Last issue we learned about stress, both acute stress which lasts for a brief period and then is gone, and chronic stress which can last for weeks, months, years and even a lifetime. Our response to difficult situations is what determines whether the situation is stressful to us. We also learned that what is considered stressful for one person is not stressful for another person. We are very individual in our responses to situations in our lives. This is determined by genetics and previous life experiences. Some people seem to be relaxed about almost everything, whereas others react strongly to the slightest stress. Those who have lived through traumatic events tend to be more vulnerable to stress. Most people react to stress somewhere in between these two extremes. We also looked at events that would be considered stressful for anyone. And then, there are situations in which there may not be an external stressor, but our own negative thoughts can create an internal state of stress. And then we become our own stressor. For example, you may see that your boss seems out of sorts, and you decide that he is unhappy with you. When, in fact, the way he is feeling has nothing to do with you.
There are two types of stress—physical and psychological. We can be physically exhausted by strenuous work, but if it continues, the stress can also affect our emotional state. There is also the impact of an accumulation of small stressors that can become overwhelming. Large stressors can also lead to a number of other stressors, such as the death of a spouse. Not only are you dealing with a significant loss, you may have to deal with issues such as loss of income, learn new skills that your spouse used to take care of, and the need to develop new social supports. No matter what the source or type of stress, our physical response is the same. As we learned last issue, chronic stress can permanently damage our bodies. We may develop a weakened immune system, with resulting physical or mental illness.
Therefore, when we look at stress, it can happen “to us” or we can also bring stress on ourselves by the way we think about a situation.
Good stress can actually enhance our physical and mental functioning, whereas bad stress wears us down, both physically and mentally.
How do we ensure that our responses to difficulties are healthy and even beneficial? Can we actually shut off our stress response so that life events do not affect us in a negative way? The answer is “yes”! By the grace of God it is possible.
Stressful events are a fact of life. You may or may not be able to change your current situation. But the Lord can give you wisdom to take steps to manage the impact that these events have on you. Coping with stress is a process; we can learn coping s1trategies that can be used in many different situations. Once we learn some of these strategies, we are better equipped for future stressful events that may arise.
When we talk about coping strategies for stress, they can be viewed in two main ways. Stressors that are perceived to be changeable or can be fixed by using some problem-solving coping strategies. Stressors that are perceived to be unchangeable respond to emotion-focused strategies and the seeking out of a support system.
There are times in our life where we feel a sense of unhappiness or unease and we have physical reactions such as poor sleep and lack of appetite but are unsure of what could be causing this level of emotional and physical distress. These feelings indicate that there is some stressor in our life that is triggering these feelings. The first step in dealing with stress is to pray and identify what the stressor may be. Common sources of stress in people’s lives are related either to work, finances, school, family, parenting, relationships, health, and responsibilities. Once we are able to identify the source of stress, we need to ask ourselves several questions: Are there practical things I can do to remove the stressor in my life? If I can’t remove the stress, can I do something to reduce the impact of the stress? Is there something that I am doing that contributes to stress in my life? Each one of us may use different strategies to cope with stress—these differences usually reflect differences in personality, not effectiveness of the strategies.
Let us first look at some strategies that help us remove or reduce the stressful situation we are in. Firstly we need to look at the role that we play in our stress. Is there something that we are doing that could be contributing to the stress, or making it worse? Our attitudes towards a situation can create an even worse situation. For example, do we have unreasonably high expectations of ourselves or others that could be causing undue pressure? In school, do we expect to always achieve perfect marks? Do we expect our children to behave perfectly at all times? Do we expect our spouse to be attentive to all our needs? Do we need to make enough money so that we can have a big house, a nice car, or regular vacations? Can we stop sinning? Do we have certain expectations and put pressure on ourselves to make it happen?
Often our values about the way our life “should” be, puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on us. Challenging these beliefs and deciding to live a simpler life can relieve a lot of stress. We do not need to have the perfect children, house, job, or friends to be happy. We do not need to surround ourselves with material things to be happy. We have a Saviour who will forgive our sins and help us to live a righteous life. Being content with what God has provided for us will relieve a lot of stress.
Do we have goals in life that cause us stress? Do we have career goals that have expectations concerning the type of job we have, the amount of salary we should be making? We may need to change our career goals to be more in line with reality. We may not be able to achieve the type of financial success we are hoping for. Perhaps we will never reach the goal of finding a life partner and having a family and children. Sometimes we need to change our goals and set more realistic goals in order to reduce stress. We need to pray and ask God for direction, so that He can work out His will in our lives as we surrender our lives to Him.
When we see all the crime and corruption in this world, we see that people no longer have a love for God, do we constantly fear for our children when they go to school, and what type of influences they may be encountering? When we see people take advantage of others to “get ahead”, when selfishness and greed are all around us, how does this make us feel about people? When we feel disappointment and sadness about the way we see society becoming, we feel stressed. We need to look at our own beliefs and accept that people have beliefs that are not the same as ours, but as long as we treat others in a way that aligns with our own beliefs, we will feel good about our interactions with others, and also accept that the world is the way it is because of sin and corruption. When we teach our children our values and beliefs that we learned from the Bible, we can send them out into the world with the training that they need to be in the world but not of the world.
Sometimes the simplest solution to deal with stress is to distance yourself from the source of stress. If you have a job that is causing you a lot of difficulties, pray that the Lord will help you find another job; if you have a challenging friendship, end it; if you have too much debt, sell some of your belongings; if you live in an area with a lot of crime, move. Sometimes these solutions are not possible. Pray for direction and the Lord will either help you distance yourself from the stress or give you strength to manage the stressful situation.
Problem-solving often can be used to get things back on track to reduce stress. The definition of problem-solving is “the process of finding solutions to difficult or complex issues.” Sometimes a solution is obvious, but not always. Using a step-by-step process to problem-solve helps to achieve your outcome.
First you must identify all the aspects of a stressful event. This includes your behaviours, thoughts, and feelings. Behaviours would be things like needing to look for another job if you have been laid off from work. Identify thoughts and feelings that can be obstacles to your goal, such as “I’m a failure, I will never find another job.” Are you feeling angry about being fired? Negative thinking patterns can worsen the stress we feel. Recognize when these feelings come and focus on positive thoughts instead. “The Lord has given me many skills that I can use in a variety of different jobs.” Or “It’s no use being angry, it can’t change the past.” It is natural to initially feel upset, angry, and disappointed, but how you express these emotions are important so that they do not become all-consuming so that you can go forward. Say like the Apostle Paul, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13–14. Hanging onto negative emotions can make us stuck.
It is important to identify any physical responses such as fatigue or trouble sleeping that may affect your motivation to find another job; take care of yourself by addressing your physical needs. Give you burdens to the Lord. He can find you friends that can offer support and help in different ways, they can help us find solutions, or just provide a listening ear. Surrounding ourselves with an emotionally-supportive network is the most important strategy to cope with stress. Connections with others reduces stress. There are many sayings with similar meaning such as, “Grief shared is grief halved.”
The next step would be to brainstorm some options. Think of as many solutions as you can, even if some might be far-fetched. At this stage, do not criticize any of your solutions, just write them all down. You may consider jobs that might take you to another city, another country even. Or perhaps you consider a job that is not in your same line of work, but that you would be willing to try. Perhaps consider a part-time job instead of a full-time job. Consider jobs that you would never have considered in the past, changing your beliefs about the “ideal” job expands your options.
The third step is to evaluate. This step involves rating all the options that you have written down. Consider the likelihood that you will be able to carry it out and succeed. Identify the cost and energy of each option. And think of the solution in terms of its impact on other people. Rewrite your list in order of its rating. You may have the option of a lucrative job, but you will have to move away from your family. Is the job worth this sacrifice? For another job, you may have to return to school to take some classes to upgrade your skills. Will your new job give you enough of an income to justify the cost of taking extra courses? Bring your list to the Lord and ask for guidance. In which option can you bring the greatest honour and glory to God?
The final step involves acting on the option that the Lord has impressed you to follow.
We had mentioned that everyone perceives situations differently, which then determines how stressful we find a situation. Even though we might not be able to change the situation, we can decrease the amount of stress we feel by changing how we feel about something. We often feel stress because we do not know how to cope with the situation, we feel it is beyond our resources to deal with. Thus, it becomes a threat to our wellbeing. But, does it always have to be a threat?
If the Lord has helped us change something about the stressful situation to make it less stressful, we will feel a sense of control. He has helped us do something to help ourselves and the way we feel improves; our perception that the stress is a threat is no longer the case. We work in cooperation with the Lord.
For example, if you are struggling with managing deadlines at work, and always feel pressured to work extra hours to complete your work, you could send a quick prayer to heaven and then go and talk to your manager, and explain the struggles you are having and ask for help with solutions. The manager may even provide ways to reduce the amount of work or provide extra help for you to complete your work. Because you have taken the initiative to control your stress, you now do not have the same sense of feeling overwhelmed by it. However, if the manager says to you that there is nothing he can do to help you, that the expectation to produce results are still the same, then what do you do? You need to change the way you feel about the situation. You decide that you will see the deadlines as a challenge. Often this change in thinking will allow you to be more productive in your work, you are able to think more clearly and be more focused when you have a positive attitude, and you will find that the challenging deadlines are now manageable. Perhaps you can do some problem-solving, perhaps approach your work in a different way that may make you more efficient or work out a timeline as to when you should finish different parts of the project. Just ask the Lord to help you and He will.
A way to change one’s perceptive about something that appears overwhelming is to break down complex tasks into smaller pieces; this will make any task feel less overwhelming. Each time you finish a smaller piece of the task, you feel a sense of accomplishment that gives you motivation to keep going. The amount of work has not changed, but how you feel about the work has changed, and has decreased your level of stress.
Sometimes we have to accept the fact that the work we produce will not be “perfect” if we do not have the time to make it so, but accept that “good enough” is still a reasonable expectation. In my work as a nurse, I often do not have the time to do all what I would like for my patients as often we are short-staffed in the hospital. If I always had the expectation to do a “perfect” job, I would quickly get frustrated, and eventually burn out, and then would no longer enjoy going to work. But, when the Lord helps me to do a job that I know is “good enough”, where my patients are still well cared for, but
certain things I could not get done due to lack of time, then I can go home at the end of the day, feeling good about the work that the Lord helped me do that day, and still enjoy what I do. For many things in life, reduce your stress by thanking the Lord for helping you to do what is sufficient. By altering the way we interpret the world around us, we can gain control over stress. By allowing the Lord to change our perception about a situation, we can even gain the insight to see its benefits.
Often when unpleasant things or difficult events occur in our lives, we spend a lot of mental and emotional energy lamenting their existence. We wish that these difficulties would go away, we feel anger and resentment. A way to reduce stress when bad things happen is to use “radical acceptance;” this is accepting that sometimes there is nothing we can do to fix or change what has happened, or when something has happened that seems unfair.
Radical acceptance is different from regular acceptance. Regular acceptance implies that you agree with a situation. However, with radical acceptance, it does not mean that you agree with or approve, or understand what is happening, or what happened to you but you accept it.
Remember, all that happens to us is in God’s permissive will for our character development. These include events such as the loss of a job or the loss of a loved one either through death or a break-up. We cannot change how someone else feels about us, whether it is an employer or a partner. We cannot change that an event has taken place. Grief, anger, hurt, and disappointment are normal emotions when these things happens, but suffering results when the initial pain is prolonged due to a lack of accepting what has happened. We have to accept the fact that God is in control. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13
Radical acceptance also gives you permission to feel pain and sorrow. With acceptance and trust in God, eventually you will experience a reduction in the intensity of these emotions. You will accept that life has its ups and downs, and that to feel hurt is part of being human. When we can learn to accept pain, sadness, and grief as part of being human, and that it has purpose and value. It is possible to relieve the feelings of anger, shame, resentment and frustration, which keep us in a state of unhappiness. “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” James 1:2–3
We will than have hope that we will feel better, because we accept the reality rather than fighting against it. This is not easy to do, especially when things are going badly in life, but continuing to either avoid or dwell on negative emotions will only add to misery. This is where our faith can grow as we trust fully in the leading of the Lord, when we do not understand the negative things going on around us.
With radical acceptance, (accepting God’s leading) there is also a recognition that even if you are in pain, life is worth living. These thoughts reduce the amount of stress that a situation may cause. In the case of a death, rather than focusing on the unfairness of the death or that it should not have happened, you can accept your grief as a normal human reaction and find help in Christ and He will help you with your emotional struggles,. He will give you the ability to cope and recover from adversity, and to take positive action. This does not mean that we do not experience stress but we learn to successfully adapt to difficult or challenging life situations and to reduce stress. Thus we no more feel overwhelmed or helpless and relying on unhealthy coping strategies (such as avoidance, isolation, and self-medication).
To accept life on the Lord’s terms, and not on our own, is a conscious choice that we make thus allowing healing to take place by not fighting the situation or continuing to ask “why?” but accepting that “this is the way the Lord has laid out.” When we truly acknowledge our inability to change a situation that we are in, and relinquish all sense of control to the Lord, we have arrived at radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is not easy. In fact, it can require a lifetime of faith and trust in order to truly accept it.
We should not use radical acceptance in situations where we are being abused, taken advantage of, when we are experiencing fear, or if it is an obstacle to getting out of a bad situation.
A global example of a stressor that we have all experienced for the last three years is the coronavirus. It has impacted our lives in significant ways, and has many problematic aspects to it which we cannot control. It affected our ability to work and to travel. Many restrictions were placed on us such as the mandatory use of masks and often mandatory vaccines. People we love got sick and even died of covid and many of us are dealing with the long term aftereffects of a covid infection. I would say that none of us like this situation. This is a good example of the need for radical acceptance. We accept the situation as it is so that we do not make it any more stressful than it has to be.
Acceptance in Christ frees up the energy we would use fighting against reality so that we can take specific steps to actually feel better. Acceptance is active. It does not mean agreeing with stressful situations but it allows us to take steps to reduce our suffering.
Another powerful way to reduce stress is to be grateful. Gratitude is a sense of happiness and thankfulness in response to a fortunate coincidence or a gift. Gratitude should be a constant state of mind when we focus on the Lord’s goodness in our life, and see the elements that make life worth living. To experience gratitude sometimes involves a conscious effort on our part. Being able to show gratitude to the Lord, even in the worst situations in our lives, leads to having more positive feelings such as joy and compassion, while switching our thoughts from more negative emotions such as resentment and envy. Gratitude is also associated with a stronger immune system, fewer aches and pains, lower blood pressure and a deeper sleep.
There are people who have everything and still feel like they have nothing, whereas those who are grateful may have nothing but are still happy with what they have. Gratitude is a perspective that we make a choice to express. “Be content with such things as ye have.” Hebrews 13:5
To develop gratitude, keep a gratitude journal. Every day, write down 3–5 things that you are thankful to the Lord for in your life that day. Start your day on a positive note by writing in your journal when you first get up in the morning. Thank the Lord for another day of life. If you write in your journal in the evening, you can reflect on the Lord’s leading; the positive aspects of a day that may have been long and stressful. It helps to retain God in your thoughts when you focus on the positive things in your life. People who keep a gratitude journal feel happier and more optimistic about their lives, and are better able to meet positive goals and complain about fewer physical ailments.
If you are under a lot of stress, it may be difficult to find things for which to be grateful for. Under stress, our mind tends to focus on the negative because we think about “survival”—being able to figure out what needs to be fixed in order to reduce stress. Pray. The Lord will help you find a perspective that allows you to enjoy what is going right. Even being grateful for small things can pick up your spirits. Perhaps the sun was shining that day and you did not need to work in the rain. Thank the Lord. Try to make very specific statements instead of general facts. For example, instead of saying, “I am grateful for my health”, you could say, “I’m grateful the Lord has given me strength to walk to my job two miles away from home.” Or instead of saying, “I am grateful for my children” you could say, “I am lucky to have children who help me with my chores at home.”
It is important to ask the Lord to help you find the positive side of negative situations such as the loss of your health or financial hardship. Instead of only dwelling negatively on those things that are not working out, try asking the Lord to help you find something positive in those situations that you could be grateful for. “I am still unemployed, but I was able to feed my family because I was able to pick up a few odd jobs.” Or “I am concerned about my health condition, but I am grateful that this ailment has allowed me to realize how much I need to thank the Lord for each day and appreciate the value of life.” This will help focus on the positive in even the most dire situations.
Gratitude can also be expressed by thanking someone who has helped us. We recognize our connection to others and the role they play in our lives. This builds stronger relationships between spouses, families, friends, and colleagues. Think of how it lifts your spirits when someone thanks you for helping them; gratitude not only benefits the one who has received help, it also benefits the giver. The Lord loves to hear us giving Him thanks for the many benefits He has given to us.
This month is an introduction on coping with stress, both with stress that can be controlled and stress that is beyond one’s control. Now think of how all the principles that I have introduced can also be found in the wisdom that God’s word provides for us when dealing with life’s trials and difficulties. We will discuss those more in the next issue.