stressed out

Many years ago, I saw a man in a black t-shirt with “Know Fear” written across the t-shirt in white. I said to myself, “Yes!”

Some say fear is the mother of all emotions. This is true. When you think about the other emotions such as sadness, anger and worry, we often feel fear about experiencing them

Fear triggers the autonomic fight or flight response. Fear can save our lives. Fear can also ruin our lives. When stress is not released while it is being experienced, the stress, tension and behavioral patterns collide to create a constant state of fear. We usually do not experience ourselves as being continually afraid In most senses of the word we are not. Yet, in the background of our unconscious and in our bodies, the effect of fear is accumulating. Neurologically, the reptilian brain, or as some like to call it, our lizard brain, becomes the ruler.

We may know this when a new situation occurs and we feel an emotion that we wish not to feel. It could be that we are just speaking on the phone and our friend starts speaking about walking home at night alone. The next thing we know, we are tense. We may be emotionally experiencing fear, supported by the fact our heart and breathing pick up. Our mind tells our other parts to cool it – he is only telling me about walking home.

What our mind does not realize is that our unconscious and our body were triggered in some small way to re-experience an incomplete or unsuccessful prior event. As we become aware that we are experience something unpleasant, we become afraid.

I know for myself that these subtle moments of fear can occur numerous times in a day. Sometimes I attempt to ignore them, sometimes I make some deal with myself to come back to them, and other times I take them on. When I address them in the moment, I continue doing what ever I was doing as I experience the emotion I am afraid of experiencing.

In those situations when I allow the moment of an unpleasant emotion just to be in my mind and body, I may experience an increase intensity of the emotion. Inevitably, once the intensity increases it subsides to a place more relaxed than before the awareness occurred.

Knowing fear, as you know hunger, thirst or any body urge, frees us. When we begin to accept fear, even irrational fear, we begin to free ourselves from a huge cause of stress.

What to do

Ok, you get the concept, but you are not convinced it is that simple. Let’s try an experiment. The next time your spouse starts going off on that ridiculous issue, listen, and feel what is occurring. I am not speaking about your thoughts, your counter arguments. I am talking about the emotion behind your breath being restricted. I am talking about that tightening in your stomach. The clenching of your jaw and those images in your head of you standing up and yelling “shut up.” I know these irrational feelings are not typical. Nevertheless, we both know that something is happening, often disproportionate to the situation.

You have a choice now. You can proceed has you always have, check out, and talk to yourself. Or, you can step into knowing the fear (or call it resistance) to experience what is behind these sensations. In this one moment, you must decide if you will allow the fear to direct you back to your well adapted coping behaviors, or if you will allow the fear to be. If you choose the door to the fear, it is scary. You can’t be sure of what will be revealed.

Assuming you practice this act of courage, of opening this door and feeling fear, or any other emotion, there will be a moment when it will get intense. This moment is frequently a split second. As intense as it may feel, your partner will not know you are having your mystical experience. He or she is too involved in his or her process to be aware of your shift in consciousness.

Developing this practice of knowing fear sets us free from fear. “No fear” only puts us in a state of denial and opposition. Knowing fear permits us to become neutral around fear. We evolve to a place where fear is our ally. Fear becomes honored for what it was meant to do – save our asses.

A child’s perspective

As much as we may hate to admit it, stress does trickle down to our children.
As blind as we maybe to our own stress, we can be even blinder to the stress our
children endure and its effect on them. It is difficult to see the effect of
stress on our children when we don’t see how stress impacts us.

Often from the adult perspective, a child may be seen has having it easy. He
or she has everything provided. Hopefully the child’s parent provides for his or
her basic needs. It is all the other concerns and stimulation stresses the
child.

One reason we often do not notice the symptoms of stress for our kids is that
they are much more resilient than us adults. By that, I mean their bodies can
recover from stress quicker or not have such serve symptoms. Much like healing
from a wound, a child will mend quicker. This is good, but should not be seen as
an excuse to allow stress to impact a child. What does occur that certainly
should be a concern is how the effects are cumulative, much like exposure to
DDT. The compounding consequence of more stress added on old tension begins to
wear the child down. How this collapse in the child’s health shows up can vary.
The repetitiveness of colds, flues and ear aches are common
consequences.

An additional factor why stress is often not fully noticed in a child is that
he or she does not have the language to describe it. As any pediatrician will
tell you, a small child will often not know to or know how to describe something
as simple as a headache. To expect the child to articulate the general malaise
stress can create is unrealistic.

I can recall, as a child, close to 50 years ago – don’t tell anyone I am that
old, having chronic “stomach aches.” My mother took me to the one of those old
fashion doctors who made house calls. He honestly said he did not know what the
problem was. Today from my current perspective, it was easy to see my problem
was all “psychosomatic” – all stress. Our tests today are much more
sophisticated, yet our understanding of stress has not progress equally in 50
years. I suspect today if I was a child I might have gotten a few tests and some
medication to take, but the cause of the problem would not have been addressed.

So, what a parent to do?

First, become aware that your child maybe exposed to stressors you have not
been aware of. Secondary, step back and start to view your child in the context
of stress. Begin to engage your son or daughter in conversations about what
their lives are like. Obliviously, saying to a young child – “Are you stress
out?” will not work. Slowly have your child describe his or her day. Listen for
how things are being said and particularly listen for what is not being said. As
we all know too well, kids will not tell us everything. In this case, it could
be they are a shamed or afraid to speak about what we would call stress.
Alternatively, they may not be all that aware. Denial is one of all our first
coping strategies. Just having regular conversations about the other things in
their lives can be hugely effective.

Observe how your child moves. Is he or she tense, awkward, imbalanced or is
something just not right? How he or she interacting with others, peers and
adults? Where are his or her are edges, what are your child’s challenges?
Noticing and accepting the struggle, then making space for it to be ok can be
enormously supportive. When the child does not get the support needed from
adults, the child will seek out his or her peers. That shift should begin to
occur when the child is a teenager; before than the child needs the parents
championing his or her development.

The secret to shifting a child’s stress

Steven Stills had it right – “Teach Your Children.” Our behaviors are the best teachers. As we shift our relationship with stress, so will our children. It is amazing how children model us. I once had a client who was my CPA and later a business partner. David had a son who was the “spiting image” of him, right down to his twisted body and minor limp. The son never had the injury David had; he never had any injury. Getting the strain out of James’ body was much easier than David’s. The point – if a child will model a body twist, he certainly will model a stress strategy.

This you may not want to read. Children will run the parent’s energy. By
that, I mean kids will express or act out what the parents are not expressing.
The more you are not dealing with your stress in a healthy manner, the more
likely your child will find a way to express that stress. How that happens can
vary greatly. An aggressive, angry parent may produce a child who is a bully.
Certainly, a young child can not defend himself or herself against an adult.
That frustration has to go some place. Either it will go into the child’s body
or it will be acted out with his or her peers.

Lets keep stretching our envelop of what stress is for a child. The energy of
stress when not express for a child or an adult will implode. It will go into
the body. We all know we can get tense from stress. A child will unconsciously
model your physical coping or stress storing patterns. As a child, I was told I
inherited my tight, thick legs from my father. I had no reason to disbelieve
that until I got Rolfed. What I learned 30 years ago was that I unconsciously learned to develop tight legs just as my father did. This is no different than what James did with father. With the Rolfing and the release of old stress, my legs are no longer big or tense.

I once had a client who was a physician who ran his own institute and taught
throughout the world the techniques he developed. He was a brilliant and caring
doc. He was seeing me while he was going through a tough divorce. One day his
daughter came with him. She seemed very normal. He proceeded to tell me how she
was acting out. I said, given what you and ex-wife are going through I could
understand. His solution was to prescribe Ritalin for her.

We know now that children often assume the responsibility of divorces. I
suspect that is the least of it. Regardless of why these kids act out, the
stress of the family needs some expression. I have always believed it is better
that they act it out than hold it in and create an illness. The epidemic of
ADD/ADHD is a function of two variables; one the increase stress in this
culture. The other is the huge market for the pharmaceutical companies. When the
child’s stress is addressed, the ADD/ADHD resolves itself. I will write more on
this in the future.

I hope my little dissertation about children running the energy of the parent
is good news. As tough as it maybe to change the effects of stress has on us,
the benefits can be compounded when we have children.

• A little more
  technical explanation with some good suggestions
• From a
  site on children health
• University
  of Minnesota addresses several aspects of stress

______

I like to add that Tria’s comment about kids growing up too soon is right on. There is an excellent article that speaks about recent research concerning literally how our children are become old before their time.

It would be easy to say that we all are stressed out and leave it at that. Given that we all maybe stressed, it becomes serious when our stress starts to kill us or at least effects our enjoyment of life.

Medicine over the last 25 years has grown beyond believing that only genes or microbes cause all disease. Today the entire health care system accepts stress as a cause of illness. We now know stress is real because we have lifestyle disease, an increasing matrix of diseases where stress plays a huge part. Everyone knows how high blood pressure, ulcers and irritable bowl syndrome is caused by stress. What we may not be aware of is how extensive the list of stress illness has become, here just a few that are now being attributed to stress: cardiovascular disease, immune system disease, asthma and diabetes. I suspect as medicine better recognizes and understands stress what is a long list will get longer.

All this attention is good. The media has become aware that stress may kill us. So, if you have a possible medical condition, see your health care professional.

What I am more interested in writing about are the more incepted aspects of stress, what might be called the pre-clinical symptoms of a stress illness. If you have high blood pressure, it is reasonable to assume you are stressed out. As I say to my clients, hypertension is tension – you are stressed.

The subtle signs of our stress we are often not aware of. Some of this is due to the fact that we all live in a culture of stress. Everyone around us is often stressed out. We are expected to perform under stress. We often become conditioned, if not addicted to the affects of stress, such as its adrenaline.

So how do we discern our relative “stressness” in a society that is stressed out? There are several perspectives to take. One is our behavior, another is our productivity, a third is observing our bodies and there are always our trusted friends for their impressions. There is also clinical testing that your health care professional can perform. The caveat here is that not all stress will show itself in tests.

When we can separate our behavior from those around us to observe what we are doing, we will learn something. Some simple questions to ask about your behaviors are:

• Sleep – are you getting enough, do you wake rested
• Weight – have you been gaining or loosing weight
• Sex – are you wanting it, is it good
• Athletics – is your performance decreasing not in portion to your workouts
• Substance support – do you use even natural substances to get you up and others to bring you down

How is your productivity? I don’t accept much of what we blame on age as age; it is the cumulative effect of stress wearing out our bodies. So, do you experience any of these that limit your effectiveness:

• Focus – does it take more effort to keep your concentration
• Team – are you less of a team player, more concerned about you own survival
• Denial – have others told you to chill out and you are saying that it is them
• Assistance – do you need chemicals from caffeine to Prozac to keep you in the game
• Desire – are you burnt out, is the thrill gone, are you just buying time until …

Relationships often suffer the effects of chronic stress. These effects may show up at home or at work. What once was enjoyable becomes just another responsibility, another stressor. What symptoms of stress in this realm of you life do you have:

• Impatience – has your fuse is shorter
• Burdens – has being with and relating to your love ones and friends become a burden
• Communication – is it still there, is it just what it needs to be keep getting along
• Desires – who are you imagining being with, what are you dreaming of·

Ron Kurtz, an old friend of my use to say, the body never lies. It is always speaking to us and others. The question is; are we listening. With awareness and honesty, we can hear a signal before it becomes a problem. What is your body telling you:

• Tension – is your body getting tighter, are you clenching my jaw, are there other idiosyncratic tension behaviors
• Breath – right now – is your breath relaxed and full
• Posture – are you loosing the war with gravity, are you hunch over looking like an old man or woman and maybe feeling like one
• Sore – are you always sore, stiff and generally feeling old before your time
• Unsettled – do you have behaviors such as tapping your feet, shaking your leg, or tensing a body part
• Present – are you living in the past or future, escaping what is happening in the present moment
• Low energy – you may not be chronically fatigued, but are you tired
• Sick – do you go from one cold or flu to another
• Headaches, back pain – do you have one of the common chronic pains that can’t be attributed to a specific cause

Then there are the psychotically behaviors that transgress from being our unique mannerism to self perpetuating stressful emotions. Before we receive a diagnosis of depression, there are warning signs to our stress. What are yours; here are a few questions to guide you:

• Despondent – is the thrill gone, are you burnt out and nothing gives you pleasure
• Reclusive – do you want to be left alone
• Hysterical – do you find yourself over reacting, someone says something and you start crying or wanting to cry
• Frozen – are you in a daze, or just unable to decide or act
• Needy – are you feeling your needs are not being meant or maybe never will be
• Control – are you loosing control or working hard to maintain it
• Resistant – do your find yourself resisting when you would have not in the past
• Over achieving – are you too focus on tasks, getting things done becomes your purpose in life
• Compulsive – are you obsessing
• Aggression – are you in reaction or constantly aroused ready for the next event, are you often angry

One pragmatic way to look at all the aspects of our lives is to ask how many parts of my life take more energy from me than give me. When we are not constantly stressed out, we receive a lot from life. When we are living on the edge with stress, our resources are down and everything begins to be a strain, draining our precious resources.

Determining your level of stress and its impact on you may prove to be more challenging than we first would imagine. We live in a culture of co-conspirators. We all are in some level of mutual denial. To step beyond the cultural mindset and ask these questions can be the beginning to not only a healthier life, but also a more rewarding life.

For more on are you stressed out, check out the Univ. of London site. The Mayo Clinic compiled a simple chart of what your thoughts do to your body and your behavior. If you need any convincing that our modern society generates stress, read about how Indigenous communities in Australia are suffering from being integrated into what we have lived in for the last 100 years.

Here are some questionnaires testing your stress level. A short one initially designed for teachers, but applicable to everyone. This one comes from the Brits. This questionnaire represents the classic questionnaire that has been around for years asking questions that are more based on external events.

Please use other postings on this site to provoke and guide your journey out of the clutches of stress. As I used to say teaching stress reduction courses; we learned to be stressed, we can unlearn it.