Stress less, Thrive More

Stress does not come overnight.  It comes with emotions that are lurking inside. Let us understand this phenomenon.  

Understand the emotional triggers 

1. Be free from anger 

 Pay attention to the way anger feels in your body:- 

Knots in your stomach 

Clenching your hands or jaw 

Feeling clammy or flushed 

Breathing faster 

Headaches 

Pacing or needing to walk around 

“Seeing red” 

Having trouble concentrating 

Pounding heart 

Tensing your shoulders 

2. Tackle fear 

Suggestions to deal with fear:  

1. Admit it. Knowing about the irrationality of our fear may not be of much help unless we experience and release the energy of fear. Become aware of and feel the sensations of fear in your body. Ask yourself what you are afraid of, particularly in a current situation. See the need to overcome it and decide to do so. Please list all the possible actions you can take to prevent the dread from happening or to cope with it.  

2. Examine your irrational fears and develop a habit of consciously challenging them whenever you notice them.  Examine how rational they are and how they may keep you from doing what may help you live a better life. Fear is a learned conditioned response. We are likely to fear doing something that proved disastrous once—even though our fear, its intensity, or both may be irrational. Irrational fears are triggered by the residues in our memory of a fragment of someone else’s (sometimes our own) unpleasant or disastrous experience that shares a part of the situation we may presently be in. They become our habitual irrational fears if we don’t challenge them and allow this erroneously associated memory to kick in every time we are required to do that act.  

Our brain, unfortunately, cannot distinguish between an irrational habitual fear and a justified well-meant fear. Hence, we need to challenge the former and honour the latter consciously. Just as we are conditioned to fear certain things or situations subconsciously, we can also consciously recondition ourselves to undo that fear. This re-conditioning to undo our learned conditioned fears is known as fear extinction. Fear extinction begins through exposure to our specific fear triggers in a safe condition and may take several repetitions to mature. The new memory of these conscious repetitions in the safe environment develops a new neural pathway in the brain that signals the message of safety in place of threat. And the safest place to begin practising fear extinction is within your mind through mental rehearsals. Our brain cannot discern between an imagined situation and a real one, and hence our imagination is a tool that we can use to learn or to unlearn many things within the privacy and safety of our skull. Using this tool, you can run through the TERPR process every night and mentally rehearse a changed response to the identified trigger. When you feel ready, start practicing it in the real world—initially where it is very safe and then against progressively more challenging situations  

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. —Bertrand Russel 

3. Think of the worst and mentally prepare yourself to face it. Fear is inescapable. If fear is in your nature, you will find it everywhere. You cannot run away from it.  We cannot escape fear. Make it an adventure. Take a risk a day—one small or bold strike that will make you feel great once you have done it. —Susan Jeffers  

4. Grow your ‘courage’ muscle. Having mentally prepared yourself to face your worst fears, go after them. We cannot overcome our fears overnight. Kites can fly only against the wind, muscles can grow against weights, and courage can grow only against fears. Kites can fly higher and higher as we release more and more string. Muscles can grow by practising with heavier and heavier weights. Similarly, courage can only be developed over time by repeatedly doing the things that we are afraid of, by increasing in small steps the risks that we choose to take. For example, someone afraid of expressing opinions in the presence of seniors for fear of rejection can express them in a meeting of relatively junior officers where the chances of acceptance are high, and then gradually step up his contributions till he can express himself on essential matters even in a meeting involving the senior most officers. The best way to beat anxiety and fear is to do the very thing that you are afraid to do. Do it more often despite a violently pounding heart.  

One can only achieve some things by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. —Franz Kafka  

5. Having done your best, surrender. See the positive purpose of this emotion and take necessary action. Chalk out an action plan defining all you could do to avert what you fear may happen and act on it. Having done this, tell yourself that that is all you can do (be sure that you can say this honestly and with conviction), and you have no other option but to trust and surrender to the forces of Nature to let them take their course.  

6. Having listened to your fears, do not permit yourself to recycle these thoughts throughout the day. Whenever you think of thoughts of fear, postpone them to your ‘daily worry time’ especially earmarked for this purpose  

7. Cut off the supply of their raw material. Do not spend too much time reading about crime in newspapers, novels, and TV.  

8. Read or watch spiritual inspirational material.  

9. Practice living in the here and now. Refuse to compare your present with your past. Whenever you catch yourself doing so, bring your attention back to the present moment.  

10. Keep your inner chemistry positive by sticking to your daily routine. Spend some time every day in the sunlight, and by doing physical exercises (yogasanas, aerobics, running, swimming) pranayama, reiki, meditation, Vipassana, and/or Yoga Nidra (or any kind of progressive relaxation).  

11. Rewire your inner software to develop detachment by reminding yourself of the impermanence and illusory nature of reality.  

12. Stick to your daily routine.  

13. Hold the correct ‘spine erect–tummy in–chest out’ posture, whenever you sit or stand, and practice walking faster, if you can.  

14. Seek professional help. If none of the above works for you and your tendency to fear irrationally continues unabated (though it is very unlikely), seek professional help from a counsellor or a hypnotherapist. Try hypnotherapy or PLR (Past Life Regression) for inexplicable deep-rooted fears.  

15. Let go of your fear. Some of us may tend to get attached to our negative emotions and refuse to let them go. Like an old, comfortable and warm pullover, negative emotions may feel comfortable to wear simply because of their familiarity. While hoping for the best, be ready to face the worst after you have done all that you could and let go of your fear now; it has served its purpose. 

By tackling our emotions with the above suggestions, we can say goodbye to stress, slowly but steadily. 

By Jamuna Rangachari 

Please also see some earlier articles of ours on stress -  

handling stress successfully | Life Positive 

becoming free of stress | Life Positive 

removestress | Life Positive