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Reforming Stressful Situations
By: Shira Frank, LCSW
- Dear Shira:
I recently went to my doctor and my blood pressure has gone up. The doctor said I might need medication, but I’m afraid to start on pills. I don't know many people who stop using them. He said that I should decrease my stress level, but that’s easier said than done. I’ve begun to exercise, but I guess that I’m more of a tense person than I realized. I'm reading about relaxation exercises, but that kind of therapy only helps for a while. I just have a little patience when things go wrong. I think that people affect me too much, but I can't live in a world without people. Do you have any suggestions?
- Dealing with stress is a life-long occupation for any human being. In the introduction to Mesilas Yesharim, the Ramchal writes that only one person in a thousand receives no afflictions and even that one person knows others close to him/her who experience afflictions. It is clear that stress is a given factor in life. Knowing how to respond appropriately is truly an art.
Another way to help work with stress, besides vigorous physical activity and relaxation exercises, is that of attempting to rethink the way that you envision situations. Often times, people have a tendency to immediately “paint with a black paintbrush” and envision the worst possibilities when things begin to become problematic. A person needs to create an individual way of responding to problematic situations through creating new psychological solutions in order to better cope with life's challenges. Cognitive therapy stress the importance of re-framing negative experiences to be viewed in a more positive light. As a person might take a photograph and put it in another picture frame (thus changing the general visual experience somewhat) so would “mental re-framing” change our vision of the world.
A common example of this idea might be seen in phrases such as “how important will this even be in two years from now?” Integrating such a thought puts the situation into perspective in terms of its critical importance. Another helpful thought might be, “No matter how irritating this is, its temporary. Many people go through it and its workable.”
When people begin to see themselves get upset, it is sometimes helpful to correct the negative feeling and attempt to improve it – be it by giving a person the benefit of the doubt or just to analyze why you immediately became tense. We often contrive tense feelings without stopping to try and help ourselves and re-envision the problem or negative reaction.
A general attitude towards challenges is the idea that we can often not control circumstances. All that we can really control is our response to the situations. Instead of reacting emotionally alone, one needs to be solution-oriented in asking, “I have this problem. What am I going to do about it?”
In general one needs to reevaluate one's coping mechanisms in order to decrease their level of stress, yet the process of change is an evolving one and one needs to have patience with oneself during this process.