According to the National Institute of Mental Health in the US are now 40 million adults living with anxiety disorders. This stands for almost 20% of the US adult population. Anxiety's prevalence increases with age as among teens between 13 and 18 years of age it oscillates around 8% - less than 20% of whom ever receive medical treatment. This clearly points to the fact that even in a country with such an advanced health care as the United States these disorders are largely neglected and tend to strike people when they're the most vulnerable. Studies shown that anxiety disorders are 60% more common in women than are in men which means - given that the brink of adulthood is when anxiety disorders usually emerge - an overwhelming disadvantage for so many women living today.
Anxiety disorders are very often correlated with chronic stress. The effects of this correlation are striking:
- It affects the individual's cognitive ability,
- Causes muscle tension leading to permanent skeletal deformation,
- Renders a person unable to perform even the simplest tasks,
- Causes both temporary and chronic insomnia,
- Damages the autoimmune system.
All of the above have the ability to reinforce themselves once settled in a person's reality and they are but a sample of what stress and anxiety impose on a human being. We often live our lives unconscious of the smallest wounds we inflict on our mental health every day.
WHAT LEADS A PERSON TO BEING STRESSED AND ANXIOUS
Constant evaluation
In today's world you can easily get overwhelmed by the realization of how many people actually evaluate your actions on a daily basis. Of course there is room for exaggeration, but the truth is that such a great majority of human beings focus on how others are doing and are constantly judging them by what is visible to their eyes. You are evaluated based on how you look, how you speak, how you carry yourself, how you gesticulate, based on your relationships and connections, so often also based on your background, your mother tongue, your degrees and most often what others are saying about you. People rarely approach others without any preconceived notions and this creates a perfect ground for the creation of stereotypes.
We are segregated and placed into these mental boxes people create for us and our potential alikes. All this happens without you even beginning an actual interaction with the judging person but at some point in our lives we've all been guilty of this. The key to understanding what's behind our evaluation of others may be easily found by analyzing how the process is handled by your own brain. First of all you start by connecting certain traits of another person to what they were connected with during your past experiences. This is done so quickly that you're only aware of its outcome - the same thing that happens with the reappearance of your memories. It might be compared with how Windows downloads and installs its actualizations, when for a brief moment you're able to see every three hundredth number out of several thousands, which are yet to be checked but the existence of which you rarely even experienced.
In fact the roots for your evaluation of others are placed in pretty much the same soil in which your memories are, because any preconceived notion is the reappearing memory in action. You store the connections between people's face expressions and their attitude towards life or towards you, the connections between people's posture and their actions, between people's tone of voice and their treatment of others. For each memory there are dozens of these connections, and no matter how narrow-minded storing them may seem these days it was once crucial for human survival.
Since the emergence of our species we were living in tribes struggling to obtain food and shelter and as we all once experienced - when the demand exceeds the supply a tension is created. Language wasn't really a thing back then, and diplomacy? Forget it. People had to rely on other sources of information to actually evaluate the danger they were in - whether another human was looking to bond with their tribe or slaughter their close ones. An expression, the way one carried himself where indicators of what chain of events was possible to occur. Don't get me wrong - your tools for danger evaluation are still of tremendous help, but in so many instances we all tend to get way too far with how much there is to be drawn from a persons' appearance. Very few men and women realize this today, just take a closer look at gossiping and how much preconceptions may one human being form and share with another.
Do not get overwhelmed when you feel you're being evaluated, when you experience a judicious look - just realize that you were once guilty of a similar deed and think of what this really means, because - how big a threat do you pose to that person?
Life changing events
Events such as the loss of a job, the breaking of a friendship or relationship, the passing of a close one may often become traumas for the rest of your life. You dread the next moment as if all of your convictions were shattered by that one event and exceeding uncertainty and concern start to take control over your life. In so many cases this even strengthens the trauma and causes you to experience pain in almost unbearable amounts.
The fact is that no matter how traumatic the experience, your life after it is guided by your thoughts which - given the emotional baggage you're now carrying - rarely serve as an aid, a relief from your misery. You start reliving what happened as if it never ended and get stuck in an uncontrollable stream of thoughts. It often leads to conditions such as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) from which 25 million people suffer in the US alone. All this could be avoided only if we were properly educated on how to approach these often life-changing events.
People with PTSD rarely even realize they developed a condition and feel hopeless when it comes to any other change that may happen in their lives. They get stuck in the present dreading every step forward because it feels like they may experience an occurrence somewhat resembling the one from their past that keeps on haunting them.
Social pressures
For so many decades in the past people were trying to get our attention onto how many pressures are forced on every human being by our culture and society. These differ drastically around the world, but one can't escape their overwhelming impact. You are raised by the standards posed by your parents' culture, you develop habits in accordance with where you grew up, sometimes rebelling against what's assigned to you as the member of society, and very often you end up making peace with where you were born - burying the hatchet. More often than not these societal enforcements have very little impact on what you hold important, but sometimes you find yourself caged by the laws of your surroundings as often what is agreed on by the majority lays very far from what's right. Keep in mind that slavery used to be a norm.
Social pressures are in their origins quite similar to the previously covered preconceived notions, as with them the case is that what was once connected by a number of people becomes banned or forced upon. Once a few people agree on something's righteousness it becomes a guideline to every new member of their social group without even making her aware of how is she to act.
Striving for perfection
Sprouting from the above social pressures is often the striving for perfection with which so many of us are acquainted. In a great majority of cases the necessity of becoming the ideal is inflicted on us from above - when you are a child it comes from your parents, once you get into school it comes from your teachers, then from your employers and at one point you start to inflict it on your own daughters and sons. People often justify their need for perfection by pointing to its motivational abilities but it's just a bunch of BS. Of course you should aim at doing your best performing any task, but obsessing about - usually unnoticeable for an untrained eye - details is an exaggeration. A very harmful one. Perfection in its nature is unachievable - there always will be some minor defect to point out.
LEADING MENTAL CAUSES OF STRESS AND ANXIETY
Stress and anxiety causes might easily be counted by thousands, below are the categories under which all of those causes fall.
Emotional instability
Today's world strikes you with an astounding amount of choices on practically any field you might direct your focus to. Even the easiest activities such as grocery shopping have the potential to overwhelm your mind and leave you feeling almost hopeless when it comes to picking a fruit. This is an exaggeration of course, but weren't you ever stressed about taking an almost meaningless action like the one above? I'm sure you were, so was I.
This happens because, as was scientifically proven people can't process the amount of information that's connected to so many choices in a while short enough to enable us strolling through the store comfortably. A study was done - at the supermarket actually - trying to depict how people respond to different numbers of choices. Jars of jam from the same supplier where placed on one shelf. They were the same in price but differed in tastes. During one period of time the store offered a choice of 6 tastes and during the other - 24 tastes. What it found was that the people who stumbled upon a choice of 6 jars were TEN times more likely to make a purchase than were those who stumbled upon a choice of 24 jars.
3% of participants picked one jar out of 24 and 30% picked one out of only 6. This happened because, as I've mentioned earlier - too much choice is overwhelming. It renders you indecisive.
Inability to cope with changes in life
Traumatic events or simply meaningful changes in life can often get you stunned, leaving no perspectives ahead. This happens because what you have in the present is very often projected into your future indefinitely, you feel as if all the things you possess now will remain in this world for at least as long as you will. That unfortunately isn't true but it also doesn't mean that without them you will no longer be able to function. People and people's brains have this amazing ability to adapt to situations which they wouldn't even imagine surviving before they happened. Just look at the experience of holocaust survivors - people who often spent several years in concentration camps. They were able and very often even eager to find and cherish real meaning in their lives. People who had lost literally everything were able to find enough strength to struggle through torture incomprehensible for those of us with whom they shared their memories.
Erroneous approach to social pressures
We tend to take social pressures as previously mentioned guidelines way too often. You'd rather compromise than stand out having made a choice of your own. Sadly what we refer to as social pressures - pressures coming from other members of our society - are often a reflection of the pressuring people's unmet needs or desires. People tend to force upon others what was forced upon them, or on what they wished they had achieved "when it was time". Realize that if what someone is trying to force upon you, when it isn't in line with your core beliefs is just that person projecting onto you what they wish to have done themselves.
Unhealthy self-image
All these pressures and evaluations tend to have a very terrifying impact on your self-image which often leads to experiencing chronical stress. If for example you're working your bottom off - the job is being performed and the results accomplished - your boss comes and yells at you and makes you feel guilty for what sounds like unmet and imaginated needs of his and it happens several times, what concept do you then start to form about yourself? Is it close to: "I must be the problem"? After such an experience occurring repeatedly - how easy it is to feel unworthy, unreliable and in result actually less able to perform?
Fear of judgement
We fear evaluation, we fear people judging us and even the thought that they may try judging us. Every opinion issued publicly or not regarding ourselves serves as an amplifier to our already substantially stressed lives. We feel as if every sentence spoken of ourselves and every grade assigned to us for the work we've done was final and definite in its description of us. What you hear about yourself is so often more important to you than your own thoughts about yourself. You feel like somehow the other people's standards are more accurate and reliable even when it is comes to whom you undeniably know best - yourself. For so many of us it is very hard to grasp that a sentence once issued doesn't increase in value solely because it was issued - its transition from thought into sound doesn't make it stronger or more certain. Other people hold no authority on the topic of yourself, they may be qualified to judge your work, your performance, but there isn't a single human in this world capable of forming your opinion regarding yourself.
MAJOR PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF STRESS AND ANXIETY
Distorted perception
While under stress you start perceiving life entirely different. The lens of - so often simultaneously psychological and physical - chronic pain makes you see practically everything as either a result or a cause of pain. You start to mentally erase one of life's events three categories: positive, neutral and negative - the first one. What was once a reason for your smile became another ordinary occurrence, what wouldn't once even bother your eyes happens to be the cause for your irritation and things you once would have get upset about start being perceived as your reality. And the reality is unbearable.
Malevolent attitude towards life
Chronic stress and anxiety subtly turn a person's attitude and approach towards negativity. You start to feel as if everything became flawed, even as if the people whom you've once held close start to act like their goal was your harm. Actually they rarely do act differently - what changes is your perception described above. But once you mentally accuse someone of not acting in accordance with your best interest you start feeling the need for revenge. It becomes with vicious remarks but in some cases turns into actual acts of violence. This is how criminals are born, although in most of their cases stress and fear are planted inside their minds even before the formation of consciousness and are reinforced continuously.
Indecisiveness
Your decisions become reflective of the amounts of stress and anxiety you experience on a daily basis. When a process of decision making is begun with a stressful approach more often than not what it leads to is a stressful outcome. Keep in mind that it's only a process at this point. But what kind of approach do you start to adapt if you're convinced a decision is only going to render you more stressed? Not quite an action-oriented one. This is only reinforcing your already stressful and anxious habits, as more stress in perspective equals more stress now. Anxiety and stress lead to indecisiveness and when unattended it only strengthens with time.
Social withdrawal
With the changes in your decisiveness, in your approach to life and in your perception of your surroundings you start to withdraw yourself from society and relationships. Suddenly more of what you see is flaws, the tasks are becoming harder and the sun starts to shine less bright. This isn't the process of aging as many people might think. If someone planted this conception inside your head - get rid of it as fast as possible.
Stress and anxiety cause you to like less and in turn be less liked. If a behavior or an activity changes, its outcome will change to. You can't expect others to react as they did in the past to entirely different actions on your behalf.
THE METHOD TO OVERCOME STRESS AND ANXIETY
Up to this point the great majority of what we talked about, were the reasons for and results of living our lives stressed. You might even feel overwhelmed by the seeming inescapability of a stressed reality. However, what since its first sentence was the goal of this report the fact is that any human being may play the role of a savior from stress - even to herself. You've come across some indications regarding the source of stress and anxiety and a few tips about its taming as well. For the purpose of clarity - that place is your brain. And the "your" is crucial. No person, boss, relative, enemy can cause you to be chronically stressed because it all lies under the responsibility of your brain. It is possible for other people, for situations and events to act as stress triggers but those temporary reactions are what you're born with. And what you make of them - whether you let them take control over your well-being or let them slide past you is all in your hands. You can live your life stressed or enjoy its wonders - the choice is yours.
Sounds simple, doesn't it? But the truth is that the principles and guidelines for a life less stressed are everywhere. If you're looking for one there's not a chance that a few won't pop in front of your eyes during the day and if they are so common then how come more and more people are living under greater stress as time passes by? Some of those tips might have a grain of truth and applicability inside them and can influence one's life beneficially, but a great majority of them aren't worth their salt. It's because the authors of many seemingly life-changing self-help guides aren't focused on the best possible outcome for their reader, they'd rather satisfy their publisher and fill their work with meaningless jargon melting medical findings, spiritual practices and who knows what else into an indistinguishable pulp of words. There are rarely helpful instructions, proven methods to use and experience change along with progress. This is why most help-seeking readers exit their quests even more anxious and stressed than they enter it. Did you know that only 10% of non-fiction readers ever get through the first chapter of their book? Above is why.
The core of the method you are about to get acquainted with has been around for centuries but its benefits were ripped only by a handful of people. You're now aware that in order to become invulnerable to stress and anxiety in a long run you must take control over your thoughts and mind. You must take control over what you experience and not let yourself be pulled into the whirlpool of others' destructive actions.
And the way of achieving that is through the practice of mindfulness, in other words - meditation. If practiced correctly and with awareness it is able to bring you relief from stress and render your mind unshakable by life's often shocking events. Not mentioning the actions of others. Meditation has many forms but what interests us the most is the practice of mindfulness meditation, as mentioned earlier.
Do not be misguided by the labels - meditation doesn't have to be spiritual and isn't opposite to any set of beliefs you might live by. It can be an aid on the path to spiritual enlightment if chosen so but that is not a necessity. It is a practice of taming one's mind and using it to one's benefits. Think of it as a horse - once a wild creature roaming loosely around the plains and now tamed by men. And once the horse became in unison with its rider they were able to achieve together what was before unimaginable to each of them separately. Your mind is like the horse and you can tame it with a little bit of understanding, patience and practice.
Mindfulness practice will enable you to take control of your mental habits and transform them into beneficial daily routines never before considered meaningful. You will learn how to approach life not only from a less stressed but also much happier and satisfied position.
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