Assisting the Muslim and non-Muslim communities of KW

Muslim Social Services

Safer Families: Responding to Stress, Wanda Wagler-Martin

            

             Countless books and articles have been written on the topic of stress.  Walking through the aisles of any bookstore or glancing through the bookshelves of friends and acquaintances will reveal this to be true.  And many of these are solid resources, full of helpful ideas to understand and respond to stress in one’s life.  I find it interesting that the more you read about stress the more you will realize that the same key principles are repeated by many authors.  However this reality does not seem to empower people in ways that positively impact their sense of being stressed.  Why is this?  I would propose that much of what is needed to change our experience of stress is not difficult, but that does not mean that it is easy.  Yet I am well aware that this is an area that many people identify as a priority for desired change. Understanding and responding to stress means shifting the automatic and familiar ways that we rely on to name and respond to the things that happen in our lives.  How we do this does not have to be complicated, but it does require some discipline to shift our automatic ways of being and doing. Here are some basic ideas for your consideration and reflection.

 

             We hear the phrases “I feel stressed”, or “I’m under a lot of stress” rather frequently, and ironically the more we hear these phrases, the more stressed we are likely to feel.  It seems that people are easily pulled into competitive comparisons regarding whose life is the busiest, with the understanding that this means they are experiencing the most stress.  Why would we want to win this competition?  It also makes me wonder why we invest a sense of status in such a claim?

 

             Essentially stress is any change that you must adapt to in your life.  It can range from the experience of a traumatic event to the joy of  falling in love or reaching a long-desired goal.  I think many people’s experience of stress can also be understood as an accumulation of the relatively minor effect of day-to-day worries.  Regardless of the content of our stress, it is key to realize that it is our response to life experiences that ultimately determines how stress will impact us.

 

Four key sources of stress have been identified:

-Our environment: The weather, noise, traffic--what goes on around us.

-Social stressors: Deadlines, conflict, demands--what we experience in interaction with others.

-Physiological stressors: Physical changes we experience throughout our lives, the impact of illness, injury and how we care for our bodies.

-Our thoughts: How you understand and name what happens in your life.

 

             Our experience of stress, whatever contributes to it, can impact our lives in many ways. Stress impacts our bodies.  If we do not learn to interrupt stress by learning to relax, the tension that builds in our bodies can affect our sleeping patterns, our level of energy and our physical health.  Stress also impacts our minds, affecting our thinking and emotional well-being.  It can lead to increased feelings of anxiety, depression, confusion and uncertainty.  It  can make us irritable and difficult to be around, which subsequently  impacts our relationships, with both ourselves and with others.  Clearly the risks of not dealing with stress in our lives can be costly.

 

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