What is stress? Stress is placing importance on something. It can also be defined as pressure. A bridge needs pressure to hold it up and our bones need stress, pressure or gravity to allow them to grow. So, stress is not always a bad thing. I want to start out by talking about the difference between stress and distress. Distress is extreme anxiety, sorrow or pain. So, we tend to misuse the term stress when actually stress is something good for us to help us grow and to give us good pressure to motivate us to do more than we may think at times. Today, many people see stress as bad and negative, even if it may be good stress. People are becoming more and more stressed out by things that they probably shouldn’t. What are some things that stress you out sometimes that may actually be good and healthy to help you learn and grow? I know I can definitely think of a few. Imagine your life with no stress at all. What would motivate you to get out of bed, to go to school or work, to pay your bills or do get anything worthwhile done? I know I would have a hard time managing my time if I was never under any kind of pressure to get it done. Just think of all the hardships in your life that you may have been through. When you are sharing that experience with someone you may explain how hard it was, but I always find myself saying how grateful I am for those experiences because they have taught me so much and I’ve grown closer with those that helped me through it. If you are the person that thinks that keeping your stress inside and to yourself, that actually isn’t the best and won’t help you relieve it and balance it. If you think about 4 people standing in a circle holding hands and someone tugging on one person shoulders the others compensate for that and share the pressure, so it makes it easier for that person. If they were to all let, go and not help then they would all still be affected by the pressure and would probably fall down. This is the same in real life. If you try and handle distress by yourself then it will end up affecting everyone around you anyways but if you include them in it and share that burden, then it can be evenly distributed and balanced. Another way to think of it is if you just accept that life is difficult it won’t matter if it’s difficult anymore.
Another thing I want to talk about is what your brain tells you. Your brain is just an organ and can’t tell between truth and lies and it just simply processes what you tell it. So, depending on what you tell your brain (yourself) that is what your brain will take as truth. If you tell yourself every day that the world is a terrible place with bad people, then your brain will process that and then continually make you aware of things that are harmful or bad for you. It will become very negative just because of what your brain now thinks is true. That is why depression is so vicious. Ask yourself, “How many tragedies have I suffered in my life that never occurred?” or in other words, what have you told yourself that your brain processed as truth and now you act on that lie as true and suffer because of it. Just think about it. Simple things you think can turn into a truth in your brain. So be careful what you think and what you tell yourself repeatedly. Try to stay positive and it can help your stress levels too, both positive and negative stress.
