Coping Strategies for Stress and Change

Coping Strategies for Stress and Change

Stress and change appear as a daily part of most of our lives. It is rare to meet anyone who doesn’t feel stress over health or relationships or money, to name a few stressors. How we cope with our stress is the subject of this section. Notice that I have used the word strategies in the title here. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, we are each responsible for our own emotions, not the other person’s. Perceiving stress and acting upon stress is within our own interpretations of our life. We are not powerless here. I encourage you to look at how you cope with stress in terms of a strategy you are using and not a response forced upon you by the actions of another person or event in your life. This will help you clear your mind for the choices you are about to make toward your own well-being.

There are many strategies for coping with our changing world. Some are better than others. The best ones direct us inward as we develop relaxation and meditation. We will take a moment to explore some of the more negative and positive coping strategies.

Indirect Coping Strategies

Strategy 1: Drug and Alcohol Use and Abuse This strategy is not highly recommended but is often used. Drugs and alcohol keep our anxieties below the threshold of awareness. If we are not aware of inner tension, then we do not have to do anything about it. That is, we do not have to grow and change. And that is okay too. There have been times in my life, most recently after the death of my husband, when a glass of wine before dinner was a perfect coping mechanism for me. It took me a while to accept that I had no choice but to grow and change into a new single life. Ultimately, that decision may come to everyone who uses avoidance substances.

Strategy 2: Psycho-physiological Illness Illness represents a legitimate time out. It is a way to enter meditative states without guilt. After all, when we are ill, we have to stay in bed, and we are encouraged to relax and get well. Now, I am not saying that anyone, anywhere, consciously chooses to become ill, to acquire a disease, or to have an accident. I am saying that deep down in the mass consciousness, illness does represent a way out of our current stress. It substitutes a new stress for the old stress that made

us sick in the first place, and it therefore helps us change. It is no coincidence that the word disease can be shown as dis-ease, or lack of ease in the body or mind.

Often when we experience trauma in our lives, we end up getting sick. Just being aware of this tendence may be enough to avoid chronic illness by dealing with the trauma and stress in a healthier way.

Strategy 3: Defense Mechanism Defense mechanisms are attempts to get rid of stress by placing stress outside ourselves. Rationalization allows us to not feel responsible for, and therefore not guilty about, whatever it is that we think we should feel guilty about. When we project anger and blame, we are literally trying to throw our stress out of ourselves. Unfortunately, our stress is actually tied to us like a rubber ball, which comes bouncing back! Stirring up conflict is another defense mechanism often used. When we stir the pot, we hope to get the stress going away from us so fast that none will stick. Blaming others is probably not one of the best ways of coping.

Strategy 4: Escape and Avoidance We try to escape or avoid stress by leaving early, avoiding peers, increasing isolation, taking long lunch breaks, spending more time with paperwork, or spending time in front of the TV or computer. The list goes on and on. I imagine you can think of several of your favorite ways to avoid stress right now!

Direct Coping Strategies

Strategy 1: Relaxation Techniques Relaxation techniques are used as a principal means of coping when the environment is changing rapidly. They are used to relearn how to respond to stressful situations and include formal techniques like progressive relaxation, hypnotic induction, sensory awareness, meditation, autogenic training, biofeedback, visualization and imagery, yoga, tai chi, chi gong, and many more. We will be exploring many of these techniques in depth in the following chapters.

Practice Eleven Quick Relaxation Techniques

This book is filled with successful strategies for not only coping with but also effecting change in your life. To begin, experience one of the following quick ways to de-stress and change negative energy into well-being. I ask you to experience it, because if you only read these relaxation practices, you have not experienced them. I encourage you to experience as many on the following list as you can. Perhaps you will find one or two that work for you and do help change your frequency from stress to relaxation. Go ahead and try one or two!

The Four-Count Breath: Count silently to four while you inhale, and hold for four counts. Count silently to four while you exhale, and hold for four counts. Repeat for one to five minutes.

The Ten-Count Breath: Count to ten! But do it so you are totally aware of each breath you count. If you forget to feel a breath, start over again at one. Bodybreath: Inhale through your fingertips, up the arms, and into your shoulders and head. Exhale down your neck, abdomen, and legs and out your toes. Peacebreath: Inhale while visualizing peace filling your body from toes to head. Pause, and then exhale while visualizing tension leaving the body from head to toes. Groaning to Relax: For five minutes, give yourself and those around you permission to loudly groan away the stresses that have been building during the day. Laughing to Relax: Take a laughter break——for five minutes, just laugh!

Muscle Relaxation: Tighten, then relax, each major muscle group in your body. Begin at the feet and work up toward the head, then progress to toes, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, buttocks, stomach, back, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, head, and face.

Body-Mind Relaxation: Mentally breathe into each body part listed above, feeling warmth and relaxation begin to flow in each area.

Petting Animals: Find a dog or cat or another preferred animal companion and simply sit down and pet them! Self-Imagery: In your mind, re-create a relaxing place you have experienced in the past. Return to that place and live there for a few seconds or minutes. To do this, close your eyes and picture a place you have been to where you felt completely relaxed. For me it is when I crewed on a windjammer sailing ship. For you it may be inside with a book on a snowy day, on vacation, or with friends. Take three deep, slow breaths. Release each one. Allow that image to form in your mind. Feel the air. Sense the fragrances. Hear the sounds. Spend a few moments there now. The brain doesn’t know the difference between being somewhere and just remembering. While we tend to remember the bad things vividly, we usually don’t pay an equal or greater amount of attention to the good. Permit yourself, just for this moment to feel good. Then gradually open your eyes, more relaxed than before.

Guided Imagery: Guided imagery takes the listener to a special place——a waterfall, mountain, meadow, ocean——and guides the listener through a series of releasing and healing images. I’ve included the scripts for two guided imageries later on in this book: one in the guided imagery section in chapter 2 and the other in the chakra balancing section in chapter 3. I’ve also included some suggestions in the recommended resources section of this book.

Strategy 2: Music All music has frequencies. Look for music that matches the frequencies of your goals. An example is the Solfeggio frequencies, tones derived centuries ago in the study of numbers (numerology), which are used today in energy frequency healing. Jonathan Goldman is a forerunner in both the musical composition of healing frequencies and chanting. Along with John Beaulieu, he pioneered the therapeutic use of tuning forks to generate specific frequencies. Examples of seven Solfeggio frequencies and their reported effects include 174 Hz to help relieve pain and stress, 285 Hz to help heal tissues and organs, 396 Hz to help liberate you from fear and guilt, 417 Hz to help facilitate change, 528 Hz for help in transformation and DNA repair, 639 Hz to help reconnect you with your relationships, and 741 Hz to help provide solutions and self-expression.1

Play relaxing or motivating music in the background. You do not have to listen to slow music to relax. There are pieces of classical music designed for inspiration, motivation, and productivity that energize while relaxing! Explore the type of music that relaxes you, then listen to it often.

Strategy 3: Exercise Exercise is important to both mind and body. To gain the most benefit from exercise, it must be both regular and pleasurable. If your exercise is stressing you out, then it is time to learn the art of relaxation and apply it to your daily routines. We will look at the application of mindfulness to exercise later in the book.

Strategy 4: Diet Ayurvedic medicine is a system of medicine practiced in India for centuries. Its aim is prevention by balancing and cleansing the body-mind. We will be looking at this system in depth as we discover polarity element balancing in chapter 4. Included in Ayurveda are foods based on the seasons of the year and doshas, or natural body-mind types. Because what we eat has an effect on what we think, and vice versa, we can look to certain foods to balance our stress. Categories of foods include:

1. Gaia Staff, “Healing Frequencies of the Ancient Solfeggio Scale,” Gaia, March 14, 2022, https://www.gaia.com/article/healing-frequencies-of-the-ancient-solfeggio-scale.

Sweet: Sugar, milk, butter, rice, breads, pasta Salty: Sea salt Sour: Yogurt, lemon, cheese, vinegar Pungent: Spicy foods, peppers, ginger Bitter: Spinach, green leafy vegetables Astringent: Beans, lentils, honey

You may find the following foods helpful when looking at stress or relaxation. • To calm worry, fear, and anxiety, favor foods that are sweet, sour, and salty and reduce your intake of foods that are pungent, bitter, and astringent. • To cool off from anger or frustration, favor foods that are sweet, bitter, and astringent and reduce your intake of pungent, sour, and salty foods. • To stimulate and prevent procrastination and prevent resistance to change, favor foods that are astringent, pungent, and bitter and reduce your intake of sweet, sour, and salty foods.

Strategy 5: Changing Oneself Changing myself involves the acknowledgment, without guilt, that I and I alone am responsible for how I feel and what I am experiencing in my life. No other person can change me or make me happy. A helpful way to look at problems is understanding that a problem can never be solved on the mental/emotional level on which it was created. If we knew how to solve our problems, we wouldn’t have created them in the first place. We must look within our own consciousness for insights and strategies that help us think about old problems in new ways. Connection with our Inner Selves, Souls, Higher Selves, Inner Wisdom—whatever name you choose to use—will give us the ability to calmly observe our stresses and choose our responses without the drama we have been experiencing.

This inner work results in the emergence of a new level of consciousness, one that will not only enable our own lives to be better but will also enable us to help other’s lives to be better too, just by being around us. Relaxation and