Stress Management- Is Stress Managing You?

Stress management is an essential skill to learn these days, because stress is such a powerful factor in everyday life. Stress can be subtle, chipping away at your decisions, your emotions, and your ability to get things done correctly. It’s a simple concept to understand, but exactly how does stress affect you? Quite often it seems that your mental state rules over you, but frequently emotions will determine your choices and behaviors. Not only can stress undermine your ability to make decisions and see clearly, but it can actually cause physical problems. These physical problems can be subtle or very apparent, creating challenges that require you to develop new skills to overcome. However stress afflicts you, there is one constant factor: you perceive stress through your universe of feelings, or your “feeling world”. Feelings of overwhelm brought on by stress will drown your creativity, and fog your mental clarity. You will feel disconnected from how you normally feel. Physical symptoms such as aches and pains will develop. Your thought patterns will be disrupted, your sleeping is disrupted, even digestion is altered. In a word, you won’t feel in control. But all of these things are secondary responses. You first perceive stress from within your world of feelings; that inner space where you experience feelings and moods. If you can learn how to develop an awareness of your feeling world you will find a treasure-trove of value in the information awaiting. However, you must first learn to read your feelings, which for most requires a new set of skills. Most people believe that stress begins in the brain, but this is not so. Stress actually starts earlier than the brain; it begins with a certain feeling, or emotion. For instance, tension, apprehension, aggravation, feelings of too much to do and too little time, or worry first become apparent, which then lead to feelings of anxiety, anger, and irritability. In the end, the result will be exhaustion brought on by an overload of stress. When you develop unresolved feelings, they don't just go away. They accumulate little by little. The more you allow unresolved feelings to build up, the faster these unresolved feelings develop into stress. These previously mentioned feelings are neither good nor bad. You just need to interpret them correctly. Various feelings can directly cause stress, such as fear, worry, sadness, loneliness, edginess, reactivity, irritation, anger, boredom, moodiness, hurt, jealousy, guilt, greed, envy, and resentment. And any negatively reinforced emotions, fist perceived in your feeling world, can give rise to stress. People like to bottle up their emotions and feelings, especially men. Some people feel it is a sign of weakness to acknowledge even to themselves, that their emotions are in control. Being open enough to admit that you are feeling terrible can be embarrassing. What is our typical response to the greeting “How are you?” It sure isn't “I feel frustrated, drained and unfulfilled”. Instead the answer is “FINE”. It’s easier in some cases to just ignore the feelings and emotions, squashing them deep inside you. Once you put a cap on the bottle that you’ve stuffed your emotions into, it is only a matter of time before the emotional energy builds up and manifests in other ways. You may find yourself starting to judge people, projecting hostility, or blaming others or groups of people for example, when otherwise these actions would not be present. If you don’t remove the cap from that emotional bottle, you will either explode or emotionally draw yourself away from others. This is the fight or flight response in action, 21st century-style. When emotions lead to stress, this jump-starts the fight-or-flight response and your brain quickly unleashes a flood of hormones that prepare the body to protect itself. Situations that are stressful not only will build up emotions mentioned earlier, but stress-hormones build up and start to take their toll. The good news is, there is a way to avoid this. There are ways of coping with stress. You can eat healthy, cut down on stimulants, stop smoking, develop an exercise regimen, meditate and focus your mind, take breaks from intense situations, or just relax with friends. Everyone knows this, but rarely do people actually do these things consistently to reduce their stress. Change isn’t easy, even if we know it’s necessary. Even changing our stressful routines can be stressful! It’s all about the bottom line which is feeling happy and energized, but how do we get there? Feeling the pressure from work, home life, and whatever else you have going on that demands your time seems like it can’t be put on hold all so you can catch your breath. Sound familiar? You are not alone in feeling this way! The Burnout Breakthrough! program is written especially for you. There is a better way to get rid of the stress in your life. Thousands of people just like you are succeeding in this goal every day thanks to the strategies taught in this program. You can take better care of yourself, your family, and your job. It is possible! The comprehensive Burnout Breakthrough! program will not try to change your daily routine or ask you to quit your job. It will instead focus on teaching you how to let go of unhealthy behaviors, and and how to change your emotional response to stressors; situations which cause you stress. Soon, your “feeling” world will be filled with positive emotions!