Handling Stress

[HKHaugan]

Handling Stress

       Stress is a major internal feeling that requires relief.   From schools to corporations, stress programs have been undertaken to help students and workers cope when the pressures they feel demand more than they can give.  We are part of a stress-conscious public with a smattering of TV stress gurus offering a fix.  They present bodily and meditative exercises most anyone can do.  Add physical exercise, a specialized diet and you have an industry promoting health of mind and body with all kinds of machinery and methods to invigorate the sense of well-being. 

       One word has captured the spotlight when we talk about stress relief, mindfulness.  It has a euphemistic ring that tells us we can be in control of our lives, that our mind can take control of any situation and process circumstances.  If mind-full is the subject, what are we filling the mind with?  Those I have spoken to who practice it, mindfulness has been a help in bringing a sense of calm when otherwise emotion might have ruled the day.  Most of what I have been reading about mindfulness is centered on how the individual should respond to stress. 

       But first, what is stress?  Stress is the pressure of a moment when external forces are creating internal tension.  Mindfulness is taking stock of that moment, isolating it in the mind and breathing rhythmically to reduce its stress.  There are different methods to isolate the cause like picking an object to focus on while breathing.  There are breathing cycles that can be learned through self-disciplined practices.

       But doesn’t stress involves more than the mind?  The heart and its attitudes have to be measured and the motivation of one’s spirit, the driving force behind our reactions, comes into play as well. If stress is not understood in its totality, breathing will be nothing more than a continual survival exercise, survival being the conditioning belief shaping an individual’s life. 

       Internal stress has one major cause, fear.  Fear is an emotion residing in the heart. An anxious heart is fear in motion. Worry is extended fear.  Extreme forms are terror, horror, panic and dread.  Another way to put stress is when you feel ‘uptight.’  We all know what that’s like.  You can see it in the eyes of others as they nervously look around to make sure they are ‘fitting in properly’ to what is going on around them.  There’s the mindless chatter, nervous laughter, discomfort and itchy need to move from one person or place to another.  The object of this faux congeniality is to look good which means social survival for another day.  Fear.

       Stress arises in the intensified awareness of the moment with one major concern, self-preservation.  What we feel in the moment of stress is the mind immediately jumping to the conclusion that the circumstance I am facing is uncontrollable and I will be its victim.  Fear has an emotional gravity that draws false speculation and anxiety inducing images of worst outcomes.  Yes, we can breathe our way through some of those, like counting to ten and taking a breath.  The more sophisticated have practiced methods using external objects of choice with their accompanied breathing cycles.  Concentrating on that object and breathing rhythmically with it in mind.  Physical exercise in its many forms works similarly.  All this is not to say the activity is bad.  It has been helpful to many.  Like yoga with its physical movements that encourage internal calmness, mindfulness partners with it as a mind moment mender.

       However, what about the next moment and the next and so on?  At what point does the self-centeredness become so self-dependent that self is more important until it is the only thing that is important and everything else has to fit around the calmness of the self, the me, the I?  Is it addictive?  Where does it all end up?  Also does it answer life’s basic questions of personal meaning, significance and purpose with its relational demands that have good and evil, right and wrong attached to all we do?  Is not its purpose the emptying of the mind? 

       Our minds don’t rest.  They were made to actively process our circumstance.  They are an image of particularity in Creation showing the active Mind behind them.  God’s Mind is actively keeping it moving and His people relationally growing, discovering, inventing through analysis and decision making.    It is a spiritually created universe with spiritually created people, images of Him.  Everyone is on the move.  They are built that way.  Their minds are full of His impress whether they believe in Him or not.  He is mind-filling, mind-inspiring, mind-activating, His living Word being the generator.  Our minds are always processing everything even in their sleeping dream time.  Those deeper questions of purpose, meaning, identity and function are persistent.  They will emerge at some point where personal lifestyle and ultimate truth will either collaborate or depressive aloneness cancels the relationships for which we were made. God has set eternity in every heart (Eccl.3:11).

       The very fact that we feel stress is an indication of a basic human condition, aloneness and personal imperfection.  That joint condition permeates our thoughts, emotions and behavior.  It’s what we know to be sin, a spiritual condition of assumed self-importance that cannot be avoided.  Sin is what separates us from God and one another.  Sin covets the mind that denies its presence.  Sin starts early in a person’s life and thrives on the idea we are basically good because we intend to be good even when we’re bad.  If we just act good, we won’t have stress. And if we have stress in any form, it can be overcome by our wanting to be good, whatever ‘good’ is.  ‘Yeah, I make mistakes, but I know I’ve got a good heart.’   ‘I do get angry a lot but I’m getting better at controlling my temper.’  ‘I resent the heck out of my boss,’  I have a disagreeable neighbor’ and more.  Sin always finds a way to justify any behavior right or wrong.  Another of sin’s favorite pastimes is rationalizing our thought and behavior.  Excusing oneself is a rallying point for those who want to feel safe at any given moment.

       The only answer to sin is external.  It’s reaching out to our Creator for forgiveness.  That’s why He sent His Son Jesus to give us the good news that through an ongoing relationship with Him, the stuff of sin, fear and pride, can be forgiven just by asking.  It’s the heart and its attitudes, especially the attitude that let’s us feel we don’t have a problem inside us.  We can solve our own problems.  Now here’s the truth.  If we start breathing spiritually, the whole person, mind, heart and spirit, will be filled with the Holy Spirit.  He is the breath we need for any moment not only of stress but of choice and decisions, emotional response and reaction that have to be made. 

       The great promise in living completely in the Spirit is that it is ongoing and fulfilling. If you are not feeling stress, you are not growing.  Remember that fear is the enemy of faith.  Fear is a spiritual issue.  Not physical cautiousness, but fear for relational and social survival.  It’s turning stress which is caused by fear over to the Lord who treats its cause. “We take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ (2Cor.10:5).” This is an eternal relationship started and lived in the present.  It is spiritual, personal, relational and communal, not only with God but with all those that know Him.  It is the breath of the Holy Spirit being breathed at every next moment.  The spiritual oxygen that makes up Holy Spirit breathing is the faith, love, grace, kindness, compassion, sound mind, peace, balance and stability of God Himself.  Spiritual breathing comes with being spiritually centered in thought heart and action, the Spirit of God being the inner drive.  It comes through letting the insights in the Bible be the focal objects for thought because with that thought is the living Spirit empowering it.  And this along with the sharing community of those who know Him and believe in Him.  You are never alone.