‘Previously on this programme’ I talked about Palaeolithic man and the design brief you were built to. In this brief, there was a specification for a ‘turbo’ mode. This mode would allow your great, great, great (etc.) grandparents to escape the sabretooths or hunt mammoth successfully. It would allow them to focus fully, for a short period of time, on one job alone and so carry out the task with maximum efficiency. However, this turbo mode was only designed to be used for short bursts of time to complete a specific, important task.
Now, you and I are familiar with this feeling – in efficient (but ugly) American language it can be described as feeling ‘pumped’ or ‘wired’, and it is a good thing. However, what many of us now experience is the effect of this turbo running at less than full power but continuously, and we are just not designed to take these levels of high RPM for sustained periods of time. Eventually we are unable to cope with the demands and we start to feel burned out. Clearly, as we are all slightly different, we stop behaving in a positive way start to feel burned out at slightly different RPM levels. This is feeling is stress.
The symptoms are, I suspect, all too familiar. They start with feeling anxious and distracted and we become more irritable and self-absorbed. If the stress levels are maintained we may start to have physical changes occurring such as developing fatigue, headaches, chest pains, dizziness and depression with all the consequences this has for work and social life.
However, there are a whole lot of really effective things we can do to keep this stress under control. The first thing to do is to identify the cause, which may be far trickier than you first imagine and some counselling (no, really!) may help with this. Then start to try and tackle these stressors and reduce them – and this, I acknowledge, is far easier said than done.
Concurrently, you must try to reduce the physical aspect of stress. This is best done using those classic, proven and effective stress reducing activities such as meditation, sport and relaxation. If these first tier activities fail you then I’d suggest you start to look wider at one of the following excellent stress reducing therapies:
• Massage
• Reflexology
• Alexander Technique
• Pilates
If this isn’t your cup of relaxing green tea then I suggest you try another route which is:
• Neurolingustic Programming (google it, if I were you)
• Clinical Hypnotherapy
both of which are extremely powerful ways of tackling life and so reducing stress. And, it is no coincidence (and no surprise, I suspect) that we provide all of the above at the clinic.
Stress is debilitating and needs positive action if it is to be successfully controlled but the good news is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel as these methods are proven and effective.