Many of the women I see in the clinic come in with physical ailments, but in the vast majority of cases there is a large serving of underlying stress. Life is often messy, unpredictable, hectic, unbalanced and overwhelming. It’s often impossible to control the external stress factors which keep us awake into the wee hours of the night.

The best we can do is focus on increasing our internal resilience through shifting mental paradigms.

Of course it makes sense to modify as many external stress factors as possible, and then take a deep breath and remember that stress is really an “inside job” - an internal response to an external cue.

Have you ever heard anyone say “I’m under so much stress”? The truth is that stress is not the unpaid mortgage, the sick children, or the strained marriage, rather these outside forces are the stress factors not the stress.

The stress is generated purely by how we perceive, interpret and respond to these outside forces. Given that the path of modern life is littered with stress factors, simply putting in place strategies of avoidance is not the answer.

The secret to reducing the impact of these stress factors, is shifting our focus from the outside chaos and turmoil, to our inner world, paying attention instead to altering our mental perceptions. As our thinking changes, so too does our biology.

Stress factors will always be present, but we can increase our understanding of our own individual reactions to them; and learn new psychological skills to maintain our internal biological equilibrium in spite of the less than ideal outside world.

Our mind and body are one, and their second by second interaction literally creates our internal biological soup. First comes a thought, followed immediately by a biological response. On the way home you remember that you left your house keys on your desk. Immediately your adrenal glands squirt a fountain of stress hormones, and your heart rate and blood pressure climb rapidly. Over time, our thought-determined biology predicts our physical state of health.

Our attitudes, beliefs, and emotional states, be they love and compassion or fear and anger, trigger biochemical chain reactions that affect our blood chemistry, heart rate and the activity of every cell and organ system in our body.

So what are the psychological characteristics which increase our stress hardiness and reduce our risk of physical illness? Studies looking at executives running top companies have identified several personality characteristics in those executives who remained healthy in the face of ongoing stress. One trait is the ability to respond to a challenge with excitement and the energy to overcome it. These people look at new situations as a new opportunity to learn, grow and develop personally.

Having a commitment to something meaningful, be it their work, their community, family, or charity was also another key factor. The third, and critical characteristic, was a sense of being in control, of being able to make decisions that make a difference and make things happen.

Negative mental processes, such as “deficiency focusing” (the habit of always focusing on the negative instead of the positive), also increases our vulnerability to stress. Often this is accompanied by a mindset which anticipates and expects difficulties and problems.

Constant negative self-talk - bombarding ourselves with internal messages of failure, such as “I always mess up” - causes a release of adrenaline and cortisol, and eventually leads to the development of stress-related illness. Negative self-talkers often have an associated tendency of low skill recognition. With low perception of their own abilities, they underplay the role of their abilities in their success, instead attributing everything positive to an external factor such as luck or another person.

lynda@lyndawharton.com

www.lyndawharton.com