The Glass of Water

A lecturer was giving a lecture to his student on stress management. He raised a glass of water and asked the audience, “How heavy do you think this glass of water is?”

The students’ answers ranged from 20g to 500gm.  
                       
 It does not matter on the absolute weight. It depends on how long you hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it is OK. If I hold it for an hour, I will have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you will have to call an ambulance.

It is the exact same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, we will not be able to carry on, the burden becoming increasingly heavier.

What you have to do is to put the glass down, rest for a while before holding it up again. We have to put down the burden periodically, so that we can be refreshed and are able to carry on.

So today at some point - put the burden down.  You can pick it up again tomorrow if you need to. Whatever burdens you are having now on your shoulders, let it down for a moment if you can. Pick it up again later when you have rested.

Recently I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and we were talking about Starbucks reward cards. She had been poorly of late, and I offered to go and get the coffees and take them round to hers. “Swing by” she said “and pick up my reward card, so that I can get the points”.

Now if you didn’t know, Starbucks register each visit you make, and you build up the points until you qualify for a Gold card status. Not really sure what you get exactly, but my friend is close to the gold status and is keen to get there sooner rather than later.

I knew there was no point in arguing about it (she can be very persuasive!) although I did protest.  However, after getting the coffees, the conversation continued and I begun to feel quite agitated, mostly by the need to manage yet another ‘loyalty’ card. In fact, I then went onto to rant about how I now seemed to spend more time carrying out administrative duties for company’s services than I have ever had to do in the past.  

It was the look on her face that told me I was over reacting, and indeed I was, at which point I apologised and parked the topic.

Fortunately, my friend knows me very well.

But the point is, I was getting really agitated over something that was in fact very unimportant, so I knew that there was something much bigger going on, as I rarely get that cross these days. J 

I wonder how long I had been carrying around that burden!

So, what sort of issues cause your blood to boil, your heart to sink, your tummy to churn?

In a recent poll I carried out, https://www.facebook.com/#!/KimSearleHypnotherapy,  money seems to be the biggest stressor for people followed closely by time, or both and made me think about what causes stress.

Major Events

Everyone understands (and is probably more sympathetic) if stress is brought about by external events such as  bereavement, loss of a job, divorce, or illness. These events can wreak havoc in our life and threaten everything we have come to believe about ourselves and our lives. For most people there is usually plenty of support available from loved ones, and society to help us through this difficult time. These events tend to occur infrequently, and as a result, long term health effects can be minimal.

Daily Hassles

But could it be the daily hassles that cause us stress?

You know the sort of thing, the daily, minor irritations such as misplacing your car keys when you are in a hurry, traffic jams, minor arguments with family/colleagues, lack of sleep, job dissatisfaction, time pressures, money etc.  Research by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), at the University of California, indicated that it was these daily hassles rather than the major life events that affected us the most. 

Any constant, daily frustration caused by these hassles can result in our body frequently responding to what it sees as a threat, by releasing doses of adrenaline to help us react with the fight or flight¹ response.  Because these events occur so regularly, they become a natural part of our life, the constant release of Adrenaline which is not then used, can overtime, potentially begin to undermine our health. (Regular coughs and colds, headaches, poorly tummy etc).

And yet for many people even these daily hassles, are something that most people have learnt to live with, and do not experience any side effects.

Internal Stressors

Internal stressors, however, are more insidious stressors. These are caused by our own internal processes, and invariably we are completely unaware of their presence and effect.  

These internal stressors are like the programmes on your computer, happily running away in the background, and you only know they are there, when you experience difficulties. They can cause us to be have in ways that perversely lead to stress. Expectations of how we should be behave, finding that we 'believe' we can't do some things or constantly pleasing everyone, but ourselves. As we nearer Christmas, these internal stressors can become even louder when everyone has expectations of what a good Christmas should be, the need to make the whole event perfect for everyone or just endeavouring to keep everyone happy.

These internal stressors are more difficult to identify and then address, as it calls for some honesty in what we ask our selves and this is where hypnotherapists can help. We can find out if there are any internal programmes running that may be creating even more hassle for you than necessary, for example:-

·         Our own expectations of how things should be (particularly at Christmas)

·         Our belief in our abilities

·         Perfectionism

·         People pleasing

·         Low self esteem

·         Believing we have no control

·         Believing everyone else is better than we are

·         Lack of self belief

·         Lack of confidence

We can all recognise the major events in our lives that cause stress and have access to extra support. We can even recognise when the day to day hassles are beginning to be an issue and the various distraction techniques we employ help keep us sane.
But it is probably the internal stressors, that are running away quietly in the background that we need to be more mindful of.
If you think you may have an internal stressor causing you a problem, or carrying more than your fair share of the load of  life, then a chat costs nothing. Give me a call, or drop me an email and let’s start to explore what is really going on for you.

It doesn’t matter when you call, just that you do!

NB: Stress is an individualistic, subjective experience and therefore what one person finds stressful another may not. 

¹ flight or fight - http://psychology.about.com/od/findex/g/fight-or-flight-response.htm

"Come on! Come on! Start!..." The Immortal Words of John Cleese

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78b67l_yxUc

John Cleese...Fawlty Towers....hitting the car with a branch....

A very funny scene when his car stalls and he can't get it started again, at which point he starts to lose his temper!

And who of us, has not been frustrated with a piece of machinery or equipment at one time or another? Felt under pressure to do something, behave in a certain way or be something we are not? And most of us have experienced a health issue that has prevented us doing something we need or want to.

STRESS

It means so many different things to people.

In a good way it can drive us forwards to achieve what we need to achieve, to do what we need to do, or be who we need to be.

Stress is only a problem when it becomes consistent over a period of time, and/or increases beyond our (perceived) ability to cope. And even at this point, it is just the body's early warning system that something needs to change.

If we do not recognise these early warnings and just carry on, believing we have no choice, then we can begin to store problems up for ourselves. Our ability to think clearly, our emotional state and even our physical wellbeing becomes increasingly volatile, haphazard, clumsy (making mistakes, bursts of uncontrolled emotions or increase in accidents and illness).

In the next  Journey's of Discovery workshop in January, we will be looking at how we can identify our own personal stressors and what we can do about it. And over the next  few blogs, I will explore the typical reasons for stress, what happens in the body when we get stressed and the latest thinking about how to manage it for yourself.

Look for me on Twitter to see nuggets of information, Facebook for polls and links to other sites that may be of use or call me if you want help with Stress.

It doesn't much matter when you get in touch, just that you do.

Gut Wrenching Emotion

Living so close to the motorway and a major A road, the sound of sirens are an everyday part of life. As I sat working recently, I heard a siren, which only just barely made my conscious awareness. the second one made me look up to see if I could tell where they were heading, mere curiousity now,  almost a casual observer to events that were completely disconnected from me, that were happening out there, in the world beyond my immediate neighbourhood.

It was only as I notice the next siren, the 4th, 5th and 6th siren did a cold finger of dread worm its way up from my unconscious, through my body, and into my chest. I felt a clutch of fear grab at my heart, and I turned cold, as I strained to hear which direction they were headed in.

My immediate thoughts were to place all my loved ones, and friends or family, to think whether they would be on the roads or not, but it did not detract from that gut wrenching emotion that weighed heavy all the way into my chest....and only as the sirens ceased did I sense the feelings begin to subside.

This reaction, almost an abreaction, to those numerous sirens, harks back to an event barely 2 years ago when my youngest was involved in a car accident. It was close to home, and on that occasion I never heard the sirens...I was asleep. I was woken with a call and that was the beginning of my own personal nightmare, that brought death very close to my door.

Whilst the outcome for my family was a miraculous one, I can instantly be transported back to the events of that night, just by hearing multiple sirens,  feeling my insides squeezed together as I imagine the potential carnage those paramedics, police and fire crews must face.

In the world of therapy, this is what is known as a Significant Emotional Event (SEE) and is an example of an extreme form, but demonstrates just how easily, we are able to experience very strong emotions from the past as though we were back there, right now.

Phobia's are a typical type of SEE that people experience, and the beauty of Cognitive Hypnotherapy is that the emotional content can  almost be neutralised so that it no longer causes us such an issue. For many people, the time will come when they need to let go of the reactions that cause so much anxiety and stress for the body. By doing so they could find that things could be much calmer and more relaxed than they would have once believed.

Whilst I have had some help with this, I am happy to be reminded just how lucky we all were that awful night. But