FREE PREVIEW FOR GUIDE FOR COPING: STRESS, WORRY, ANXIETY


It is not possible for any of us to go through life without getting rained on. There is no question that you will face challenging and serious circumstances from time to time. The only question is: How are you going to handle those difficult situations in your life?

Getting the best possible outcomes, results, for our lives, depends very much on how well we are able to respond. When things go wrong, our emotions will be affected. We’re going to be unhappy, sad, angry, frightened, disappointed. We may need to take action to improve or otherwise deal with the situation.

We need to keep in mind that a problem, an issue, a situation, circumstances, all of these are a matter of interpretation and perception by each individual. A rug is a rug, a car is a car. You can see them and touch them. But a problem is a concept. I can show you an object, but I can’t show you a problem. For example, if I show you a car that has just been destroyed, and the car is neither yours nor mine, then we don’t see any problem. We just see another car ready for the junkyard. But, if it’s your car or mine, then one of us will believe that there is a problem.

A vicious dictator, who has killed and tortured many people, dies. His family and henchmen may be sad and crying. For them it’s a big problem. The majority of the population of that country may be dancing in the streets and celebrating. For them it’s no problem.

When something occurs that we are unhappy about, or that we believe is having, or will have, an adverse effect on our lives or on the lives of those we care about, only each of us can rate that event, the situation, the circumstance, as to its seriousness. If it were an earthquake, would it be a 10 on the Richter scale, or just a 1 or 2? Should we treat all problems as calamitous? How will we feel if we do that? How we will deal with all those 10s?

We are not made of stone. When troubles come, we feel the emotional pressure. I find it useful to imagine that we all have a mental, emotional, garbage can in our heads. Perhaps it exists in our hearts, entire bodies, and in our souls, not just in our heads. The point is that our emotional garbage can is only able to hold so much in the way of troubled feelings. When that pressure builds beyond a certain point, we can no longer stand it. We must have relief.

There are only three ways to relieve the pressure in our emotional garbage cans, other than by dying:

1. We can become ill, go crazy or behave violently. If the level of pressure from our perceived problems stays too high for too long, our suffering increases, .

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