and like everyone else on the planet this little clump of flesh is living trough a pandemic as well. 

There has been alot of stressors in eight months and some of them are fairly big...yet these are not the cause of my stress.  My mind is...more specifically...my perception and judgement is.

The Mind's Judgement Induced Perception: The Cause of Stress

Huh? 

I used to teach that stress is a phyiscal and mental reaction to a "percieved" threat. 

• So number one: Stress  is a reaction ...Stress is not the mother bear that stands on the other side of the cub you came across on your hike in the woods. It is how your body and mind react to it that makes stress.  It is not the circumstance but the reaction to it. So though it seems I have had a lot of things thrown at me to deal with in the last eight months, a lot of mother bears to face...I am not cracking my teeth or getting sick because of them.  I am cracking my teeth and getting sick because of what my mind and body are doing in reaction to these things. 
• And my body does what the mind tells it to do.  The mind must first say, "This is a threat! React!" For my problem with clenching...the mind has told the body to stay tense and alert.  "At any time now you are going to have to run, fight or curl up in a little ball.  Be ready!" So my jaws just obliged.  It also tells the immune system, "Okay!  I am  laying you off to conserve energy for fight and flight." The immune system obliges and walks away from its jobs ...and things can change on the cellular level without it doing its job.  
• The subjective experience of stress ...the "feeling" of stress, worry, dread, fear  also comes about because of what the mind is saying and reporting. "Danger!!!" That message comes from what it is perceiving.  It is "perceiving" a threat to its survival, whether that survival be physical, emotional, mental, or financial etc. 
• Perception comes from making a judgement.  And that judgement we see the mind using in response to challenge that leads to stress is, "This is bad, wrong or shouldn't be!"  When I was more or less told I might have cancer...I judged it as 'bad, wrong, shouldn't be', felt fear and then pereceived it as as a threat to my physical survival. When I realize how much pain a loved one is in...I judge this  as 'bad, wrong, shouldn't be' and it becomes  a threat to my emotional and mental survival as a parent. When I realize I cannot make my mortgage payments that is perceived as a threat to my financial survival. These circumsatnces are all a part of Life doing what Life does.
• It is not the possible diagnosis, the suffering of a loved one or the lack of income...it is my reaction to it.The perception is the problem...and the perception of threat comes from the mind's judgement. 

So what do we do then to help eliminate or reduce the stress we are experiencing?  Especially when we have no control over it?

• The serenity prayer comes in handy here: we accept what we cannot change, and change what we can.  Knowing the difference between what we can and cannot change is important.  I loook at my so called "stressors" and say...I can change some. I can't change others. I can change my living situation if I absolutely have to.  I could kick everyone out! I am not going to do that lol but I could. I cannot make them stop using, make them stop enabling but I can change my limit setting and boundaries. I cannot change what is going on in my body right now but I can make changes in lifestyle and treatment so it doesn't get worse. 
• And most importantly, we can change our judgements and perceptions. Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.  (Hamlet) Life is a series of coming and goings, peaks and valleys, joys and sorrows.  It is just the way it is. 
• If it is something we cannot change, we realize number one, that it is not the thing that is the problem but what the mind is doing with it.  Just watch your mind and see how it is dealing with this...what judgements is it making about this thing? 
• If you are percieving a threat, ask yourself , "Is this really a threat to me?" Very few things we react so strongly to are actually threats to our survival.  Many times we over react and perceive a threat when no real threat is there.  We nee dto put things into persepctive and not automatically jump  everytime the mind calls out "Danger!" 
• And if you know it is a threat to you at the physical or psycho social level...ask, "Is it a threat to the "real" me, though ?"  That quetsion helped me so much when my world seemed to fall apart after  I got sick and couldn't work. I lost so much of what I thought was important and it felt like part of me was constantly being threatened.  I realized after a long inward questioning  that the only part of me that was being threatened by the loss of income, title, role, recognition was my ego not who I really am.  Nothing real can be threatened (ACIM).  The only thing being threatened by cracked teeth and disease is my body.  I am not my body.  Well that helps me, anyway. 

So to sum it all up, it isn't the circumstances that cause stress but our reaction to them. Our reactions are created my perceptions which are in turn created by our judgements. Let's go there to determine the cause of stress as well as the solution for it. 

All is well!