Conflicting Beliefs
Cause Your Stress
For years I’ve been saying that beliefs are the basis of reality. Beliefs generate thoughts and emotions, which in turn create all your experiences. It is that simple and there are no exceptions.
Your beliefs are the result of programming from your current incarnation and from your past lives. And many of your beliefs are faulty and self-defeating. They are blocks to your happiness and success. So if you’re not satisfied with your life, you need to begin the process of reinvention by changing beliefs.
But in this column I’d like to apply beliefs to stress. Stress manifests as a conflict between beliefs: 1) We have a belief about how things are, and 2) we have a belief about how things should be. When these two beliefs do not align, the result is stress.
Your belief about how something is, is not necessarily reality. You may think it is reality, but that doesn’t make it so. Reality just is. You can not change what is. And if there is no possibility of changing it, why resist it? Remember Buddha‘s words: “It is your resistance to what is that causes your suffering.”
So stress is caused by a conflict between your interpretation of reality and your expectations of how things should be.
Exercise: 1) Recall a recent stressful experience. 2) Capture the emotions that accompanied the experience. 3) Explore your belief about how things were (your perception of reality). 4) Explore your belief about how the situation or other person should have been. 5) Explore the conflict between the two that caused the stress. 6) Also consider the experience from the perspective of your expectations being in conflict with what is (reality).
“Belief is an impediment to reality, and that is a very difficult pill to swallow for most of us. We are not seeking reality; we want gratification, and belief gives us gratification, it pacifies us.”
-- J. Krishnamurti
Stress is one of the most misused words. The words like pressure, tension, strain, etc., are used synonymously with stress. However, these words are quite different from stress; for example, pressure is an input or stimulus and stress is an output or response. Our ancestors depended on this stress response for life itself - to flee from predators, to fight enemies and to survive in a hostile world. Somewhere along the line, slowly, stress wove its way into every aspect of our society and became a part of our lives that we took for granted.
Stress Response
While stress itself has probably existed for centuries, the concept and the label are relatively modern. The use of the term "stress" in reference to humans, stems from the work of the eminent Canadian author and researcher, Dr. Hans Seyle, who in the 1930's discovered a generalized internal response of living organisms to environmental challenges. In scientific terms, Dr. Seyle described stress as "the non-specific response of he body to any demand."
Whenever we are faced with a life threatening situation or threat, a complex part of our brains and bodies called the autonomic nervous system prepares us for fight or flight. This nervous system was once thought to be absolutely automatic and beyond our control. We civilized are seldom faced with a need for fight or flight. When modern man is threatened, he braces himself, but he often struggles to control his nervous reactions as threat is not usually one of the immediate, physical harm. Budgets, bosses, financial crises, audiences, family tiffs, emotional problems, examinations and so forth are not life threatening, but sometimes we feel as though they are.
Small-small stressors and brief stress responses can add up to hundreds a day. These can be parts of our lives that we hardly notice and almost take for granted. Not only do we seem to trigger our stress response more often, but most situations do not provide an outlet for the extra chemical energy produced by our bodies. The fight or flight response is not useful for most of the stress situations in modern life because we have a few physical battles to fight and almost nowhere to run.
In short "short" is simply a natural reaction to threat or fear. Many stress hormones and chemicals are released during a stress process, which over a period of time are very detrimental to health. When a person is stressed, his blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, etc. go up. This is due to activation of sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight response), which shoots up the levels of stress hormones such as epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol. The hormone epinephrine has the highest effect in releasing stored sugar. The hormone norepinephrine has the highest effect in increasing blood pressure and heart rate. All these along with cortisol help to prepare for a vigorous physical activity. Some of the unfortunate results of higher level of cortisol secretion are break down of lean tissue (muscles, organs, etc.), increased levels of fatty acids in the blood and higher gastric acidity with possibility of ulceration.
Health Hazards
The twentieth century has been called the age of anxiety. And now the twenty-first century can be called the century or the age of stress. The term "stress" has become quiet common in everyday speech and often enters into most people's thinking about their own lives. Almost everyone admits that they are experiencing some degree of stress and that stress is certainly a problem for modern society. Yet most of us are not aware of the full depth and breadth of the stress problem. Some latest facts and figures are presented below.
More than two thirds of the visits to family doctors are due to stress or stress-related symptoms
Stress-related absenteeism, company medical expenses and lost productivity may cost more than 90 billion a year
Stress is now known to be a major contributor, either directly or indirectly, to six of the leading causes of death in the US, namely, coronary heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidental injuries, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide.
The best selling prescription medications in the country treat problems either caused or aggravated by stress, namely, anxiety, high blood pressure and ulcers.
It is estimated that more than 90% of all the medical complaints are due to stress, tension, worries and emotional or psychological reasons. Stress and tension are the major factors in causing or aggravating:
High blood pressure (hypertension)
Heart attack (myocardial infarction)
Hyperacidity, gastritis, ulcers
Migraine, and tension headaches
Asthma
Chronic backache
Arthritis
Kidney disease
Cold sores
Hyperthyroidism
Diabetes mellitus
Allergies and skin diseases
Tuberculosis
Brain strokes
Cancer
Psychological disorders (depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, etc.)
These disorders and symptoms are reaching near epidemic proportions.
Stress may lead to harmful habits such as smoking, drinking and over-eating, which cause or intensify still other diseases.
Some of the excess hormones that the adrenal glands release during repeated stress responses could interfere with your body's immunity to infection. You may become more susceptible to bacteria and viruses.
Management of Stress
Stress Management process is an art, and hence, it should be enjoyed and considered as self-development. The below outlined are some of the major stress management tools:
Relaxation - especially progressive relaxation
Meditation - should be scientific and done correctly
Breathing exercise - also known as pranayama in yoga
Physical exercise - such as stretching, aerobics, weight training and so forth
Managing Type A personality - becoming Type B
Cognitive restructuring - thinking positive
Controlling anxiety - reducing or coping
Reducing anger - at least controlling anger efficiently
Reducing expectations - by improving understanding
Learning to be assertive instead of aggressive or passive
Time management - prioritization
Developing proper food habits
The aforementioned are just a few but major stress reducing or stress controlling tools. There are many more tools or techniques which are beyond the scope of this article.
Of all the techniques available for managing stress, the Omega Method (OM), a revolutionary meditation for the modern man, is surely the finest. It operates at the most subtle level of stress causation, the realm of the mind. Stress is an emotional and subconscious dimension of the mind…it is a result of the way we perceive and think. The Omega method (OM) helps you to control and harness the cybernetics, or computer like power of your brain and mind to gain greater health and enhanced mental functioning.
The mere practice of the Omega Method (OM), 15 minutes twice a day or 30 minutes once a day is all that is required to achieve and maintain a healthy body and mind. Autonomic nervous system gets rebalanced. "OM" deactivates the sympathetic nervous system to quiet an extent and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. The release of stress hormones is remarkably reduced. "OM" uses the healing source of nature and soothes the nervous system, restores the emotional equilibrium and brings peace of mind. Maybe we can learn to replace "fight or flight" response with what have been called "stay and play" responses.
