Stress is a normal part of day-to-day life. We cannot entirely escape stress, especially living in a fast-paced society. If we look around at the different people we know, we can see that different people tend to respond to stressful situations in different ways. Different types of reactions or responses to stress, lead to very different results. HOW we respond to stress is the key. Let’s use the wisdom of mindfulness to decrease our experience of stress.
Ultimately, our automatic reactions to the stressors we encounter determine, in large measure, how much stress we experience. Automatic reactions, triggered out of unawareness, usually compound and exacerbate stress. What might have remained a simple problem becomes a far more difficult one. These automatic reactions prevent us from: seeing clearly, solving problems creatively, expressing our emotions effectively (when we need to communicate with other people), and ultimately preventing us from attaining inner peace.
The stress reaction cycle involves the onset of an internal or external stressor. The stressor produces a fight or flight response (muscle tension, hormonal changes, increased blood pressure, heart rate and so on). In this state of hyper-arousal, it is often difficult to see the situation clearly and to cope effectively. Some people engage in maladaptive styles of coping in trying to relieve their stress (e.g. overworking, overeating, using drugs and/or alcohol, and so on).
On the other hand, responding to stress involves the use of moment-to-moment awareness. This awareness allows you to take charge and influence the flow of events at those moments when you are most likely to react automatically.
As soon as you bring awareness to what is going on in a stressful situation, you have already changed that situation dramatically. You are no longer unconscious and on automatic pilot anymore. For example, by bringing awareness of the body into a stressful situation, it allows you to be more sensitive to increased muscle tension, changes in breathing, feelings of nausea and other early warning signs related to the onset of stress. This awareness of the body allows you to take earlier action in terms of using more adaptive ways of coping (e.g. tuning into the breath, doing some light stretching or going for a short walk—whatever works for you).
Tuning into the breath during these early moments of stress can also enable us to see the “whole” of the situation more clearly. In turn, this clarity enables us to see new options that might have been unavailable to us had we allowed our reactions to stress to snowball. Part of the ability to see the “whole” of the stressful situation involves relying on emotionally-focused and problem-focused coping skills.