Stress: How to Make It Easier
Stress is a big topic in the world today. We are all becoming more aware of our situations and caring about our self is more important than ever.
But the way we discuss stress today is skewed. Just like always, news and social media blow everything out of proportion and has turned us from understanding stress to fearing it.
Stress is bad for you!
Stress can shorten your life!
Stress is destroying the children
And yes, stress can be terrible, it was a problem my entire childhood. But fearing stress is not the correct way of treating it. We have to understand it before we can handle it.
It is not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.
-Hans Selye
The misunderstanding
Stress is not something we can just remove, and treating stress through medications often leads to antidepressants. This is a very debated topic but I don’t believe this to be the correct way to handle it.
It’s important to understand that we are all unique, and stress is not a disease that can be cured like bacteria. It’s a reaction to our environment, current situation, and perspective. Most often the only way to handle our stress is to change either our situation or find another perspective on the issue.
The way I handle stress is to categorize it as two different types of stress.
Static stress
Static stress comes from things we can’t control. It will be the same no matter what.
I become stressed when I have to leave work suddenly if my child is sick. This is not something I can change. The reason I become stressed is that I am worried about my child, feel bad about leaving work, and I lose money and time for my work assignments.
I can’t stop this. It is part of who I am. This might change during the course of a long time because I myself change as a person but it is hard to actively do something about it.
The only way we can handle this kind of stress is to avoid the situations that will stress us. I Define these situations and make sure to understand why and how they bother me. This way I can plan ahead, and avoid these situations whenever possible.
Dynamic stress
Dynamic stress comes from things we can control. This is the biggest area where we can actively do things to help.
I know that I’ll be stressed if I come home and do not know what to cook for dinner. So my family makes sure to plan every weekday ahead of time.
I know that I feel stress when my home isn’t cleaned properly. So we make sure that we clean regularly to make sure we live in a fresh environment.
I know that delaying things I should do (also known as procrastinating) will lead to an increase in stress for me. So I take actions to prevent this.
Just like static stress, the best way I have found is to accumulate enough information about what causes said stress. It’s often shrouded in mystery for us when we start to get worried. Focusing on the wrong thing is a common mistake. What truly stress us might not be apparent and might actually be easier to handle than what we originally thought.
How to categorize your stress.
To define a reason for stress there are a few questions we have to look at.
Why am I stressed?
What is it that makes me feel this way? List all the things that can be the reason for the stress. If I feel stressed about taking the bus then I might ask these questions.
- Is it that I might miss the bus? Will I be late?
- Is it the ticket? What if my ticket is not accepted?
- Is it the cramped space of a buss? Do I have trouble with small spaces?
- Is it other people that stress me? Does it feel like they stare at me?
What can I do?
Now we need to define if this is a Static or Dynamic kind of stress. To do this we need to figure out if there is something that can be done to remedy the situation.
If I’m stressed about the cramped buss then this is static stress. I can’t change my fear and anxiety about cramped spaces so the only way, is to avoid the issue. It boils down to the question, is there another way to travel?.
But if I’m stressed about being late to the bus, this is dynamic stress. We can actively make choices to feel more secure in coming on time.
- Set double or triple alarms.
- Make sure you have a bike ready.
- Leave 10 minutes earlier than usual.
The changes we make can be different for each person, we have to find the changes that make us comfortable personally. It might take several trials and different approaches, But as long as we don’t give up and keep trying it will become better.
We are not alone in this.
Everyone feels stress about something, and I think that the most important thing is to not be afraid of stress. For me understanding the difference between stress that I can or can’t control has helped me a lot.
It enables me to work towards a more stress-free environment and helps me counter stress when it comes at me suddenly.
