Stress accounts for over 70% of visits to your GP's surgery and for the loss of millions of working days, costing society billions of pounds.  Stress Management is thus important, not only to the individual, but society as a whole.

Having resolved my own stress related disorders I now have over 20 years knowledge and experience in helping others to do the same and I would like to share some of this with you.

The term stress, as applied by Hans Selye, the founding father of the movement, is used to imply effect, the causal factors being termed "Stressors".  These stressors do not directly create stress but are mediated by the way we think about them - our self-talk, beliefs, and attitudes.  This we call cognitive appraisal.  If the stress continues for long enough it creates dis-stress and dis-ease.

Thus: STRESSORS + COGNITIVE APPRAISAL = STRESS "DISEASE

Although the same physical reaction can occur to positive triggers, producing eustress rather than distress, it usually doesn't last very long and therefore is unlikely to create disease.  I prefer to call this positive arousal in order to simplify the equation.

How then do we manage stress?

We can deal with the stressor directly by trying to change it or get away from it.  You could, for example, get a divorce, move, or give up your job, but it may not always be possible or advantageous to do this.

You can deal with the stress directly by learning relaxation skills.  Stress and relaxation are defined as opposites.  If you relax correctly, and for long enough periods, I can guarantee that your stress related illnesses will disappear for as long as you do it.  But I suspect that when the next lot of stressors come along the first thing you will stop is your relaxation practice.  And to some extent relaxation is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.  Theoretically if you didn't get stressed you wouldn't have to relax!

So maybe the thing to do is change the way you think about the stressors and there are many ways of doing this - REBT, NLP and TA for example, as well as by taking up particular philosophies or through life itself.  Unfortunately, this isn't the whole answer either, although it can produce the most profound effects.

Much of the stress response is a bad habit and can occur even when there are no stressors for you to think about or react to.  Therefore it is worth learning to relax in order to resolve this.  Furthermore it has been found that in a deeply relaxed state you are more likely to change your thinking and behaviour by means of a visualisation process. 

Likewise, if your partner is chasing you around the house with an axe, hell bent on mutilation, there is little point in relaxing and persuading yourself that they are lovely really,  and if you think nice thoughts they will stop it.  Get the hell out of there!

So what am I saying?  In essence I'm pointing out that working on all three elements is important.

1. Your key initial strategy is to learn relaxation skills - this will help you to get rid of the symptoms that may be making your like such a misery.  Relaxation is something quite physiologically specific and is best learned with the help of at least temperature and muscle biofeedback where specific criteria can be reached.  You can then be sure you are truly producing the opposite of stress.
   


2. Learn how to change your thinking, beliefs and attitudes in order to reduce your negative emotions and enhance the positive ones by learning one of the numerous cognitive restructuring techniques.
   


3. When you can relax and have changed your thinking you may only occasionally have to remove yourself from the stressor.  Usually you will be able to adapt or resolve it by using the other key skills of assertion and problem solving.