Author Archives: Tamera

Practical Wisdom–Getting Your Needs Met

Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English scholar, philosopher, writer, and women’s rights activist who was a champion for giving women access to education. Her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wrote Frankenstein.

 

Once a week, I do volunteer work that involves sitting at the information desk of a local church. Although what I do is unaffiliated with the church, I am asked many questions related to the church and try to help when I can. One afternoon, a man strode purposefully into the lobby and up to the desk.  Catching my eye, he tapped his index finger to his head multiple times and informed me that he had memory problems and needed help getting back to a shelter.  He repeated his sentence in a rote manner until I was able to interrupt and promise to help.

I managed to identify the shelter he told me to find and make contact with a social worker who promised to send a van to get “Mike” and expressed astonishment that he had wandered so far. Mike sat with me while awaiting his ride, and the next thing I knew, he’d told me many significant, tragic stories about his life.  In fact, he repeated each of his stories at least half a dozen times, breaking my heart as I realized how awful much of his life had been and the extent of his memory problems.  Reading in between the lines of his stories, I realized that multiple traumas had set him up in such a way that it was practically impossible to make healthy decisions, and I felt as if it was easy to see how he’d ended up as he had, finally sober but brain-damaged and homeless.

He remained on my mind and even kept me awake that evening as I wondered what I could do to be beneficial in his life beyond helping him get back where he belonged. The next day, I called the shelter, and it turned out that he wasn’t truly homeless; he’d become lost walking out the door of the home he’d just moved into, and he couldn’t recall that he had a place to live.  He also had an incredible network of support around him that was providing for his basic needs as a result of the social worker who obviously cared profoundly about his well-being.

In the end, I realized that Mike’s ability to reach out for what he needed in life went far beyond his ability to find a church to help and recite a script when he got lost; he knew how to touch people’s hearts and receive care and love in return.

THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

Journal or sketch your responses to Wollstonecraft’s words and the reflection. Then, consider the following questions.

Where in life do you struggle with the world? How do you rise to the challenge?  What is your experience of how the world responds?

How have your struggles shaped your skills and mental abilities? What have you been called upon to do that you have not yet mastered?

Where do your needs remain unmet? What faculties do you need to call forth to get them met?

When have you been called upon to help meet someone else’s needs and ease their struggles with the world? How have you responded?

Practical Wisdom–Observing the Rules

This is the first of what I intend to be weekly posts that use quotes as a jumping-off point for self awareness and personal growth.  Grab a journal or sketch pad to record your responses and reactions to the questions at the end.  See my post from August 30th for more information.

 

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

One of the finest writers of his times, American poet and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was also a physician, lecturer, university dean, and law student.

A young woman practically leapt out at me as I pulled into a pharmacy parking lot one afternoon a few months ago, because she seemed not to belong in the setting. Pretty to the point of being striking and perhaps not much more than 20 years old, she was sitting all folded up along the curb, with a heartbroken, almost forlorn look in her eyes and on her face. Her face haunted me as I did my shopping. I knew she was no midday drunk—in an instant, I had considered and dismissed the idea that her pained look had anything to do with substance abuse. My thoughts had moved on to awful possibilities, such as the idea that she might be a victim of human trafficking, which has become a big problem in our area, and I knew I’d continue to ruminate and worry about her if I drove off without checking on her. So, when I was finished shopping, I decided to drive by the place where the girl had been sitting, just to see if she was okay.

The girl was still folded up in the same position I’d first seen her, so I rolled my car window down to ask if she was okay. She replied that she had gotten to the pharmacy by bus and now wasn’t sure how to get home, because she’d waited over an hour, and no bus had come. I explained that I didn’t know much about the bus schedule except that it didn’t run as frequently in the middle of the day as it did in rush how. I asked where she was trying to go and what she needed, and she told me she could get home if she could only make her way to the metro.

I happened to be planning to drive right past the nearest Metro station. I knew intuitively that she was no threat, and so I mustered up my courage. I told her I’d never given a ride to a stranger before, but that if she wanted a ride, I was willing to take her to the Metro.

I could see her sizing me up, and then a look of relief crossed her face. Charmingly, she informed me that she’d be a safe passenger. “I’m not going to kill you or anything,“ she informed me earnestly.

On the ride to the subway, significant pieces of her life story poured out. She told me she’d recently moved to the area from out-of-state because her fiancé had died, and she’d decided to move home with her mother. She told me many other private things that out of respect for her I will not share, but I got stuck on the idea of what it must be like to grieve when one doesn’t have society’s stamp of legally being a widow, especially at such a young age. It also clarified for me why she looked so lost and forlorn when I first noticed her.

After I dropped her off, I called my husband to tell him what I’d done, not because I believed I had been in any danger, but because I felt guilty about breaking the safety rule of never giving a ride to a stranger. He was unsurprised that the young woman had shared so much of her life story with me, because people randomly share so much with me. He also thought it was no coincidence we’d been thrown briefly together. I agree.

 

THOUGHTS AND QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

We all have rules of life we follow, most of which become automatic and receive no thought from us. Consider your rules of life. What are the significant ones? Why do you follow them? What has been the outcome of breaking one or more of them? What did you learn? Do you have regrets?

The young woman I met was grieving the loss of her fiancé. Would you feel differently about her and her loss if she’d been a newlywed? What if she’d been slightly older and married several years? What if the fiancé’s death had been from something like a drug overdose rather than disease or an accident? How would that change your reaction?

How do your unspoken rules of life serve you? Have they kept you safe, perhaps? How have they harmed or hindered you?

 

 

Holding Space for Letting Go

There are many people for whom the presidential election has triggered great worry, fear, sadness, and a whole host of concerns about what the future political situation might bring. If you or someone you know needs a place to sort things out for themselves, please give them my name and contact information. For the next several weeks, I am offering one-time sessions during which they can unburden themselves in an accepting and safe environment. It is not psychotherapy–I come from a spiritual perspective–but it is confidential. Suggested payment is $50 for a one-hour session plus optional meditation and mindfulness guidance..

Hyperactive Default Mode Network Behind Many Emotional Disorders

The brain’s default mode network, a series of connections that create what the brain is doing/thinking when it isn’t focused on any one thing in particular, appears to be hyperactive when emotional disorders are present, according to research from the University of Illinois-Chicago.  For more information, read Science Daily’s summary of the research, which is linked below.

Neurofeedback is not mentioned in this article, but certain neurofeedback protocols are designed to train the default mode network.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160928141901.htm

 

 

Neurofeedback vs Entrainment

Over the past few months, I’ve been asked several times about various hand-held devices meant for a layperson to use at home, and I thought it might be beneficial to share my responses more broadly.

Neurofeedback is a means of gently teaching new electrical patterns to the brain using tones and other non-invasive rewards. It does not force the brain into specific states, and because it is a teaching tool, it takes time to create long-lasting results.  Once the brain learns those results, however, the patterns are set, and the brain holds onto its progress.

Unlike neurofeedback, most portable entrainment devices provide no feedback to show the brain what it is doing and create space for change. Instead, these devices—some called AVE, or audio-visual entrainment, some called CES, or cranio-electrical stimulation, and some called binaural beats—push the brain into a desired state using sound, light, or even light electrical charges to achieve change.  These devices, generally considered safe for relaxation purposes, do not teach the brain to change.  Because they force the brain into a new condition, changes may happen in just minutes, but the changes are short-lived and in most cases will not become permanent.

Entrainment devices have their benefits, even though they don’t create long-lasting change. For those who cannot afford the time or money to pursue a course of neurofeedback brain training, for example, entrainment tools provide immediate, short-term benefits until the person is able to do neurofeedback. They also are beneficial for some people to use in between neurofeedback sessions to extend the benefits of training—in fact, I keep a few types of entrainment tools available to share with my clients.  In addition, many neurofeedback software programs include binaural beats to help the brain shift into new states, so they can be useful during brain training.

The bottom line is that to create long-lasting change that does not require continual daily effort, neurofeedback is the better path. For short-term benefits to hold one over before implementing longer-term solutions, entrainment is a beneficial choice.

Stress, Trauma, and the Amygdala

A recent study in Biological Psychiatry found that neurofeedback was effective in helping calm the amygdala, a part of the brain that becomes over-activated in stressful and traumatic situations. The authors enthused that EEG-guided neurofeedback “holds the promise of reaching anyone, anywhere” and of its usefulness for stress resilience training.

Read more on the study at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160912122608.htm.

Practical Wisdom for Creating Change

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who doesn’t love the feeling of inspiration that comes from reading the quoted words of our wise and sometimes humorous ancestors? Especially over the past decade or so, inspirational quotes have been appearing everywhere from social media and email signature lines to headings in chapters of books.  I even have a few on refrigerator magnets.

A few years ago, I began to wonder about how those brief feel-good moments from reading a quote could be taken a step further and used to create meaningful change in one’s life. It seemed to me that there is a richness that can come from taking in the practical words of wisdom available to us and using them as agents of change.

I know it can be done, because it happened to me. As an undergraduate, there was a point at which I worried I wasn’t going to be able to make it in college, would lose my scholarship, and would have to leave.  One day at about the high point of my anxiety, I received a newsletter from a group to which I belonged, and it contained the following quote from Winston Churchill, “If the motivation be sufficient, even a donkey might fly.” Those words hit me hard, and from them, I found the encouragement to keep working hard toward my goals.  My anxiety dissipated, and everything shifted.  All these years later, I still have that quote clipped and set aside for moments at which I lose my courage and resolve.

As a result of this experience, I have over time compiled a large number of quotes on subjects related to personal growth and change. With each of them, I have written a reflection on the quote and composed questions designed to make the reader stop, reflect, journal, and shift as a result.  They are part of a forthcoming book, but I will occasionally be posting quotes and reflections here in this blog.  I hope you enjoy them and, more importantly, use them!

 

Note:  Emerson’s quote can be found on page 67 of The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume XVI 1866-1882, Ronald A. Bosco and Glen M. Johnson, eds., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982.

Starting the Year off with Self Care

September always feels more like the beginning of the year for me than January 1st ever does.  It’s probably left over from school days, when everything from crayons to clothing to textbooks was fresh and new for the new academic year.

As a result, this is the time of year when I try out new things, usually related to self care or continuing education. And although I don’t make new year’s resolutions, the things I choose to take on and add to my world feel seem like promises to myself. Many of my friends and colleagues feel the same way, and perhaps you do, too.

One promise my clients make to themselves at this time of year is the decision to pursue neurofeedback training. This self-care promise has a rhythm that feels like a new year’s resolution, because I experience spikes in calls  throughout the month of September, just as I do during the first two weeks of January.  People are toying with whether they want to make a commitment to personal improvement, and because it’s a commitment that lasts longer than an actual new year’s resolution, it requires some forethought.  I find that those who call me think they want change but are not quite sure about what they could be getting themselves into if they make such a commitment.  That’s understandable and is probably in part because neurofeedback and the research that backs it still isn’t that well known.

If you’re toying with the idea of trying out neurofeedback for yourself or a loved one as part of your new year, give me a call. I offer free consultations that allow you to meet me, discuss how neurofeedback works (and, just as importantly, what it doesn’t do), and what brain training might mean in your life.  I think it’s valuable to educate yourself before you make a decision.  In addition, taking steps toward personal improvement is a great way to start a new year.

 

Better Approaches to Trauma–Neurofeedback, Body Work, Even Theater

Beginning this week, my intention is to share periodically about a book I’ve read that may be of interest to anyone who is exploring or considering neurofeedback training for whatever reason. Some of these books may be scientific and heavy on neuroscience, whereas others may have a more spiritual bent, because neurofeedback encompasses mind, body, and spirit.  In any case, I am sharing what strikes me and not providing a review or report.

Normally when I read a book, I end up scanning pages and sometimes entire sections or chapters, simply because either the writing failed to capture my attention or the content was weak. With The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk, I found myself doing the opposite.  I read slowly, taking in the long but well-written and content-rich words of one who is in my mind the most prominent and respected name in the field of trauma.  For someone whose life has been touched in any way by life’s traumas large and small, this book is worth reading the same way—a few pages at a time, with a notebook nearby.

Van der Kolk decries the emphasis that mainstream psychology places on medications and cognitive approaches to resolving trauma and treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), noting that they have a dismal record of success in restoring a person to healthy emotional functioning. He also points out that many people end up with a multitude of false diagnoses that share only a trauma response underneath the myriad of symptoms. Van der Kolk prefers an approach that recognizes how the body’s safety systems have been hijacked and that reconnects body and brain in a way that makes it safe for individuals to experience healthy emotions so that they can actually live inside their bodies again.  He explains why this is so through an explanation of brain functions—including a description of the limbic system and polyvagal theory, and the memory distortions that occur in individuals who have experienced trauma.  He speaks to the irrationality and non-verbal nature of trauma, and he talks about how trauma in childhood causes different physiological responses than trauma in adulthood.  Most importantly, Van der Kolk offers hope to those who suffer and their families.

In the final and perhaps most important section of his book, Van der Kolk shares what he views as essential approaches to helping individuals tone down their internal alarm systems in ways that allow them to function better in life. He suggests body work, especially yoga, massage, and EMDR.  He suggests a more dynamic approach to psychotherapy called IFS, or Internal Family Systems, which is quite similar to psychosynthesis.  Van der Kolk also encourages therapeutic theater participation, although that may be much harder to find such a program than his other suggestions.  Of especial interest to me is that Van der Kolk is a strong proponent of integrating neurofeedback into any wellness plan for trauma recovery and dedicates an entire chapter to the subject.

His emphasis on brain training and body work have not yet received support from the American Psychological Association, but individuals around the country are paying attention to his ground-breaking efforts. As someone who has been a long-time neurofeedback trainer and has specialized training in the IFS-related field of psychosynthesis, I especially appreciate his wisdom, leadership, and courage in the face of nay-sayers.

If you have any interest in this topic or relationship with someone who’s experienced trauma, put this book on your must-read list.

 

Fix What You’re Tolerating to Create Space

If you’ve read the previous post, you know that putting together a list of the things you’re tolerating in life can result in a daunting list. The first time I did it, my list was close to 200 items. I worked on the little ones first, because getting something done in 10-15 minutes made me feel like I was making progress, not just from the task itself but from the process of crossing out items on my tolerations list. It meant that I was tolerating less in life.

What I wasn’t expecting, though, was that no sooner would I cross off one of the more moderate-sized items, than I’d realize that there were a handful of items that either popped up or I had forgotten about. It meant that although my tolerations list got low, it still existed. I realized that it was a flow—some things off, some things on the list. That ebb and flow, as long as I did a reasonable job of making sure I was taking care of things rather than putting up with them, meant that my overall stress level reduced just enough that I was able to sit back and look at the bigger picture.

Looking at the bigger picture is the key aspect of this exercise. Yes, you’ll feel better about taking care of the little things—the gnats and mosquitos of life, as one of my former counseling clients put it, but you’ll also be creating room in your life to take a more serious, more careful look at the bigger stressors in your world.

What you’ll find is likely to surprise you. You are likely to see that it really isn’t the thing you THINK is making you crazy that is really the cause of stress in your world. Instead, it’s almost always something underlying the surface problem. Bad bosses, delinquent children, poor relationships…there’s always something else fundamental to how the situation got to where it is for you. Knowing that there’s something deeper and that you can find it is life changing, because it opens up new doors and new options for change.

What Are You Tolerating?

Despite good intentions, this is the about the time when New Year’s resolutions begin to crumble and fall by the wayside. Undoing old, bad habits or adding new, healthy ones is a challenging business, and it takes more than grim determination to create change that lasts.  This is especially true for those who have chosen to destress their lives in the new year.

Too often, this is because we go about making changes the wrong way.  The big things in life seem to be the source of unremitting stress, yet those big things—a bad boss, unchallenging work, lousy financial situation, or crummy relationship/lack of relationship—often are only symptoms of the true, underlying issue. And that’s why destressing by overthrowing your whole life or big chunks of it doesn’t work—first, it’s daunting to make such big changes and second, some unconscious part of you already knows that the real problem has little to do with what you consciously believe needs fixed.  The real secret to feeling better and having a better life lies unnoticed amid a heaping pile of stress, worry, and anxiety.

This year CAN be different, though.  You can get to the source of stress in ways that create calm in your life and a sense of rejuvenation that those who rely on willpower alone will never find.  Neurofeedback, obviously, is a tremendous, long-lasting way to calm the body and relieve stress so that you are not always over-responding to life’s hassles.  To get started or to find out more about this step to transforming your life, contact us to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation to learn what neurofeedback can and cannot do.

As great as neurofeedback is, though, it cannot reduce or eliminate the crazy from your life all by itself.  You have to take additional steps, and those steps are much simpler than you may think.

The secret is NOT to try to shift the big issues in your life, since those are likely not really the problem in the first place; rather, the best place to begin uncovering why we’re really stressed out is with the little things that drive us nuts. As one of my psychotherapy clients used to tell me, it isn’t the big things in life that really cripple us, it’s the gnats and mosquitos that make facing the big things so hard.  So, let’s start with the little, annoying things.

Grab a piece of paper or open a word processing document and start listing all the things that bug you. What are you tolerating in your life that you don’t need to tolerate?  We’re not talking big picture things like nuclear proliferation or immigration crises.  Look at the little things instead.  Is there a pothole on your commute to work that rattles your fillings every day?  Can you never find a pen in your house when you want one?  Is that junk drawer becoming a junk room?  Does your most practical pair of work shoes hurt your feet?  Are you eating out too much and want to cook more at home?  Whatever it is, write it down.  Make your list expansive, make it pretty and colorful if you’re the artistic type, and include every little thing that drives you crazy over the course of a week. Almost all of us could get to 25, but I encourage you to aim for 50, or even 100 items.

Once you’ve thought of everything that bugs you, refine the list. There are multiple ways to do this, but the best two approaches for our purposes are either prioritizing the easiest ones to fix or the ones that annoy you the most.  However you choose, make a top 10 list.  Then, give yourself a short timeframe in which to address those things—depending upon what they are, a week is probably a good amount of time for things like washing scuffs off a wall or adding adhesive grips to the back of a picture frame that never hangs straight.  Go for it, and see what happens.

Addressing tolerations may seem like a backwards way to start reducing overall stress, but it actually works well, because having fewer minor things bug you creates space for pleasure. That, in turn, can create energy for you to tackle still more tolerations, or perhaps begin to face the bigger stressors that are invisible to you right now.  Either way, it’s real progress!  Next time, we’ll address what to do once you’ve finished your first set of tolerations.

Neurofeedback and Improving Reading Skills

Every now and then, I run across a study that is particularly exciting.  An article in the latest issue of the journal NeuroRegulation is among those findings that are worth sharing.  In it, researchers report that they were able to increase the reading level of students with learning disabilities by more than an entire grade level using a short course of neurofeedback.  Granted, it was just one study with a small number of participants under laboratory conditions, so the improvements may be better and have come faster than typical results might be, but the findings point to a promising method of helping children for whom reading is a struggle.

You can read the article for yourself here:  http://www.neuroregulation.org/article/view/15893.  The jargon may be a bit confusing to a lay reader, so feel free to call me if you’d like to explore what it means in more depth.

Reducing Anger, Creating Calm

Most anger management programs talk about triggers and ways to control one’s anger. That’s all well and good, but the truth is that anger and rage flare up in a tiny fraction of a second, making it difficult if not impossible to stop an outburst. The key is to stop the anger before it starts, and that requires more than just vowing not to let that temper get out of control again. Besides that, it’s practically impossible to eliminate all triggers (though it IS nice to imagine our crazy Northern Virginia traffic without all the bad drivers).

Fortunately, neurofeedback is an excellent way to calm the body and therefore reduce angry outbursts. Sessions can help soothe something called the autonomic nervous system so that the body is no longer in fight, flight, or freeze mode. If you’re calm and your body is relaxed, anger cannot exist as the same time.

Because neurofeedback is a teaching tool that helps the body to create new electrical patterns, trainees set themselves up for a lifelong skill. This means that rather than having some short-term solution, people who use neurofeedback create conditions for responding more calmly long term.

If you’re curious to learn more about how neurofeedback might help you, call or email for a complimentary information session.

Focused Acts of Kindness

I was going to write about stress management this month, but one of the ultimate stressors, violent and terrorist-triggered death is front and center in the wake of yet another mass shooting.

As we search to find meaning and sense in the senseless, most of us look to the easy and obvious solutions. We must do something about gun control. We must provide mental health care. We must fix racism. We must write and pass laws.

Is it any wonder that nothing gets done when we’re wringing our hands and asking others to do something, yet we do nothing and take no responsibility for getting that something done?

It’s all a charade, and I think, deep down, we all know there’s more to a solution than passing a few laws. Sure, regulating guns at least as well as we regulate driving privileges is a good idea. It might even preserve a few lives. But gun control alone won’t solve the violence in our society, no matter how worthy the cause. And, absolutely, taking care of those who suffer from mental health illness is important and a worthy cause. We’re likely to prevent even more deaths, largely by preventing suicides, if we help ease the suffering of those who suffer quietly with depression, anxiety, and even psychosis.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though. Gun control and mental health care aren’t going to fix the problem. At best, they can resolve a few symptoms. The real problem is this:

We have created a culture in which we have glorified the neglect of one another. We have taken our national myth of the rugged individualist too far. It’s become an every man for himself (and every woman for herself) society.

We’ve done it to ourselves in hundreds of little ways. We compete too much and cooperate too little. We connect with our own tribe and demonize The Other. We deny the basics of food and shelter for the poor and most vulnerable in our country. We forget that we are social animals, which means we aren’t properly socializing our youth to maintain society. Most get by, but those who get left along the margins can and will behave in anti-social ways. Add guns and the glorify of making a splashy impact, and you have a perfect prescription for mass shootings.

We can talk about changing rules and regulations and, yes, those are necessary steps, but we must do more. Fortunately, the something that must be done is not overwhelming. It’s not something that only large and powerful groups like elected officials or the National Guard must do because it’s too big for any one individual. In fact, it’s the opposite. ONLY the cumulative effect of individual actions can change our culture in ways that diminish the glorification of the taking of human life or other violent terrorist acts. Only individual action can create a sense of community in which even those on the margins can feel a sense of importance and belonging.

Every major religion on the planet teaches the solution of individual action. A major piece of the solution is right there in front of us, pervasive even if we happen not to be religious. It is the solution of loving our neighbor, of treating others as we ourselves would like to be treated and as we deserve to be treated.

It sounds facile to many, I realize, but it is in fact one of the hardest things any human can ever undertake. Noticing, respecting, thinking about, and being kind to the people around us is hard work, especially when it’s people we think are weird, wrong, jerky, or otherwise offensive.

Plus, if simple kindness is hard, intervening when there is a problem or suspected problem is even harder. It takes an amazing amount of courage to take many of the actions that could truly make a difference. We risk exposing ourselves. We risk feeling like we’re butting in where we don’t belong, because our society tells us to mind our own business. The line around what is not our business is too large in a society that values extreme individualism.

A few years back, there was a trend toward what were called random acts of kindness. We need to revive that trend, only we need to have focused acts of kindness. It will require stepping outside ourselves to pay deep attention to the other people in our lives. If we pay attention, we each will be able to tell what needs to be done. Will we make mistakes and butt in where we should not? Of course. But, most of the time, we’ll be making a positive difference and modeling to others, especially our children, that caring matters, and that caring involves doing more than posting a sympathetic Facebook post.

Imagination can take us so many places, because there are endless ways to ease others’ suffering, even if just a small bit for the moment. Some steps may be huge. I personally would love to see someone form a non-profit that specializes in providing low-cost mental health care to teens and young adults, regardless of background. However, most things that can be done are so small as to be almost insignificant, especially to a jaded observer. But, they all matter, because together, each act adds up to toning down our excessive individualism toward a happier medium in which caring for others is expected and rewarded. It will change our culture. The truth is, our small acts won’t fix everything, they certainly can’t eradicate the presence of sociopaths bent on destruction who have always walked among us.  However, our individual acts of reaching out to others are the best way to heal our terrorized, angry, and violent society.

The Backwards Approach to Resolving Stress

We all know, or think we know, solutions to the stress we feel in our lives. Most of the solutions are written about in pithy magazine articles or in click-bait postings such as “The Top Ten Tips for Stress Reduction.” You probably could recite many of them off the top of your head: get a good night’s sleep, eat right, go for a walk, reduce your caffeine intake, talk your troubles over with a friend, have a glass of red wine, light some candles and take a bubble bath, go to the gym, drink more water, have a massage.

These are worthy pursuits, and most people will find that at least one or two of these techniques offer brief, almost immediate respite from the day’s troubles. But, few of us actually do what these articles tell us to do. How many stressed-out people really make a habit of getting a decent amount of sleep the majority of the time? How many get the recommended number of fruits and veggies more often than not? How many exercise on a regular basis?

Part of the reason we don’t do these things is that the so-called solutions feel like luxuries. We’re too busy to try them, because we’ve structured our lives in ways that deprive us of the precious minutes we need to restore and rejuvenate ourselves. Another reason we don’t implement these ideas is that we’re not that good about creating new habits. It takes a lot of commitment to go to bed an hour or two earlier, no matter what a chipper author has to say on the matter. But, perhaps, the biggest and most significant reason we don’t consistently do the recommended things to reduce our stress levels is that we know those efforts are only temporary, half measures that get at the symptoms of stress rather than meaningful steps to get at the root causes of stress. What’s the point of spending time and money on something that doesn’t give long-term relief?

The truth is, we’d be much more likely to scrimp and save time and money to get that monthly massage if our stress levels were manageable and we were doing it because we knew it was a healthy way to maintain our body rather than coming at it as a desperate way to grab a few moments of relief in an otherwise overwhelming life. We’d be more likely to take steps to create new habits in our lives if the change was worth the effort, and we know deep down inside that however worthy the goal of a good night’s sleep might be for our health, sleep alone won’t solve our stress.

We have it backwards. Those stress reduction tips are important to maintain a healthy lifestyle, yes, but we’re much more likely to take good care of ourselves when we’re not overwhelmed with stress. Good habits are the outcome of reducing our stress, not the main path to reduced stress.

This is not to suggest that we give up and stop our healthy habits, just because they aren’t a stand-alone, long-lasting way to reduce stress. By all means, eat your fruits and veggies, move your body, and rest well. Maintain your good habits. It’s folly to do otherwise. However, it’s time to tell yourself the truth about the causes of stress and their long-term resolution in our lives. Reducing stress is different and simpler than we generally realize, and in the next few posts will explore some ways to achieve this.