The Art of Stress Mastery By Todd Glacy
of age, sex, race, class, or culture. What we call the “stress response” is simply a sequence of biological events that activates the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight state of being). Events that trigger stress can be real or imagined, and are not always based on objective reality, but rather on our perception of it (a stressor for you may not be a stressor for someone else.) Throughout human history, stress has served a valuable purpose in the survival of our species. In this day and age, we see chronic stress and anxiety running rampant in our culture and having adverse effects in all areas of life including mental/physical health, jobs and careers, families and relationships, and ulti- mately even our overall sense of happiness and well-being. Learning about stress and taking personal responsibility for how we respond to stressors in our own life is essen- tial for decreasing negative and potentially damaging stress reactions and taking control of our overall life experience.
S Stress Education
During my years as a school counselor, I experienced the very real effects of stress on children as well as adults. One year we began noticing a trend at the school nurse’s office. Every day at 10am a line of students would form (typically the same students
tress is a fact of life and the human stress response is part of the biologi- cal makeup of all people regardless
day after day) describing symptoms of headache, stomach ache, dizziness, and just “not feeling good”. The nurse would take their temperature and look into their complaint, and then after a brief time end up sending the child back to class. Fol- lowing up with the students later in the day, they would report they were feeling fine. We wondered what was happening at 10am to cause this spike in “going to see the nurse”, and after checking the school schedule we discovered an unexpected culprit. It turned out that 10am was the school’s math block and many of these children were exhibiting symptoms of stress and anxiety brought on by math class!
The above is a perfect example of how our thoughts around non-life threatening events (assuming you consider 5th grade math non-life threatening) can still trig- ger our fight/flight response to the point of physical dis-ease, and is a reminder of how important it is to be able to identify the stress triggers and signals in our own lives.
Stress Management vs. Stress Mastery
There is a strong distinction between simply managing stress vs. mastering it. When people talk about stress manage- ment they may be referring to anything from taking prescription medication to learning specific stress reduction tech- niques designed to lessen the effects of the stress response and move towards a more
natural relaxed state known as the para- sympathetic nervous system or Relaxation Response. While stress management is an important aspect of reducing stress symp- toms once they have occurred (and is an important part of any good stress mastery program), total stress mastery is focused on building awareness of how we process, perceive and react to life events in order to produce real and long lasting positive results. The ability to master stress is a skill that can be learned by anyone willing to apply themselves, and can lead to a more conscious, healthy and empowered way of living in the world.
Benefits of Stress Mastery
Some of the positive benefits of stress mastery include: • Ability to feel more calm and relaxed
• Improved mental/physical health and well-being
• Enhanced creativity and ability to problem solve in productive ways
• Sense of empowerment and control over how we respond to life events
• Ability to process and cope with dif- ficult situations in a healthy manner
• Develop resilience and the ability to quickly recover from stressful events
• Nurture a more optimistic, meaning- ful and healthy outlook on life
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