To deal with the chronic pressure of daily mental war, a stress-management industry is flourishing. We seem willing to try almost any stress-reduction technique just so long as we don't have to distract ourselves from combat to address the cause of our stresses. We take short vacations from the rat race or purchase relaxation tapes and self-help books designed to calm us down, at least for a little while. We swallow the latest herb or medication that promises to relax us or to reduce the depression caused by failed "success".

We try to numb our stress response with alcohol or overwhelm it with the surge of adrenalin that comes with risky behaviors like jumping of bridges tied to elastic bands or having sexual affairs. We fail to ask why there is so much stress in our life in the first place when we have at our disposal the means to cure it rather than just manage it. We have our attention.

The choice of where we put our attention is, ultimately, our most powerful freedom.  Where is yours? If you hope to detoxify your stress, you need to be willing to do more than try to 'cope' with stress. You will need to challenge the degree to which you have allowed it to characterize your living, working and loving. You will have to stop thinking about fighting for your piece of the pie and start thinking about making a whole new pie made from different mental ingredients than competing (with yourself, especially!).

Most stressed people are not stressed by the world. They are creating a stressful world for themselves by the competitive meaning they give to their daily living. It's not really stress we have to cope with, it's how we attend to our world. Stress is not out there. It's in here.

So much of the distress we experience comes from inside. Whether or not we experience stress (in the sense of distress) depends partly on how we react to things. A distress reaction is something we create in ourselves. It is our perception of events rather than the events themselves.

Believing that it is the EVENTS keeps us in a victim role. What causes one person acute anxiety may be a minor inconvenience to someone else. But don’t fall into the trap of discounting your feelings by making comparisons to someone else. If something causes YOU distress, take it seriously and take action to relieve the pressure.

Many of us are proud that we have been able to build up our tolerance for stress so that we can handle more and more of it. We believe it is a sign of strength. What that actually does is create a vicious spiral. The reason is that our stress is always equal to our current level of tolerance.

So if we learn to handle lots of distress – guess what? We’ll always feel lots of distress.

A major cause of distress is dishonesty – and it starts with being dishonest with ourselves. Dishonesty with others is important, but it is secondary to that basic dishonesty with ourselves.

We are often more dishonest with what we do not say than with what we do say. This is also true of organizations and of political parties. Collectively, as well as individually, we have learned to be quietly dishonest.

And it wears us out. It is THE major source of all human distress. Dishonesty KILLS us – our dishonesty to OURSELVES, within OURSELVES.

Which of us has not told ourselves, oh yes, it’s ok to continually work lots of overtime, work the weekends, ignore our personal life – we tell ourselves that we can take it, our bodies can take the punishment, and so can our relationships?

Throughout the world, there are different approaches to dealing with the problem of 'burn-out' or exhaustion from distress. The Western world has devised many distress management techniques but fails to confront the SOURCES of distress. We’ve mortgaged our personal lives and our health. How many of us are living as if our bodies have a 15 amp fuse rather than the 5 amp fuse most of us really have? It may sound simple, but believe me, it is not easy!

Will power is rarely the problem – it took a lot of will power to get where you are now, right? So it is NOT about will power - and some addiction programs actually claim that willpower is a character defect! It is about awareness of priorities and needs; about lowering tolerance for distress and learning to recognize it before it becomes a big problem.

Yet, this is just the opposite of what we’ve been taught. Distress is a signal that we are in an unhealthy thought process. Seeing distress as a signal can wake us up to the fact that we are thinking inappropriately - and that can begin to shift how and what we are thinking. Try to notice your distressed feelings earlier in the stress cycle. This creates a shift in your thinking and puts you back in the moment.

The longer it takes to recognize your distressed thoughts, the more difficult it is to get back on track. NOTICE your distress signals as they emerge, before they ruin your day. If it’s too late and you’ve already lost it, take a deep breath and STOP. Go for a very short walk. Figure out some way or ways that can work for you. It’s different for each of us.

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