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As focus and fear turns to the amount of craziness and chaos in the world continuing to explode, it gets harder to stay sane in an insane world - or not get sick trying. Plus, we've all got our own problems to deal with personally. Simply put, stress is the "gift that keeps giving" until it's unwrapped. In that sense, it's benevolent. I think that's why it stays in what we call the subconscious until it is brought forth. Until your body/mind considers it safe to unwrap. Someone once said, "Hell is the possibility of sanity." In a manner of speaking, it's a good type of hell, because it puts you back as the CEO of your life, despite the outside world's demands for "happy insanity." And it can be as temporary as a minor setback if we're actually allowed to get through it - but, we are compelled early on to avoid it, "be happy," suppress, distract, entertain it away, rationalize, deny, fix it immediately, wrap a bow around it...

This will help you look it square in the eye and evaporate it...

There are also ways that sound healthy to deal with stress and some of them truly are. Some of them only scratch at the surface. This is a technique that reframes the problem. It doesn't necessarily remove the problem, but removes the explosive charge - one that some people keep up for years - and allows clarity to deal. Really deal.

Maybe you are already empowered by the following - maybe it was instilled in you early on or you figured it out with growing wisdom. Each upcoming generation is given their outlets, it appears, through social engineering. Anger, stress, and frustration turned inward and left unchecked leads to powerlessness and grief.

The mind may logically know when something happened in the past and is over, the body does not. Fight or flight is triggered all the time (often by memories), even when there is no fire, or no bus about to hit you when you step off the curb. When stress from past events is left to brew it wreaks havoc on the immune system, creates constant fight or flight, and drowns a person in inflammation-flaring cortisol hormone. (That's not even the tip of the iceberg) During this time, it's nearly impossible to continue healing and dealing, because everything in the body is now focused on this "emergency." And it is a legitimate emergency for that person, so it's important to especially take care of oneself if it's a personal crisis, and treat it like a flu.

There is talk of stress management all the time - how much and how many times are people intended to rise up to it? No one - at least none of the self-help or new age "gurus" - ever talks of reducing it, do they? Why manage it, there's too much of that going on as it is... It needs to arise or we get discernment conditioned out of us, but the body always knows when it's been hit.

Stress is boiled down to these 3 things:
  1. Something you have (or that happened), that you don't want (didn't/don't want to happen)
  2. Something you want (to happen), that you don't have
  3. Denial - having something (or something that happened) but pretending you don't
    • ignoring or avoidance add gas to this fire
Here are 4 options:
  1. Change your situation - whatever is in your control to change, if that's what you really want
    • This would be the time figure that out as a way to solve the problem, are you up for the change? If not, that's okay too. It might not be a problem that needs fixing, just something that we don't like
  2. Change how you view it/feel about it - not always feasible, but it's often possible to reframe, deal and move on
  3. Stay miserable, suffering etc - this is an option
    • Some people either never arrive here or stay stuck here because, they've distracted it away. It helps to know when this option has been chosen
  4. Acceptance, i.e. embrace the "crapstorm" - it's not here to stay
    • This allows anything that needs to surface do so, and leave like the storm
Hope I don't sound too much like Stuart Smalley when I say that none of these are "bad."

I don't believe life can be boiled down to a neat list, but awareness of these stressors/options precludes reactionary behavior and further suffering. It reins in people's energy and personal power so that they are in control of their lives, and are not unwittingly socially guided or following the expectations of others. It keeps someone from being stuck on one with the added stress of "I shouldn't do/be/feel" whatever.

The problem is a "crapstorm" where stress is the response. The storm is no respecter of persons and for the most part, is outside one's control - "it happens." While it can sometimes be a result of the consequences of choice, there is no moral judgement attached to it. In other words, it's not a punishment or a cashing in of "karma points." And no, you did not attract that fender-bender into your life - believing that robs personal power and actually takes a person out of the driver seat. Attaching sentiments like that can add unnecessary pain. Constant worry or bracing yourself does this too.

Supposedly, asking yourself "is that really so?" when you internalize or "why is it so easy to deal with this and solve the problem?" can command your mind to quietly come up with answers. It doesn't hurt to try.

Do you have anything to add? Feel free to impart your wisdom below!