We all have our own version of stress.
When I share with someone that I help people with stress reduction, it is not unusual for them to respond, “I could use some of that.” Stress is something that we all experience; the word has become a term we use for the various struggles and pressures and challenges that we face in life. This has led to some confusion about the presence of stress in our lives. Is stress the cause of the pressure you feel, or is it the effect of those pressures? Because of these popular uses of the word, it might be helpful to learn some more about stress. One way to do that is to understand the difference between stress and stressors.
Dr. Hans Selye popularized the term “stress” in the 1950s from in-depth studies on how animals react when they are injured or placed in extreme circumstances. Dr. Selye chose to define stress as a response. In fact, he coined another word to help make this distinction: stressor. Stress is a response to a stressor. You face a challenging and demanding situation (stressor) and the result is a response by your mind and body to adapt to the situation. Of course, this is happening all the time; you are always adapting to challenging situations. Stress happens when your response to change and challenges is inadequate. Often, it is not just the stressor, but how you interpret it and respond to that interpretation that creates the stress.
Sometimes your ability to cope depends on the power of the stressor.
You can think about a spectrum of stressors. At one end of the spectrum are stressors that will cause great harm, no matter how you interpret them: injury from a natural disaster or car accident, being exposed to toxic chemicals. At the other end of the spectrum, there are forces that impact you that you don’t see as stressful. You are experiencing one of these stressors right now: gravity. You are feeling the pull of gravity all the time, but you don’t really notice it. When you lean up against a wall, you are relieving yourself from the force of gravity, but it’s not stress producing.
Between these two extremes, you will find most of the stressors in your life. They are not potentially life-threatening, and they are not so benign that you don’t even notice them. These are the stressors that come from your job, your relationships, your life circumstances, and events happening in the world around you. These stressors are not just external; thoughts and feelings can be stressors as well. For these stressors, the important thing to remember is it is how you interpret them and how you deal with them that determines how much stress you will experience.
How Stress Reduction Can Help
This is where the practice of stress reduction comes into play. If a lot of your stress comes from the way you perceive and appraise a situation, there are usually many ways of perceiving, appraising, and responding to a situation. Having some resources to help you step back and be open to this variety of ways to see and respond can help you handle stressful experiences. And if you can use these resources in a proactive way, in times when you do not feel the stress, you will be prepared when it does show up in your life.
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) can give you these resources. By using a variety of mindfulness practices, you will learn ways to identify the stressors in your life. You will learn how to be present to these stressors without getting caught up in them or avoiding them. You will learn ways to respond the emotional and physiological presence of stress. You will prepare yourself for dealing with stressors in the future. If you would like to learn more about MBSR, I invite you to visit my stress reduction specialty page.