“Stress is a chemical reaction in our brain and body designed to prepare us for fight or flight. These chemicals do not exist in the situation but in us. No situation is “full of stress,” and therefore, there’s no such thing as a stressful situation.”
~ Bill Crawford
Subscribe
Subscribe to Dr. Bill’s “Quotes and Wisdom from the Top of the Mind” Newsletter
Click Here
Quote & Video Gallery
It Is Impossible For A Situation To Be Stressful
Okay, if you are someone who read this and reacted with either confusion, resentment, or anger, let me explain what I mean and don’t mean by this statement, and why you want this to be true. First, I don’t mean that situations can’t trigger stress, or that your stress is somehow your failure to cope, or “your fault.”
However, I am going to suggest that if you are wanting to have more influence over your stress (anxiety, frustration, annoyance, resentment, anger, depression, etc.) then we need to change how we describe the experience. In other words, we need to ensure that we are dealing with the facts, and describing the situation in a way that supports the goal of becoming more influential.
First, we need to understand that we have been given some bad information with respect to what stress is. We have been told that stress is what something or someone does to us. Traffics stresses us out, work stresses us out, deadlines stress us out, difficult people stress us out, etc. The good news is that this isn’t true, because if it were true, we would have changed all of those external stimuli in order to influence our level of stress.
Stress is actually a series of chemical reactions in our brain and body! These chemicals are, for the most part, adrenaline, nor-adrenaline and cortisol, with cortisol being the most powerful. In fact, the job of cortisol is to rush throughout our body shutting down our immune system and our digestive system and increasing our production of glucose, because glucose is where we get our energy in a fight-or-flight situation.
Therefore, given that stress is really a series of chemical reactions in our body, there can never be a “stressful” situation, or a situation that is full of adrenaline, nor-adrenaline and cortisol!
Just think about it… both a lake and an ocean are full of water, and therefore, when we walk in to them, we will get wet. However, a situation can never be “full” of these chemicals, they are simply what is triggered in us based upon our reaction to whatever we are dealing with. This, by the way, is why different people have different reactions to the same situation.
Therefore, if you want to have more influence over the quality of your life, I suggest you adopt the perspective that there is no such thing as a “stressful” situation, and begin to become skilled at triggering the sort of chemicals (serotonin, endorphins, etc.) that help you feel better and think clearer.
Take care and God bless, Dr. Bill