My work as a stress consultant has taught me that stress is more to do with ourselves and with our perception and reaction to threats than with the threats themselves. If this is not the case, why is it that some of us are scared of flying, while others will hang-glide for relaxation; why is it that some of us are inhibited by one person, while others find that same person easy to deal with; and why is it that some of us will relish a change of job, and others will resent and fear it?
We all experience stress in our lives to some degree. We do not, however, all suffer from it, allowing it to interfere with and invade our life so as to control us. The essential difference between people who cope with stress and people who suffer from it is that copers can let go of stress, while sufferers hold on to it, allowing it to either plague their health, distort their perception, hinder their performance, disrupt their relationships, or inhibit their potential. These people become ill. I do not believe, however, that stress is the illness.
I am convinced that where people suffer from stress is but a symptom of a greater, more profound malady which is at the root of many illnesses. I describe this malady as a temporary inability to accept and love oneself. In other words, stress is not so much an illness as a symptom of inner and personal disharmony.
If we could give a hundred different people the same stress to cope with, we could guarantee that each one of those people would react differently. The variable in the equation can only be the individual’s sense of inner harmony.
One a day when our sense of inner harmony is rich, stresses will most often appear weaker and fewer: indeed many will fail t register at all. If, however, there is a day when our sense of inner harmony is poor, the stresses appear inexhaustible and overbearing; we feel defeated and oppressed and will invariable use maladaptive, harmful coping tactics in an attempt to get by.
The way we experience and deal with stress, then, invariably says more about ourselves than about the perceived threat. The idea that stress is a symptom of inner and personal disharmony is not a new one. Aristotle summed up the essence of healing and illness in six words: ‘Health is harmony; disease is discord.’ And Carl Jung wrote ‘Man can meet the demands of outer necessity in an ideal way only if he is also adapted to his own inner world, that is, if he is in harmony with himself.’
Given that our capacity to cope with stress is equal in some degree to our level of inner and personal harmony, it follows that any long-lasting solutions should concentrate more on the need to build and maintain inner harmony than on coping with each individual perceived threat. To concentrate on the threat is to fall into the age-old trap of mistaking symptoms for the causes. The challenge with stress is not so much to cope with living in the world, but to cope with living with oneself.
Self-Knowledge
Pythagoras wrote, ‘There is no illness, only ignorance.’ The ignorance he referred to is principally a lack of self-knowledge. I believe that a lack of inner harmony is more often than not a symptom in itself of a lack of self-knowledge.
In my stress management sessions I will often begin by asking five questions, which you may k\like to answer for yourself: "Who am O?" "What am I?" "Am I fulfilled?" "What will make me feel fulfilled?" "What do I have to do to achieve the things which will make me fulfilled?"
Most people haven’t a clue where to begin, to which I reply: ‘Now do you see why you suffer from stress? If you do not know who you are or what you want from life, you have no strength to draw upon to cope with stress; you are like a small ship tossing and turning in a violent sea.’
I concentrate on the need for self-knowledge for several reasons. First, you cannot control yourself until you know yourself. Second, you cannot expect to understand the world and the motivations of others until you look deep into yourself. And third, it is not possible to love yourself if you do not understand yourself.
There are two other questions I ask which you might like to answer. First, ‘What are the causes of your stress?’ Make a list of every stressor you can think of. Then, ask yourself with all honesty if the stress belongs to you, because very often we will watse our own time with threats which are either not ours or are beyond our control and sphere of influence anyway. Then ask yourself whether or not the real cause of your stress rests with the way you are looking at the threat rather then the threat itself. The simple act of thinking something through in this way does sometimes call for painful honesty, but until you can be honest with yourself your world will not be honest with you.
Second, ‘What are the symptoms of your stress?’ Often we only become aware of stress once it is upon us. If, however, we can be more sensitive to the ‘warning signs’, then we can take preventive action, such as relaxation practice, before and not after the stress takes a full grip.
One more useful exercise belongs to Pythagoras who wrote, ‘Let not sleep fall upon thine eyes till thou hast thrice reviewed the transactions of the past day.’ The more aware we are of ourselves, the kinder and more helpful we can be to ourselves.
Self-responsibility
The failure to be true to oneself, to live one’s life for one’ own reasons, instead of living it for the hopes, the pleasures and the expectations of others, is the common cause of stress which often manifests as depression and powerlessness or as resentment and anger, and is an obvious symptom of our inner disharmony.
I believe it is good and right to want to live for others, and to want to acquire a measure of selflessness in our life. The point is though that we can only be truly selfless once we have a self to give.
The French essayist, Michael Montaigne, wrote, ‘I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others as what I am in my own: I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing.’ I encourage this attitude by suggesting that we imagine looking down upon our own funeral. I then ask, ‘What do you think you would regret most not having done in your life?’ The final answer is usually ‘Not being true to myself.’
Self-responsibility demands that we put an end to the practice of finding excuses for our stress. It is easy when we are stressed to find fault and put blame on circumstance and on the action of others, In the end, though, we must look to ourselves. The Sufi philosopher Hazrat Inayat Khan wrote, ‘Man must first create peace in himself if he desires to see peace in the world: for lacking peace within, no effort of his can bring any result.’
Self-organization
If we are to control stress we must become conscious of the importance of order and harmony in our life. ‘It is always best to do things systematically, since we are only human, and disorder is our worst enemy,’ wrote the Greek poet Hesiod.
There are two essential aspects to self-organisation. The first is the ability to centre oneself. Stress management is all about the realisation of an inner centre, or inner core, which belongs to no-one but you, a place where you can go for strength and support, comfort and rest, and energy and inspiration. We can begin to build this centre by making a conscious effort to return to our inner self again and again throughout each day. Relaxation, deep breathing, meditation, massage, autogenics, and yoga are all good methods for developing the ability to centre, a feat which is impossible without inner harmony.
The second essential aspect of self-organisation is the ability to create your own space. Very often techniques for self-assertiveness and stress management go hand in hand. There will always be people who will want your time and energy, but it important for you and for them that they understand and respect that you are entitled to your own space. Very often it is our failure to attend to our self and own personal space which makes us susceptible to suffer from stress.
Self-expression
The inability to express ourselves adequately is another very common symptom of a lack of inner harmony. Suppression is a common cause of stress. I am a firm believer in the rule, ‘if in doubt express it’. Suppression is capable of doing as much harm to our inner harmony as is fear. Know thyself, be true to thyself, and you will then be in a position to organise your life in such a way as to make it a perfect expression of your inner self, not someone else’s!
Self-appreciation
People who suffer from stress are very often impatient with themselves, have a low self-esteem, are too self-critical, experience a sense of inner frustration which tells them they should be doing better than they are, and may not even recognise their own achievements. These people tend to appreciate only what is not theirs.
They have lost the ability to love and appreciate themselves for what they are. They are compelled to achieve, achieve and achieve again, but each time the achievement is empty. They are looking to the world to give them fulfilment instead of to themselves.
One very useful exercise I ask these people to do is to write down fifty positive things they can appreciate about themselves. It must be fifty and no less. Why not try it? The list should include all the achievements you can think of, and, where appropriate, the often overlooked achievements of the ability to see, to hear, to walk and also to love.
This is an important exercise because it helps us to begin to appreciate and to love ourselves for ourselves. Once we can accept love from ourselves we are then in a position to love others that much more fully. Most people who suffer from stress are not under-achievers, far from it; it is the only way they look at themselves which suggests that they are. Once again, this is not so much a cause of stress as a symptom of inner disharmony.
And so we return to the basic premise of this article, that the challenge of stress is not so much to do with living in the world but with living with ourselves. The world appears for the most part a turbulent, ever-changing and impermanent place; it is unreasonable, therefore, for us to look out to it and expect from it a permanent peace for ourselves. I do believe, though, that we can expect the world to act as a mirror which will faithfully reflect our attempts to find peace within our self. The answers to our problems can be found more often within us than in any other place in the world.
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