Stress is Not a Thing
Following on with how we use the energy of Thought and how we design our lived reality using three fundamental universal principles, stress doesn’t actually exist. Outside of our thinking.
We’ve made it up. I know! I’ve been telling people for years how stress is negatively affecting them and how it’s a real thing! Doesn’t stress cause 95% of all disease? Or something like that.
Dr. Kelly McGonigal, Stanford lecturer and health scientist, surprised everyone by talking about research showing that “stress” only has a detrimental effect if you think the life event is stressful. What? Confused yet? If it’s “stress” isn’t it inherently stressful? Well apparently, only if you think it is. This really bugged me for a long time.
She advocates thinking positively about stressful situations and reframing them. I see that it goes deeper than putting a positive spin on things.
If you dump a bucket of ice water over someone’s head, they are likely to yell at you and get upset and tense up in their body. Over time with repeated situations where you tense up, your body develops biomechanical compensations and eventually pain.
However, if you dump a bucket of ice water over someone’s head at the beach on a hot day, they are likely to enjoy it and find it invigorating or refreshing. You may get thanked or you might even get a bucket over your head! There is no negative effect with the same ice water bucket happening when it's fun rather than traumatic.
My point is that different people respond to different situations or circumstances differently. If a situation was inherently stressful, all humans would respond the same way all the time. But we don’t. Our experience is variable.
What is stress? Stress is a feeling. Usually a spinning, overwhelmed, tight tension feeling. Maybe related to or the same as anxiety or overwhelm.
Around Christmas last year, I started to see something odd about stress. I’d always taken for granted or assumed that stress is part of life and affects everyone to greater or lesser degrees. There is a list floating around, for a long time now, of life stresses ranked from worst on down. In case you were feeling pretty good about your life, you can look up how many of these events had occurred in your life in the past year. Then you would know that you were actually stressed out. Unbeknownst to you!
I began to notice that “stress” is variable. One person may not find the same thing stressful as someone else. You may not find the same situation stressful depending on the day. How is this so if stress is so universal? If it's supposed to be a real thing?
I’ve learned that if my response to something is variable then my feeling is caused by my thinking in the moment rather than some inherent stressfulness of the external event.
I started experimenting with my lived experience.
First, I looked at what I mean by stress. What is it when I feel "stressed out”? For me, it meant a sense of spinning thoughts that built up into more and more negativity and a feeling of overwhelm. I don't have enough time or I can't do everything.
We generally use the word stress to describe a sense of tension in the body, pressure or overwhelm. As I noticed my response to different day-to-day life situations, it became obvious to me that “stress” doesn’t actually exist.
I started noticing that stress is a body signal that we are caught up in our unhelpful thinking.
We live in the feeling of our thinking. Not the feeling of any circumstance or situation. Everything that happens outside of us is a neutral happening until we have a thought. Recognizing this, as we do it, allows for a neutral experience. Stress only exists in our thinking.
My New Year’s resolution this year is to live without stress. So far, it’s going wonderfully.
Love,
Dr. Sara
P.S. Join us to experience an exploration of living from Inner Wisdom. It's April 15th, 2023, from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm in New Hamburg. Lunch is provided.
Register with Nancy at frontdesk@drsaraoneill.com or 519-880-0003 by April 6.
Stress is Not a Thing