It is such a talked about subject these days and we are bombarded with information on stress but I continually see clients who have no idea that they are under stress or what impact it is having on them, their mind and their body. They seem in denial.
Why is it that we seem so hell bent to ignore the signs of stress? We often realise we are going through a stressful situation, we may start feeling anxious, start letting bad habits come through but yet we do nothing about it. Often people feel that being under stress helps them get more done, that old feeling that the busier you are the more you get done. But are you getting things done affectively?
Maybe it stresses you out to hear this, maybe you are too busy in your life, too busy trying to hold everything together, eat right, exercise. Stress maybe just something you don’t want to deal with, you simply don’t have time.
STRESS MANAGEMENT MAY VERY WELL BE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR HEALTH.
Even if your diet is perfect, even if you are exercising well, stress can still ruin your health. There are huge amounts of scientific research to suggest that stress is only secondary to diet as the primary cause of modern disease. The word itself is Dis‐ease
It is believed that our brain is actually designed to ignore stress; it’s the only thing that the brain knows and not knows at the same time. Enough information gets through to cause us to put up our defences without our conscious been aware! That good old subconscious mind doing what it thinks it needs to do to keep us safe.
The age old fight or flight which involves mobilizing stores of fat, protein and glucose to give us the energy we need to deal with the threat. This denial of stress helps us survive through those big catastrophes or helpless situations that we may find ourselves in. We deny ourselves stress because we are worried that we will not be able to cope. But in the long run coping actually requires less energy. In this day and age we do not fight or flight, we carry on with the demands of our day, worrying about the future, finances our health, causing ourselves more stress.
We are not dealing with immediate stress but rather chronic, long term stress. Denial can help with the initial fallout of a devastating situation. Most stressful situations however are not life threatening and denial can be highly detrimental if it causes a situation to worsen until it is life threatening.
Because stress is bad for us, we tend to deny its existence. The most common and primitive way to cope with stress is not to think about it at all.
How deeply embedded in our psyches is the denial of stress?
