Stress is not 'out there' - It is 'in here'

A famous Shakesperean quote: "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." As far as I am concerned, this concept is the basis for what is known as cognitive therapy, as for the most part, what we "believe," or stated another way, "think," about what happens external to us is the source of feeling good or feeling bad. Thus it is also the source of the stress we feel internally. Stress really is our internal reaction to our perception and resulting interpretation of what happens "out there." No matter the path of how we arrive at feeling stressed out, it is rather miserable and even though there are countless studies that show the calamitous effects of stress in our lives, it doesn't take a genius to know that big doses of it ain't good physically for any of us.

I don't think it is possible, or perhaps even desirable to eliminate all stress from our lives as some of it is just a side effect of living. Some of the big word experts call it existential anxiety and if we don't have some of that, this body at rest just might continue that way. However, when we are literally physically feeling the internal bumping and grinding inside our abdomens, it is not a good thing. And especially not if it is a chronic condition of our lives.

So....the question that my column will attempt to answer just a bit is what can we do about this problem? Well, one of my conclusions is that we can develop the gumption to simply avoid many stressful situations that are really not necessary. There are certainly other tools to help, such as learning how to "self-talk" ourselves out of some of our misery. However, that will have to be a topic for another column. Our internal "self-bashing" adds many layers to normal stress.

I have a recent example of avoiding a stressful situation in my own life. Last Sunday I had a trip planned to drive to Austin to visit my daughter, Mandy. I had built her some cabinets several months ago but didn't have time to complete the construction of the drawers; thus one of the purposes of my trip was to take those to her and install them. However, around noon that day, it commenced to rain here in DFW, and I waited and waited for it to move past us, but it continued until near 4:00 in the afternoon. I couldn't even load my truck with the drawers and tools I needed while it kept raining. Finally, it almost stopped and I did just that. Then, by the time my wife and I hit downtown Dallas, the rain started again and I have a healthy fear of driving on wet roads. Therefore I was beginning to feel high stress about our trip. Not all that long ago I probably would have ignored it and plowed on through the driving rain. However, I pulled over about 10 miles south of Dallas and checked the radar and saw that it was raining all the way to Waco, and was still going to be moving in from the west. As a result, I called my daughter and told her I was going to have to come another time, to which she totally agreed.

I don't know if I used to thrive on stress, or was just so accepting of it that I didn't know there was an alternative. Sometimes we need to be able to say no to others. At other times, we need to realize we can't be all things to all people. I tried to be all things to all people when I was younger and think I have paid a high price for it over the years. Since there is already so much stimulation in most of our lives, it is high time we develop the courage to do it differently. I am quite positive we can eliminate a great deal of stress by just managing our lives differently.

As I often say to my clients, we can be "smart selfish" or we can be "stupid selfish." If we don't stop on a regular basis to "sharpen the saw," or otherwise take care of ourselves, we won't be cutting down many more trees.

Doug Smith is a licensed professional counselor. Contact him at 972-436-6227, doug@ccclewisville.com or visit his website at ccclewisville.com.

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