Authors: Chris Kresser
Tags: #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Diets, #Health & Fitness / Diet & Nutrition / Weight Loss
The first step is to avoid unnecessary stress. Obvious—but it’s a challenge for most of us because it’s easy to overlook habitual patterns of thought and behavior that cause unnecessary stress. Here are a few guidelines for how to avoid this kind of stress:
•
Learn to say no.
Know your limits, and don’t take on projects or commitments you can’t handle.
•
Avoid people who stress you out.
You know the kind of person I’m talking about. Drama kings and queens. People who are constantly taking and never giving. Limit your time with these people or avoid them entirely.
•
Turn off the news (or at least limit your exposure to it).
If watching the world go up in flames stresses you out, limit your exposure to the news, especially given the sensationalistic nature of so much of today’s news coverage. You’ll still know what’s going on in the world, but you’ll be in control of what you’re exposed to.
•
Give up pointless arguments.
There is obviously a place for discussion and debate and working toward change. But have you noticed that heated, highly emotional arguments don’t lead to real change? In fact, they tend to have the opposite effect—each side becomes more defensive and entrenched in his worldview. Find other ways to get your point across, learn to listen with empathy, and know when it’s time to walk away.
•
Escape the tyranny of your to-do list.
Spend some time in every morning really considering what needs to be done that day. Drop unimportant tasks to the bottom of the list. Better yet, cross them off entirely. The world will go on.
•
Reduce your exposure to online stress.
Social media can be a fun way to connect, but it’s truly a mixed bag, peppered as it is with strangers primed for endless arguments (not to mention those Facebook “friends” from college who want to debate you about your political views). Pay attention to how much energy you expend Tweeting, texting, e-mailing, and commenting—do you really need to respond to everything? Trying to do so is quite stressful—and you can never really have the last word when it comes to online exchanges.
The second step in reducing the amount of stress you experience is to address any physiological problems that are taxing your adrenal glands. These include anemia, thyroid issues, blood-sugar swings, gut inflammation, food intolerances (especially gluten), essential fatty acid deficiencies, and environmental toxins. The basic three-step Reset, Rebuild, and Revive approach will help with many of these conditions, and I discuss more specific strategies for addressing some of them throughout the book and in the bonus chapters on my website.
Obviously, there are times when stress just can’t be avoided. Maybe you have a high-stress job, or you’re caring for an ailing parent, or you’re having difficulty with your partner or spouse. In these situations it’s not about reducing stress itself but about reducing its harmful effects.
How do you do that? There are several different strategies:
•
Reframe the situation.
We experience stress because of the meaning we assign to certain events or situations. Sometimes changing your perspective is enough to relieve the stress. For example, being stuck in traffic can be a disaster or it can be an opportunity for contemplation and solitude.
•
Lower your standards.
This is especially important for you perfectionists out there. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let good enough be good enough.
•
Practice acceptance.
One of my meditation teachers used to say, “All suffering is caused by wishing the moment to be other than it is.” Many things in life are beyond our control. Learn to accept the things you can’t change.
•
Be grateful.
Simply shifting your focus from what is not okay or not enough to what you’re grateful for or appreciative of can completely change your perspective—and relieve stress.
•
Cultivate empathy.
When you’re in a conflict with another person, make an effort to connect with his or her feelings and needs. If you understand where he or she is coming from, you’ll be less likely to react and take it personally.
•
Manage your time.
Poor time management is a major cause of stress. When you’re overwhelmed with commitments and stretched too thin, it’s difficult to stay present and relaxed. Careful planning and establishing boundaries with your time can help.
In addition to everything I’ve listed above, other important ways to mitigate the harmful effects of stress include cultivating more pleasure
and play in your life and spending more time outdoors. I will cover these in more detail in
chapters 15
and
16
, respectively.
In the next section, we’ll discuss specific strategies for managing stress that I’ve found to be helpful in my own life and in my work with my patients.
There are many different clinically proven ways to manage stress, from yoga to deep breathing to biofeedback to acupuncture. Now I’m going to share the practices I’ve found to be most helpful for myself and my patients over the years. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, and if you’re drawn to something that I don’t mention here, by all means, go check it out! The important thing is not the type of stress-management practice you choose but that you do it on a regular basis. By
regular,
I mean every day, or as close to it as possible.
Here are a few general tips for incorporating a stress-management practice into your life:
•
Start small.
Instead of committing to one hour of meditation each day, which will be hard to follow through on if you’re new to it, start with just five minutes. Then gradually increase the time as you become accustomed to the practice.
•
Make it a priority.
I ask my patients to put stress management on their calendars in the same way they schedule important appointments.
•
Choose a mix of practices.
Some days you might be so wound up that doing a movement-based stress-management technique such as yoga or tai chi is preferable to simple meditation. On other days, you might be so exhausted that a more sedentary technique, like mindfulness-based stress reduction or deep breathing, might be better.
•
Be gentle with yourself.
Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a session, and don’t treat this as another thing you have to be good at. Stress management should feel like a peaceful and restorative break from your normal routine.
•
Find a teacher.
Many of these practices can be learned at home with books or recordings, but there’s something to be said for finding an experienced instructor to work with.
Finally, a note about exercise. While it’s true that exercise relieves stress, I’m purposely not including it here. The techniques I mention below induce a particular pattern of brain-wave activity that exercise does not. I view exercise and stress management as complementary, not as interchangeable.
In spite of the fact that I’m listing it in this section, I don’t consider meditation a form of stress management, although it can certainly have that effect. Meditation is an awareness practice. Through meditation, you learn to witness your thoughts, feelings, and sensations and dis-identify with the stories you tell yourself about them. You learn to stay present in your life, even in the face of great difficulty or pain.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be able to relax in order to meditate. Sometimes people are relaxed during meditation; sometimes they are quite agitated. We don’t meditate to manipulate our feelings but to learn to observe them without reacting to or becoming them.
One of the books I often recommend to people who’d like to learn more about meditation practice is
Opening the Hand of Thought
, by Kosho Uchiyama. Another excellent resource is
Meditation for Beginners
, by Jack Kornfield. If you do pursue meditation, I recommend working with an experienced teacher. You might consider doing a beginners’ meditation retreat at a retreat center, finding a local teacher in your area, or doing an online class. See my website for links to specific resources.
In her book
Finding Joy in the Heart of Pain
, my late Zen teacher Darlene Cohen posed these questions:
How do we live through unbearable situations like catastrophic diseases without being destroyed? How do we deal with the mundane anguish of our everyday lives? How do we continue to live under crushing stress? And, even further, how do we not just get through these things but have rich, full, and worthwhile lives that we actually want to live—under any circumstances?
For me, and for many others who have had experiences similar to mine, meditation is the answer. As I explained at the start of this book, I was seriously ill for several years. I was scared, exhausted, and in great pain during this period. I had tried so many things and seen so many doctors that it was hard not to lose hope. Yet my meditation practice taught me how to find joy in the heart of pain, how to stay present in circumstances that felt unbearable, and how to love and forgive myself through it all—whether I felt sick or well, sad or happy, frustrated or at peace.
Have you ever taken a walk in the woods or on the beach only to realize after ten minutes that you’ve been completely lost in your thoughts and have hardly experienced your surroundings? Compare that with a time that you were completely present to what was happening around you: the feeling of the breeze against your skin and the sand between your toes, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and the taste of salt in the air. When you are fully present and aware, your experience of life becomes far more rich and full. Your senses are heightened, your heart is opened, and your connection to the world around you deepens.
Meditation practice is what taught me how to slow down, remain present, and experience these moments of joy, peace, and connection even in the midst of severe illness and unrelenting pain. Those moments are what made my life worth living and prevented me from succumbing to darkness and despair.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) combines mindfulness meditation and yoga to help cultivate greater awareness of the unity of mind
and body and of the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that can undermine emotional, physical, and spiritual health. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the mindfulness-based stress reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979, and clinical research at the University of Massachusetts and elsewhere has demonstrated that MBSR positively affects a range of autonomic physiological processes; for example, it has been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce overall arousal and emotional reactivity, and improve sleep—particularly slow-wave sleep. MBSR is offered as an eight-week intensive training course in hospitals and medical centers around the world. It is also offered as an online course, and it can be done via home study with books and audio recordings. MBSR is particularly effective for anyone struggling with chronic illness or pain. I’ve found it to be particularly helpful in my own life and in my work with patients.
The word
yoga
comes from the Sanskrit
yuj,
which means “to unite.” Today
yoga
is used as a general term to refer to physical, mental, and spiritual disciplines that originated in ancient India. Yoga has been shown to reduce stress as well as improve cardiovascular and respiratory health, flexibility, cognitive performance, and overall well-being. It is particularly effective in relieving stress-induced or stress-related disorders such as insomnia, anxiety, depression, hypertension, and asthma.
Yoga is a great choice for stress management for several reasons. First, it’s a movement-based practice, which is often suitable for people who are new to stress management or who have very busy minds and find it difficult to sit still. Second, yoga is often practiced in a group or class setting, which has additional benefits. Third, because of its popularity, it’s now easy to find a class in most places.
Touch is vital to human health. In fact, touch is so important that infants deprived of it are unlikely to survive. Human beings are highly social
creatures, and touch is part of the way we relate to and communicate with others. This is one reason that massage can be such an effective stress-management strategy.
Massage has been shown to cause beneficial hormonal shifts, such as an increase in oxytocin and a decrease in the hormone ACTH, that help regulate the HPA axis and decrease stress. I will discuss the benefits of touch and massage in more detail, along with specific recommendations for how to incorporate it into your life, in
chapter 15
.
Feldenkrais (awareness through movement) classes are, as the name implies, movement lessons that bring awareness to our everyday actions. They help people become aware of tension patterns that are unconscious and cause stress, fatigue, and pain. Through this awareness and through learning new patterns of movement, people report feeling more relaxed and at ease moving through their day, which often leads to better sleep at night. People also notice an improvement in how they do everyday activities, from sweeping the floor to working out. Though Feldenkrais isn’t as well known as yoga, acupuncture, massage, or other stress-management modalities, I’ve found it has more profound and longer-lasting results in many cases. See my website for information on how to find a class in your area.