Stress management

By: Mercedes Oestermann Van Essen
Feeling stressed is a disease of our times. Unfortunately feeling that way can really make one's life a misery. Avoiding stress when you are constantly chasing after your life, busy with work, running a home and the kids, and snatch whatever free time you can, is not always that easy.

Many stress management books and courses give you plenty of ways to relax and teach stress avoidance techniques, but unfortunately this is like putting the cart before the horse.

Why? Because you are addressing the symptom rather then the root cause of the stress problem. This statement may well sound strange to you, but let me explain:

What happens when we are stressed is this: Our mind reacts on a belief of something happening that might endanger our life in some way. This something is of course not reality but just a figment of our imagination, so to speak. We are reacting to a past danger and project this danger into the future, which has not as yet happened. And here is the real challenge: Because these feelings, thoughts and images are so deeply imbedded we only see the tip of the iceberg. This tip of the iceberg we recognise as stress, a feeling of being overwhelmed, sleepless nights, worry, headaches and so on.

Our mind reacts today in the same way it was trained to react when we are children. If some kind of trauma has occurred during the six stages of development unitl the age of around 20, and sometimes beyond, we find ourselves reacting subconsciously to these unresolved traumas, but we do not recognise the real trigger, which is deeply imbedded in the subconscious. All we see is stress, as we call it.

Our mind only takes in consciously about 2% - 5% of anything that is going on in the environment at any given time. We are constantly filtering the influx of information.

In our fast living times this puts more and more strain on the brain, and we cope with this by deleting more and more of the incoming information. Our perspective becomes skewed. Stress, anxiety and eventually illness show up to the conscious mind. These symptoms of course are your internal alarm bell.

Prevention is always better than the cure.

Now, how can we prevent stress? Well, the answer is not so much about prevention, but recognition. Recognition means increasing your awareness. You can do this by learning simple techniques that increase your awareness. This means you learn to identify when you start reacting with stress before the stress can take hold of you. Energy Therapy is a great way to increase your awareness, because it is relaxing and works extremely quickly. In minutes you can change your state.

Admittedly that takes practice. But you can learn just by spending a few minutes every day training your mind. My preferred tool for the job is EFT and MICRO EFT. Micro EFT in particular works very fast. When you feel pressured you need quick results. With Micro EFT you tap on three points which stimulate all the main meridians in the body whilst you concentrate on your intention, reducing stress.

This simple technique is so incredibly effective. It is like a first aid kit, but for the mind and I urge you to check it out. If you are serious about having a better life you need to make changes. It is as simple as that. Therefore if you want to feel relaxed and in control you should find a way that suits you, fits with your lifestyle and you know you will use when you need to.