The Effects Of Stress And
Dealing With Stress

Mental Stress

Most people have at least a vague idea of the physical effects of stress. Let me give you a quick lowdown in case you don't...

• Basically perceived threats to you and your environment cause you to experience mental stress.
• This triggers your body to adjust physiologically to get ready to handle the perceived threat (the fight or flight response).
• Your blood pressure then increases and blood is diverted to critical organs required for quick action and alertness.
• Your body remains in this state until the perceived threat goes away.
• In the long-term this way of dealing with stress is not sustainable without injury. That's why the effects of stress are linked to all sorts of conditions, anything from sleep disturbances to IBS to anxiety disorders and substance abuse.

Symptoms Of Stress - How To Tell If You're Stressed Out

Anger, depression, overeating, overworking, anxiety and fear are coping mechanisms commonly employed by people when their concept of who they are isn't enough to cope with their environment. Their energy then is spent engaging and fulfilling their coping mechanisms rather than being present to the world and the opportunities in front of them.

Why Do We Get Stressed?

Stress comes about because of the meaning you attribute to certain events or situations. This meaning is in line with deeper beliefs you hold - whether conscious or unconscious. If, as an example, one of your beliefs is that you are unlovable and need "fixing", you will find you attract people and situations into your life that validate this deep-seeded belief to be true. Healthy, loving people could be within your physical proximity but they won't seem attractive to you because they don't trigger fulfillment of this belief about yourself.

Saying Goodbye To Stress

In dealing with stress, the only way to permanently eradicate it from your life is to treat it at the source; your mind. As Cicero said

"Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body."

Cleansing your mind will cure you for good. It will free you from the cycle of managing recurring sypmptoms over time.

Treating your stress at the source requires turning inward to understand the destructive beliefs you hold about yourself and the world and then changing them for the better. A truly healthy body is an outcome you can expect from cleansing the mind. But you must start with your mind first.

When you've excavated your problem beliefs, you will then feel free to create new ones.

As you work to eradicate bad beliefs from your life you may face some internal resistance. This is normal and to be expected. The resistance is coming from your ego, your personality which is threatened by the breakdown of longstanding beliefs.