Stress: Try something different to get over it

Writes Maria Μεραμβελιωτάκη-Simon MSc
Consultant Psychologist
When we experience excessive stress in our life, or any other intense and unpleasant emotion, our first instinctive response is usually the attempt to get rid of them. We want to control them at all costs, to get them out of our lives, to rule over them.
At first sight, the human this trend seems not only reasonable but also as a necessary condition to improve the problem. Besides, if you don’t learn to control how you deal with it?
Oddly, every attempt at control is doomed to fail, and this is because the control of emotions is impossible.
Because it is impossible to control our emotions?
Let’s assume for a moment that we are connected with the most accurate lie detector ever built, and who can read the slightest indication of anxiety that exists. The only thing we have to do is to stay relaxed as well as thinking about a recent episode where you experienced stress. If you feel even the slightest indication of anxiety, the detector will understand. Let’s assume also, that this machine is made in such a way that if it detects the slightest stress or physical symptom, we are going to give us a fatal shock. Of course, if you just stay relaxed, you won’t die. So all we have to do is relax!
I guess it would be impossible to survive in the above hypothetical scenario. In fact, there is no way to stay relaxed because we are already connected to the most perfect and the most accurate machine detection: our nervous system. And every time it detects the slightest indication of arousal or anxiety.
And the control of thoughts is impossible
Let’s assume that someone gives us the following directive:
“Can you think of anything, except a delicious, fluffy chocolate cake. Don’t think this chocolate cake coated in dark chocolate, has come out just from the oven, spreading everywhere the fragrance of the.”
How did it go?
Isn’t it true that every time we tell ourselves, “don’t think about X”, we get annoyed by the thought of it even more? Yes, sometimes, if we are extremely convinced that we must not think a particular thought, this leads to obsession and siege non-stop.
Acceptance instead of Control
Our mind tells us that we have to stop being nervous. Maybe it tells us that we can’t control our anxiety is a weakness and shows that there’s something wrong with us. Compare us with others, that they seem to be fine and to worry, because we are not like that.
Our mind tries to convince us that the audit is feasible and the stress, negative, embarrassing, unwanted.
How auxiliary this is the strategy of the mind? If this is the way to solve the problem why not solved?
Just because this strategy makes us feel even worse about ourselves.
Acceptance is the opposite of control. It is the attempt to create an interior space for our experience, whatever that is.
It is the understanding that even though we have feelings we’re not those feelings as well as understanding how everything that we experience is part of human nature.
Instead of fighting against the stress, make peace with it.
Look at it as something that comes and goes like the clouds in the sky.
Allow him to catch the space, as one of the many pieces of your experience.
Let it flow through you, without resisting and without being swept away by this.
You are not your anxiety, but something separate and bigger.
Notice how this simple practice can affect the intensity of the.
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