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Since this is a book about stress it is important, from the start, to establish what we mean by stress. Many people discuss stress as if it is some sort of external agent or event that has attacked them. In fact, stress is not something external that you can define, identify and measure. Stress is the disturbance created within you by your response to a situation or activity, be it internal or external.

Stresses can be pleasant, such as the excitement caused by an anticipated pleasurable event. They can also be unpleasant and cause you distress. It is these unpleasant stressful responses to situations that we will be discussing and dealing with here.

This book will show you how to handle these unpleasant stresses in your life by a new and positive method, one that helps you to get to the real heart of the problem and solve it. In this way you can rid yourself of all your responses to situations and people that currently cause you to feel worried, anxious, fearful, angry, resentful, guilty, dominated, out of control and many other unpleasant emotions.

You will learn how to eliminate the stress from your life, once and for all. You will learn how to discover the real causes of the way you feel and how to change so that your life is stress-free and positive. You will still have challenges but they will be of your own choosing and will not distress you. Stress in itself is not bad; it is part of the challenge and excitement of life. It is the stresses that cause distress that we are aiming to eliminate.

To eliminate this stress you will not be taught first aid techniques for handling it. Techniques such as deep breathing, relaxation, meditation, learning to count to ten and so forth may indeed help you to handle the stresses you have now, provided you practise them consistently, but they will not eliminate your stresses. They may even work against you. I recently spoke with someone who said they did their relaxation techniques so well before an exam that when it was time for them to write the paper they were too relaxed to put a lot of energy into it and as a result they failed.

The ideas described here are not designed to help you cope with stress. They are designed to reduce and even eliminate the times you feel stressed, the times you feel an unpleasant response to a situation.

Identifying the problem

Most people have problems and most people put these problems down to stress. The trouble with this is that it is not specific. The statement ‘I am stressed’ does not identify the problem and so it does not lead to the finding of a solution to the situation.

Over the years countless patients have come into my practice saying that they are suffering from stress, with no details as to precisely what they mean by that, as if the term alone explained everything. It sometimes even seems that they think of it as some sort of bug they have caught, for which they are not responsible. As they might expect, inappropriately, an antibiotic from a doctor for a cold, they seem to expect a few vitamin pills or herbs from a naturopath to give them the calm they desire.

The really troublesome aspect of their approach is that their argument seems to go like this:

My life is not working at the moment, there are problems. I have too much to do, too little money, too many responsibilities, too little time. I’m not loved enough by people I love, my friends let me down, the boss is impossible, the children are a worry, the news is always bad, times are tough. If only the recession would lift, the children would behave, the boss would retire, my marriage could be the way it was in the beginning, people would expect less of me, then I would be happy.

In other words, if those outside situations changed then they would be happy. There is rarely a recognition that they could change and thus improve the situation.

There are always many seemingly rational explanations for the fact that your life is not exactly the way you want it to be. It is all too easy to assume that the solution lies outside yourself, in the world at large. The problem is that you cannot force all these external factors to change in the way you would like them to. The next assumption is that since you cannot change these external factors, you are helpless to improve your situation.

The comforting thing about this assumption and this attitude is that the problems are not your responsibility, they are not of your own making and you cannot be blamed for them. The trouble with this view is that since, for things to get better in your life, things outside your direct control have to change, you are helpless and the best you can do is to try to make the best of things and learn tolerance and acceptance.

This attitude means that the solution to your present stress must come from improving your ability to handle your present, apparently unchangeable, stresses. Thus you do relaxation exercises, deep-breathing exercises and go to classes on other stress-handling techniques, all aimed at increasing your ability to cope. Sadly, these are largely quick fixes and rarely work on a long-term and permanent basis to make your life happier and more stress-free.

The alternative method is to believe that you are indeed, in some way, responsible for the way you feel. You may not be able to control the recession, but you can control your own finances and the way you think about them. You may not be able to force the children to behave differently, but you can change the way you treat them and the way in which you respond to their behaviour. You can assume that a way does exist to create a more comfortable relationship with your boss and you can then work on discovering it.

While this approach takes away the comfort of blaming outside factors for your situation and stops you being a victim who deserves sympathy, it does give you a powerful tool in return. It encourages you to make the positive changes that will indeed lower the amount of stress you experience. So let’s explore this approach further.

The concept of stress

Stress is not a new or rare concept. Almost everyone, at some time or another, thinks they are stressed. The overworked, overworried, unhappy person knows they are stressed all the time. Worse still, they will claim their problem is (non-specific) stress rather than concern over a specific issue. Even the happiest of people will almost certainly claim to feel stressed occasionally. There are few people who have not, at one time or another, said they were stressed. Most people feel stressed, and say so, at some point. People you know do. You do, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this book.

It may surprise you to know that stress, as an entity, is a new concept, a concept of the past 40 or so years. Our grandparents did not grow up with stress as a familiar word. They might have said they were worried, afraid, tired or had too much to do, but they probably didn’t lump it all together and call it stress. Today, however, everyone is familiar with the concept of stress. You probably think of stress as anything difficult, troublesome, painful, challenging or harmful in your life. You may blame stress for the way you feel and the way you behave. You probably blame stress for everything that goes wrong in your life, much that goes wrong with your body and most of the things with which you cannot cope. You may then blame these problems, in turn, for making you feel even more stressed. You may even think that if you had a totally stressfree existence your life would be perfect.

If you read the papers, magazines and books and listen to the media, you will have realized that you are constantly being exposed to the idea that you should reduce the stress in your life, you should learn to cope with stress, you should overcome stress and not let it get you down. You may indeed have tried the old and hackneyed so-called remedies for stress, but the stress and your feelings of tension and diminished health have continued. You may even be feeling more stressed by your inability to profit from the books on relaxation and meditation and your inability to conquer your stress.

All too often the problem of stress can become overwhelming. When you are under great strain it is easy to lose the ability to view yourself and the situation from a realistic perspective. You may then make a number of rash decisions, based on erroneous premises and create more stress for yourself, thus generating a vicious circle.

The pace of life is faster in the 21st century than it has ever been before. In the past we spoke to our friends face to face or wrote letters; later we used the phone; now we are supposed to be able to master computers, mobile communications, the internet, IT, WAP and a multitude of technologies. In the past we walked from place to place; now we are supposed to be able to handle with equanimity crowded trains on unreliable timetables, road chaos and traffic jams or near misses in the sky. In the past we lived close to the earth with space to move and breathe freely, space to be alone or with friends; now we live in crowded towns and cities, rarely exposed to the peace of the open countryside. When some of us grew up we had a full expectation of getting a job and finding full employment for our whole working life; that is no longer the case. We used to live in a relatively unpolluted world; now we consume or are exposed to thousands of toxins, many of which affect our emotional state and mental clarity. No wonder so many people feel that stress is on the increase.

Where other books on stress tell people how to relax, how to meditate, how to do deep breathing exercises, in this book you will be taken back to the ultimate source of your stress and given assistance in identifying the specific problem. ‘Stress’, as a word on its own, is, as we have seen, too vague and non-specific. It is an amorphous monster waiting to attack and forever evading defeat. If you say you are stressed, there may seem to be little you can do about it. On the other hand, if you say you are frightened, you can identify the object of your fear and deal with it. If you say you are angry, you can identify the cause of your anger and do something about it. If you say you feel guilty, you can identify the cause of your guilt and do what is appropriate to assuage it. In phrasing the problem you also identify the area of your life with which you have to deal. By putting the problem into a large miscellaneous basket labelled ‘stress’, it loses its identity and becomes some overwhelming ogre that you cannot fight.

There are, however, several levels in this self-exploration. At the first level you may say you feel stressed. At the second level you may identify the major problem in your life as worries about money. In turn this may worry you because it may mean you cannot provide for those you love. At an even deeper level you may fear that if you cannot provide for them they will leave you, or they will think badly of you. Thus you will, in time, get down to the ultimate problem, your own insecurity about yourself.

You can deal with specific emotions more easily than with unidentified ‘stress’. Finding the root cause of the problem will enable you to solve the problem rather than just deal with it. Here we will be working together to find the specific cause of your feelings of stress and then to resolve the issues involved.

Once you have done this you no longer have to deal with stress, you no longer need to feel stressed, and it is easy. The solution, once you have grasped it, is not something that you have to work at remembering to do. You do not have to be disciplined and force yourself to deal with the problems in the new way. The new way, once you fully grasp it, becomes the obvious, easy and most satisfactory way of dealing with the challenges in your life. It is like walking through a peaceful and newly discovered mountain pass rather than having to struggle to climb the rugged and dangerous mountain. Just as you do not have to discipline yourself not to struggle over the rugged mountain to get to the next valley, once you have discovered the easy pass, so it is with this new way of dealing with the situations that arise in your life. It is much easier than the old approach.

This book is divided into two parts involving respectively your emotions and your physical health. Before you start on your journey it is important for you to consider whether or not there is a physical basis for any of the stress you are feeling. A number of physical health problems can lead to you feeling stressed, uptight, easily irritated, depressed or anxious.

The first, and major, part of the book covers your own internal emotional and intellectual responses to situations and the ways in which these can be changed. The second part covers the physical health problems that can generate feelings of stress. If you think there is a physical health problem to be solved then take a quick look at Part II. After all, there is little point in working through Part I and searching for problems in your apparently happy childhood when the real cause of your present situation is the tension caused by consuming a food to which you are allergic, the jitters caused by hypoglycaemia or the emotional disturbances resulting from an excess of Candida albicans in your system.

You may indeed have unresolved issues resulting from your parents’ divorce or your feelings of being second best as a child, but focusing on these will be of only partial help if you neglect your nutrition and suffer physical ill-health as a result. Most people will find that both parts of the book are important and helpful.

Do not be misled by the fact that the second part is the shorter of the two. It is meant as a guideline, to point you in the direction in which you need to go for better physical health. The first part is the longer of the two, as here we explore the emotional aspects of stress in greater detail than the physical ones. It offers some new concepts on ways to deal with stress, concepts that have been used extensively with patients and workshop participants and produced exciting results, concepts that, therefore, warrant a more extensive explanation and discussion.

It is now time to outline the various components of the book in greater detail.

Part I: The emotional aspects of stress

Your first challenge starts right here. The following 10 points are fundamental to the method of dealing with stress presented in this book. Read these 10 points before you read the rest of the book and as you do so, become aware of your own reactions to them and, more importantly, write these down.

You will almost certainly feel like arguing with some, if not most, of the points listed. You may want to claim that things are not your fault, that you cannot change things but are stuck in a highly stressful situation. You may argue that there is nothing to be done about the stresses in your life or that if there is then someone else should be doing it. You may insist that things are so bad there is no way out and the future can only be worse. Write these thoughts down.

You may protest that the ideas expressed are familiar to you, that you have read or heard them before, that you have done the things that are suggested and yet you still feel stressed. Write these comments down.

Keep these notes handy. Read the book and do the (mental) exercises suggested. Make the changes that seem appropriate to you. Then, when you have completed the book, read this section again with your original notes beside you and discover how much you have changed.

Once you have done this you will realize fully how much less stressed you are, how much better you are at handling your life and how much more in control and happy you are.

Having said all that, it is worth pointing out that, like the instruction to write down your goals, 95 per cent of you won’t do it, 5 per cent of you will. If you do you will get far more out of this book than if you don’t. I am assuming that you are one of the five per cent who will.

There is one further task for you to do before you start. Make a list now of all the things that stress you in your life and the reasons why you find these things stressful. Include all the big stresses in your life but also all the small stresses, the little things that cause you problems. Some of them may seem too small to mention but write them all down now. You will then be able to use this list as you go through the book. Any time you have an insight into one of your stresses you will be able to check it off as something you can now deal with in a different and more peaceful and productive way.

Stop reading now. Follow the above suggestions. Write this list down before you read on. This is essentially a practical book, not a book to be read through fast and taken in passively. The method works, if you do. Make your list and then read on.

You are in for an exciting journey in personal growth and development. If you follow through with the things you will read about you will also find that life is a lot less stressful for you in the future.

Dealing with external stressors

• If you can change the external stressors in your life then do so. If you feel cold, put on more clothes. If you hate your house and can move, do so. If a divorce is really essential then get on with it.

• If you cannot change the external stressors, then working with the following points will help you to reduce your feelings of stress. Even if you can change the external factors, working with the following points will help you to create a stress-free future faster than you could otherwise do.

Here we go.

1 Stress is your own experience; it is personal to you and generated by you. It is not directly to do with things outside yourself; they are only the triggers to a response from within you, a response that is individual to you. There is no such thing as a universal stress.

This covers a controversial and, at the same time, exciting approach to stress. The controversial hypothesis presented here is that there is no such thing as stress. There is only your own, individual, response to situations. This may set you thinking and even protesting. Yet we will persist with the idea. According to this hypothesis there is no such thing as a universal stress ‘out there’ that comes to ‘get you’. There is only you as an individual and your response to a situation.

Most people find speaking in public to be a highly traumatic experience. A few people love doing it and thrive on it. Many people find a cocktail party or a similar social gathering to be a high point in their social calendar. Some people find this a highly stressful experience. They are frightened of what people will think, unsure of what they will say or do and delighted when the evening is over. Most people love a chance to lie on a sunny beach and soak up the sun as they let the tensions ooze out of their life. A few people find this a highly stressful situation, feeling frustrated at the lack of things to do and accomplish. Most people hate wars and fighting. A few people look for wars and are only happy when in highly dangerous situations. Some people find routine jobs boring and stressful, other people love them for their predictability and their routine. Some people feel stressed by challenge. Others respond to and thrive on it.

There is no single thing that is a universal stress. There is only your response to the outside world and the situations it provides. These you will either enjoy and respond to positively or will dread and fear. When you fully understand this you have made the first step in recognizing and then reducing the stress in your life. The next step is up to you.

2 Feeling stressed is your choice and you can choose to continue or to stop. It is up to you to make the changes.

Since stress is an individual thing experienced by you in response to both external factors and your own inner interpretation of them, you can be in control. If you are willing to change your response you can reduce or eliminate your feelings of stress.

Will you continue on your present path or are you willing to learn more about yourself? Are you willing to change yourself so that you do not respond to the outside events with all the reactions that you now group together under the heading of stress?

Your immediate answer may well be, yes, of course I am willing to change, I do not want to go on feeling stressed. However, a surprising number of people are not willing to be the ones to change. They think other people should change first. Others insist they are willing to change yet they do not do so. Others change a little and then stop. Perhaps they think that other people should now change too. Perhaps they think that there has not been sufficient benefit from the changes they have made. Just a few people are willing to change, and keep on changing and developing, until their life is just the way they want it and their stress is negligible.

3 You can use the awareness of what stresses you to learn more about yourself and then use this knowledge for change.

Finding out what causes you to feel stressed tells you more about yourself than about the stress. Some people like responsibility, some don’t. Your response says more about you than about the responsibility. Some people like solitude, other people don’t. Your response says more about you than about solitude.

The next step is for you to find out why a perceived stress in your life is indeed stressful for you, and why it makes you feel uncomfortable. The causes behind your response almost certainly lie somewhere in your past. After all, they can hardly come from the future, and the present is but a fleeting moment. You may have to search back to infancy and childhood. You may only have to go back to times in your earlier adult life.

One woman, Rosemary H., felt stressed every time her queue in the supermarket was not the fastest. By using various techniques that are described later in this book, she came to realize that this reaction stemmed from a feeling that if she was served last she was not getting the attention she deserved, and this in turn meant that she was not good or important enough. This came from a childhood where she was the youngest of four and her older siblings were always calling her stupid simply because she, being three years younger than the youngest of them, could not keep up.

When she understood this and realized how many things she had achieved in her life, she was able to develop the assurance she needed to be ready to drop the belief that she was not good enough. Her feelings of stress in queues then evaporated. Instead she spent the time usefully in thought and contemplation, or took something to read with her so the time in the queue wasn’t wasted.

Another woman felt stressed every time she thought about the fact that her husband, a senior executive laid off in the recession, was no longer supporting her. The money was not the issue – they had reserve assets and his golden handshake. Her problem was a subconscious belief that if he didn’t make the effort to go out and look for another job, hard to get at his age, and if he didn’t actively work to support her, he didn’t care, if he didn’t care then he didn’t love her, if he didn’t love her she was no longer part of the loving and nurturing relationship that she craved.

Her stress came from the underlying fear of not being loved and nurtured, not from the more obvious cause of having a non-working husband. The stress she felt both caused her direct distress and led to overeating. This increased her weight which in turn made her feel more stressed, inadequate and unlovable. Once she identified the real problem she was able to discuss it with her husband.

The solution was not for him to go out and work again but rather for him to show her how much he loved her. Even more importantly, she had to develop her own sense of self-worth since, without that, all the loving he gave her would be insufficient for her to feel secure in that love. Resolving her beliefs about being inadequate and unlovable helped her to deal with the situation and reduce her experience of stress. She was then able to enjoy the free time her husband had and they started to share a number of hobbies. In the long run her recognition of the underlying problem brought them closer together.

Learning how to look at the subconscious beliefs that make you respond to outside events and experiences in a manner that you label ‘feeling stressed’ can lead you to a number of positive results. Provided you act on what you learn, are willing to change and to put the information to good use, it can take the stress out of your life, increase your self-respect and self-confidence, increase your positive plans and improve the outlook for the future.

4 Be willing to change what you are doing if what you are doing is not working and has not been generating the desired result.

Have you ever seen anyone beating their head against a brick wall? Unless they are mentally ill, if they beat their head against a brick wall and it hurts they will soon stop doing it. Yet at the emotional level this is what many people do for much of their lives and it leads to enormous stress. They continue in behaviour patterns that result in rows, in disappointment, in irritation and frustration, in boredom, in being let down. Sometimes they even realize what they are doing yet refuse to change; more often they don’t.

Harold sat across from me telling me about his ulcers and how stressed he felt every day. He ran a small retail business, a delicatessen and a takeaway food bar with lunch-time catering. He was very successful but at great cost to his health. The work was intense all morning as the staff got the food bar ready for the lunch-time crowd and for the regular orders to be delivered to nearby offices. Then came the lunch-hour rush when everyone wanted their sandwiches or take-away food in a hurry. Once or twice a week there would be a sudden phone call during the morning for a rush order of 50 sandwiches to be delivered by one o’clock to an office that was not on the regular list, or for a double order to be delivered to one of the regular customers. This upset Harold’s routine and caused him enormous stress. So much so that he blamed the stress of his job for everything else that went wrong in his life and for his ulcer.

‘There is nothing I can do. How can I stop feeling stressed? I shout at the staff and tell them to work harder but they won’t. They don’t seem to care, and it all comes back to me.’

Was he willing to put on more staff? No, that cost too much money. Was he willing to look for better staff? No, that took too much time, he worked non-stop as it was. Was he willing to tell people their orders had to be in by nine o’clock? No, he might lose customers. Was he willing to sell up and find a more routine business? No, this was not the time to sell. He had just built the business up and started to make good money.

Harold was not willing to change. As I asked him to consider other options all he could focus on was the reasons why there was no alternative to his present actions.

Stop beating your head against a brick wall and be willing to change. If you are not, then you must ask yourself why you are not, what benefit you are getting from your present course of action. Harold was not willing to change. Ultimately that is an individual’s right, but it does not lead to a reduction in stress.

Christina’s problems were with her boss and her family and the demands that, she felt, they each made on her time. Her boss kept giving her work to do at the end of the day with the result that she stayed back to complete it, missed her express bus home and got in too late to cook dinner for a tired and irate husband who had arrived home an hour earlier and for two teenage children who were no help around the house. She told me that her job was stressful, so was the boss, so was the travelling, so was her husband who expected her to do all the housework as well as her job and so were the children who wouldn’t help. She had plenty to say, to me, to her boss, to her husband, to the children and to anyone who would listen about the problems they and other people caused in her life. But what she was saying and what she was doing weren’t working. Her words and her deeds did not change the amount of stress she experienced.

She had told her boss repeatedly that she had to have the last letters before three o’clock so she could get them typed and finished and get the express bus home. She had told her husband she couldn’t help being late, it was the boss’s fault. She had told the children over and over again that it was time they did some of the chores round the house. She kept talking. It wasn’t working. But she kept doing it.

What she really wanted was for them to change. The real solution was for her to change. She could either change her job or change her reactions or change the way she handled things. If she didn’t she could continue as she was and complain and feel stressed. Until she was ready to change she would feel stressed, no matter what changes occurred externally. Like Harold, she had to be willing to change. In addition, she had to be willing to take responsibility for the way things were and not to blame everything on the other people involved.

We will follow Harold and Christina’s stories as we move to the next point.

5 You are responsible for all that happens, and has happened, in your life. Be willing to assume that you are in total control. Be willing to give up victim status.

There is a definite pleasure, for many people, in being badly done by, in having something to complain about and in getting sympathy for their hard lot in life. You may prefer getting sympathy to relying on people liking you for yourself. You may feel that other people will be more tolerant, more kindly, more generous if you yourself have something to complain about and are deserving of sympathy. You may feel ashamed or guilty if everything in your own life is going smoothly.

Does this apply to you? If the answer is yes then congratulations for recognizing a behaviour pattern that you can now change to your advantage. If you think this does not apply to you then ask yourself when did you last tell someone about something bad that happened to you. What was your motive in telling them? Were you seeking attention, sympathy, a ready ear? What was your goal? Why did you want to be seen as a victim?

Harold enjoyed being a victim. He, in some perverse way, enjoyed having things to complain about. Later on I spoke with his wife who worked with him and she said he seemed to thrive in the mornings. If things were going wrong he could complain of the terrible time he was having. If things were going smoothly and all the work was getting done he complained at the lack of orders and what that would do to their income. She also told me that Harold’s father had been the same and that he had, ultimately, been a successful man.

‘I really think that Harold feels he can only be successful if he is worked off his feet. Also,’ she said with rare insight, ‘I think he feels guilty at how well we are doing and how much money he is making and only feels he has deserved it if he has suffered to get it.’

Until Harold is willing to make changes in his attitude and give up the need for victim status he will continue to feel stressed and continue to have and get ulcers, whatever medication, drug-based or natural, he takes to help him in the short term.

Christina’s response was different. Initially she complained that it was not her fault that she felt stressed. It was the fault of her boss and the way he did his work, the fault of the children who would not help to prepare dinner and the fault of her husband who did not earn enough so that she could work less. She was a victim and relished the complaining this allowed her, the sympathy it earned her and the limelight that fell on her.

When she decided to accept that she was responsible she also learnt that she did have the ability to change things and to control the situation. After some sessions during which we explored her options and her fears, she was ready to change. She talked with her boss and explained the situation to him and told him that from the following Monday she would leave on time, no matter what work he gave her to do late in the afternoon. She told the children that they would have to take care of their own rooms and their own clothes and her husband that, if he wanted her to work full time, he would have to help with dinner or they wouldn’t eat.

The results surprised her. Her boss did not sack her. After two days of letters not sent on time he reprogrammed his work so she could have them typed and completed by the time she was supposed to leave. After a week of having no clean or ironed clothes to wear, the children got the hang of putting their dirty clothes in the washing machine and after only one evening with bread and cheese for dinner her husband started to prepare the vegetables and have things ready for when she got home. Since she was now able to catch the express bus, they finished up cooking dinner together and having that time to share their news of the day.

She admitted to feeling a little uncomfortable at having nothing to complain of but soon got used to the new regime and, as she said, it was amazing the way everybody was benefiting from the changes.

6 Get clear on your outcome – what are you really trying to achieve? Are you trying to prove someone else wrong, to force someone else to change to the way you want them to be, to have something to complain about – or do you really want to reduce your stress?

Let’s continue with Christina’s story. After these changes had come about she was able to acknowledge that they had been relatively easy. When asked why she hadn’t made them before she came to understand that what she had really wanted was to prove everyone else was wrong. She had wanted to prove what a thoughtless boss she had, how unhelpful her children were and what an inconsiderate man her husband was, expecting her to work full time and be a housewife as well. She was looking for sympathy for her hard lot in life. When she got clear on her goal of having a relaxed and stress-free time both at home and in the office, it was much easier for her to let go of her grudges, change the situation and reduce her stress.

7 Know you can cope. Avoid the stress caused by fear of the unknown. Imagine the worst possible scenario. Find out how you would deal with it. Then get on with handling the present.

A lot of stress comes from your fear of the future. You worry that this will happen, you’re afraid that that won’t happen. This in itself is stressful. It also reduces your ability to deal with the present and your ability to prevent this unwanted future. Further, since this bad future may never happen, you may be experiencing the stress needlessly.

The solution is to allow yourself to imagine the unimaginable. Create the worst possible scenario that could occur, the worst possible outcome that would result if all your fears were realized. Then plan what you would do. You would cope. Somehow or other, with the exception of the few people who opt for suicide, we all do cope. Recognize in detail just exactly what you would do and how you would cope. Then look for the benefits, even small ones, in this scenario, for there certainly will be some once you learn how to look for them.

Once you know that you can cope, no matter what happens, then you can free yourself from the crippling effects of your fear. If the outcome is bad but only half bad or two thirds bad then you are better off than you might have been.

You can either view a glass of water as half full or half empty. It won’t change the amount you have to drink; it will change your level of stress. If you have recognized what you will do if it becomes empty then you can enjoy the half you have rather than fret over the half you haven’t got.

This will give you an enormous increase in peace of mind and free your energies so you can focus on achieving the best possible outcome and deriving maximum enjoyment of the present.

8 Believe in a positive future, that whatever happens will be for the best, but do this without ceasing to care and without developing a laissez-faire attitude.

A lot of stress comes about from the belief that something bad will or could happen. The stress of public speaking is based on a fear that you will make a fool of yourself or that people will think badly of you. If you were totally convinced you would be a roaring success, you could look forward to the event with equanimity. The stress of an argument with your spouse may be due to an underlying fear that they are being unfaithful or are considering a divorce. If you knew that you were going to remain happily together then the argument could be an interesting difference of opinion. The stress at work could stem, not from the work itself but from a fear of losing your job. If you knew you were about to be promoted, the work could be an enjoyable challenge.

Thus a further aspect of minimizing the experience of stress is to believe in a positive future. Choosing to believe that the future will be good can take a lot of stress out of the present. Choosing to believe that any apparent setback is merely a move to allow something better to occur can reduce your experience of stress. These beliefs can also put you in a positive frame of mind such that you deal with current situations more productively and more peacefully than you would when afraid of negative outcomes.

Perhaps you are looking for a house and see the one of your dreams, one that is ideal and covers all your requirements. If you decide that you absolutely must have it and that no other house will do, you put yourself under enormous pressure. You will put in an offer and start biting your nails with the fear that someone else will offer more or that something will happen to jeopardize your purchase. If on the other hand, you work hard to get it but choose to believe that if you do you will be thrilled and if you don’t it is because you are about to find an even better one, you can save yourself a lot of stress.

There are two aspects to this. Firstly the belief helps you to proceed with a minimum of stress. Secondly it leaves you in a frame of mind in which you can negotiate the price from a position of strength. If fearing you won’t get the house and believing it is the only possible one, you get anxious, you are likely to offer a higher price than necessary and the owner will recognize your desperation and hold out for an even better price. If on the other hand, you choose to believe that if this purchase doesn’t come off you will find an even better house, you are more likely to base your offer on what you truly believe the house is worth rather than on how much you want it.

A word of warning here. If you translate this to mean that you don’t care if you get it or not, on a ‘laissez-faire’, ‘she’ll be right’ basis, this is a cop-out and you are missing the point. Stay positive and do go for your target but don’t live as if your life depended on it or as if another even better option isn’t possible.

9 Much stress is caused by your fear of other people’s opinions of you and your deeds. Decide who you are and who you want to be. Get a clear statement of purpose, develop your own Life Plan. Keep this clearly in your mind, live by it and many of your stresses will dissipate.

Much stress occurs simply because you don’t know who you want to be or what you want to achieve. Thus you are tossed around in a sea of other people’s opinions with no firm anchor.

If you are too timid the go-getters and positive people will call you a wimp. If you are too strong the nervous and the under-achievers will call you aggressive. If you are too noisy and outgoing the timid will call you brash. If you are too quiet and retiring the extroverts will call you dull. If you do too much for other people the selfish will call you a doormat. If you do too little for others the generous will call you unhelpful.

Too timid, too strong, too noisy, too quiet, too helpful or selfish for whom? For them? For you? By what standards are you judged? By what standards are you willing to be judged?

Create your own standards. Decide who you are and what you want to be. Once you have decided this and are happy with your description of your ideal self then live by it. If someone criticizes you, check it out against your own standards. If you have done the right thing according to them then relax. If you have not then use this as a learning experience and plan how you can change in future.

When you are behaving according to your own standards it is not possible for you to feel stressed by the opinions and criticisms of others. If you find repeatedly that you still feel stressed, even when you are doing what you think is right, it may be time for you to reassess your own standards. If they need to be changed, change them. If they don’t then find out what the underlying problem is, why you are still feeling stressed. There are many ways described throughout the book for doing this.

In the same way set out the plan for your life. Be very clear on your goals. Once you have done this, work towards them. Recognize the things you will have to avoid and omit if you are to reach them. Recognize the things you will have to do if you are to reach them. Once you are happy with this then get on with your life, head in this direction, clear in the knowledge of where you want to go.

Many stresses will then fall away. The stress or anxiety of not having a fixed income will be lessened when you recognize you are doing the appropriate study to reach your goal. The anxiety or discomfort of being pregnant will be reduced when you keep in mind the large family you want. The stress of not being invited to a party is reduced when you know your career is of prime importance to you.

Having a clear idea as to exactly who you are, who you want to be and the type of life you want to have leaves you much less vulnerable to other people’s opinions and criticisms than when your goal is to please everybody else at all times, an impossible task, and when their opinion is of paramount importance to you.

10 You are terrific. Most stress comes from your feelings of inadequacy. Develop full confidence in yourself, be willing to like, love and approve of yourself. If you don’t, who will?

You grew up in a world where, under the disguise of modesty, you were taught to put yourself down. You were taught, under the guise of generosity and caring for others, to put other people first, to put others ahead of you, to give them the biggest slice of the cake, to let them go first, to praise them before praising yourself.

This is fine as far as it goes, but sadly it is all too easy for it to have negative repercussions. For most people, having been taught, as children, to put other people first has resulted in a diminished respect for themselves and their own achievements. In clinic work, in workshops and in life in general I have found that most people have a poor opinion of themselves. Even the boasts and bombasts, under all the external cover-up, have, deep down, the fear that they are not good enough, not clever enough, not loving enough, not helpful enough, not successful enough, not sufficiently worthwhile.

Learning to love yourself, like yourself, approve of yourself and be comfortable with yourself and the way you are is a major way to reduce the stress in your life. This does not mean you should be aggressively telling everyone else how wonderful you are, boasting, hogging the limelight or telling everyone else you are better than them. It does mean having the inner certainty that you are OK. You are perfect just the way you are, for this moment in time.

This attitude does not mean that you do not recognize things about yourself that you wish to change. We are, hopefully, all on a path of growth, change and development. It does mean becoming content with yourself, being willing to give yourself the unconditional love and acceptance that you give to other people to whom you are close.

It is a sad comment on the way we bring up our children and that you were probably brought up as a child, that for most people this is one of the hardest steps to make in reducing stress. Learning to give yourself full love and approval may be the most difficult step to take; at the same time it is also one of the most powerful.

These and many other similar concepts are discussed in detail with practical examples throughout the first part of this book. These ideas follow on from the ideas developed in two earlier books, Choosing Health Intentionally and Choosing Weight Intentionally. In these, attention was focused on the way that thoughts, emotions and past experiences affect an individual’s health and weight. Here these ideas have been developed further and applied, specifically, to the stresses in your life.

There are other topics covered in the first part. You are given tools that will help you to understand yourself better and to learn more about past problems and past experiences that you are letting, often subconsciously, contribute to your present stresses. You are given tools with which you can unearth some of the subconscious reasons why particular situations stress you. One such technique is Running a Phrase. You are told how to go back into the past in ways that will help you to unearth buried memories, memories that may have been suppressed yet may be the cause of much of your stress. You are shown how to take the remembered trauma out of past stressful situations and to reduce the impact of these situations on your present stress. You are encouraged, and shown how, to have positive beliefs about yourself instead of being self-critical.

In these and other ways you will be able to understand and remove the stresses in your life. Having recognized old triggers and old sensitivities, you can reassess present situations and will, almost certainly, decide to view them in a new light.

You will learn to be proactive and to create your own life, just the way you want it, rather than being reactively jerked around on the strings of other people’s opinions and emotions. You will spend time assessing just exactly who you are and who you want to be, which values are important to you and which aren’t, and therefore which criticisms are relevant and may assist in your growth and which aren’t. You will learn a lot of wonderful things about yourself that, so far, may have gone unrecognized.

You will also be encouraged to use the amazing power of your mind to change both the events and the situations in your life and your attitude to them and to yourself. By the end, if you go through the processes with real conviction and serious intent, you will be able to relegate stress to the position of a negligible problem in your life. Things that once stressed you will become positive challenges and learning experiences to help you develop further.

You will find one or more of the 10 points that we have discussed at the beginning of some of the chapters that follow. This is meant as a guide only. Many aspects of the 10 points itemized above will come up more than once throughout the book, to a greater or lesser degree. Having the major concept of the chapter at its head will help you to incorporate it into your thinking. Repetition, often in a different disguise, will help you to become familiar with these ideas and techniques and to make use of them more readily.

Part II: The physical aspects of stress

While most stress comes about as a result of your mental and emotional states there can also be physical contributing factors or causes. Thus it is wise to make sure that there are no physical health reasons for your feelings of stress. These physical factors may seem to be a direct and prime cause of your stress. Alternatively they may seem to be contributing factors that decrease your ability to handle the other stresses in your life. Either way you will need to deal both with the physical factors and with the emotional ones that result from them and may also have contributed to them.

It is the old chicken and the egg question. Which came first? The emotional stress which caused you to make excessive demands on your body and give it diminished care or the physical problem which led to your emotional stress and worry and which in turn led to the physical problem? The nice thing about chicken and egg situations is that you can begin to change things by working with both the chicken and the egg. So do both.

Clearly any physical health problem can cause you to feel stressed. Anything from a toothache to the knowledge that you have a fatal disease will stress you. However, there are some physical health problems that can, as part of their symptom picture, generate nervous, irritable and stressed emotional states. These include such health problems as allergies, candidiasis, hypoglycaemia, poor nutrition, poor immune function and the effect of toxins. If these problems are part of your experience then you can, by doing what is necessary to your lifestyle to improve your physical health, greatly reduce your stress at all levels, physical, emotional and mental.

Be warned, though, that it is all too easy to blame these possible physical causes exclusively for your stress and thus to avoid making the mental and emotional changes discussed in Part I. This is a mistake and leads you back into victim status, this time a victim to your body.

If you are not willing to make the necessary changes in your diet and lifestyle described in Part II you may at some subconscious level be showing your preference for hanging on to the physical problems as useful excuses for your emotional stress rather than facing up to the emotional and mental changes that are necessary. If this is the case then working through Part I is even more important for you.

It’s time now to focus attention on some of the physical health problems that may affect your ability to handle the outside (perceived) stressful events in your life. Some examples are outlined below and you may find it useful to consider if they could be affecting you in some way.

If you suffer from hypoglycaemia, a condition characterized by low blood-sugar levels, you will not feel relaxed and comfortable. Instead, following a large meal or an intake of sugar-rich foods, your blood-sugar level will first rise and then fall to disastrously low levels. When the level is low you will feel anxious, irritable, uptight, frightened and out of control. Under these circumstances any outside pressure at all is likely to have you complaining that you feel stressed. The slightest thing that happens will trigger off an emotional response and you will complain about the level of stress in your life.

It is not of paramount importance that you reduce the outside events that are perceived as stressful, nor is it of primary importance that you learn relaxation techniques and do deep breathing exercises. The answer is to deal with the physical problem of your hypoglycaemia. The way to do this is discussed in the relevant section in Part II.

Alternatively you may suffer from allergies. Eating certain foods may make you feel anxious or irritable. It is unlikely that you can recognize these foods yourself; they are usually masked food allergies. Fortunately, tests are available by which you can identify them. If allergies are part of your stress problem the answer is not to learn to relax but to have the appropriate tests done and change your diet accordingly.

You may suffer from a variety of infections, possibly only minor ones, that leave you feeling vulnerable and anxious. Again, the answer is not to learn to relax and deal with the stress, it is to take better care of your diet, take nutrient supplements if necessary and improve your immune function.

You may be suffering from vitamin or mineral deficiencies, or candidiasis or lacticacidosis (see Part II, pp. 319–22, 341). In all these situations and in many like them you will have a reduced tolerance for outside stresses. In addition, the physical health problem can generate its own stresses. Yet again, the answer is not for you to do deep breathing exercises, learn relaxation techniques, meditate or listen to tranquillizing music and sounds. The answer comes from dealing with the physiological problem that is stressing your body to such an extent that you have reduced emotional balance and reduced tolerance for external and perceived stresses.

Thus the first part of the book deals with your individual reaction to an outside event based on your past mental and emotional experiences and on what that event means to you at a subconscious level. It also includes the necessary background to the way you use your thoughts or the way in which you are at the mercy of your thoughts and how to control or change them to your own benefit. Techniques are included that will help you unravel your past and be more relaxed about the present and future.

The second part deals with any physical problems you may have that will reduce your tolerance to outside events and explains how these physiological problems can be remedied.

When you use the two approaches together you will have the tools needed to reduce your perceived stress levels to near zero.

Overall

In the course of researching this book I have asked a large number of people the same question, namely ‘What do you find stressful?’. The one outstanding result from this has been that no two people find the same things stressful. Things that stress one person are no bother to another. In fact, things that stress one individual may even be a positive pleasure to another. The conclusion from all this has been to bear out the hypothesis that there is no such thing as an independent entity called ‘a stress’ on which everyone can agree.

Rosemary H., already mentioned, found standing in supermarket queues thoroughly frustrating and she would mutter and fume at the slowness of the check-out girl and the customers in front of her. Another woman thought long queues were wonderful: they gave her time to stand quietly and think, an oasis of time in a busy day that seemed to be all rush and go.

One man, Peter L., felt very stressed when family members depended on him to know what to do and how to do it in any emergency. Tom D., on the other hand, loved being asked for help and thrived on the challenge of an emergency; but when nothing was happening and no-one needed him he then felt anxious and unwanted.

Denise H. could only complete a task when she had a definite deadline and knew it simply had to be done by then. Once she knew or set the deadline she could settle down and get on with the job. With no deadline she would potter around, getting nothing done, and feel thoroughly dissatisfied and stressed at the end of the day as a result of having achieved so little. In contrast Charles T. hated to be rushed or have deadlines. He accomplished most when he could get on quietly at his own speed. Knowing he had to have a job done by a certain time or date could freeze him into immobility and diminish his output.

What does all this mean? It means that each individual responds to outside events in a way peculiar to them. If you experience the outside events as pleasurable, fun, satisfying, challenging, exciting, positive, etc. you are unlikely to call them stresses. If you respond to them as worrying, frightening, threatening, unsettling, disturbing etc. you are likely to call them stresses.

Stress rating scale

A patient once said to me ‘I wish there was a pain scale so I could measure my pain on it and tell you I have pain at level 4, or whatever, just as there is the Richter scale for earthquakes. Then you would know what I am feeling.’

This is an understandable wish yet impractical because the pain of a cut finger can be nearly intolerable to one person and barely noticeable to another, or it can be unbearably painful when you are bored and thinking about it and of little consequence when you are absorbed in something exciting that you are doing. Pain is a subjective experience, so is stress.

Many efforts have been made to quantify stress and then measure the effect of a given number of units of stress on the body. They have failed. One such scale was quoted in Choosing Health Intentionally (X. K. Williams, Letts, 1992). This scale ranged from death of a spouse at 100 points, through being fired from work at 47 points to minor violation of the law at 11 points. In the original study it was found that 49 per cent of the people who scored more than 300 in a twelve-month period developed serious health problems.

However, this also means that 51 per cent of people who scored over 300 points did not develop serious health problems. Either their bodies were more robust or their experience of stress was much milder. In fact this is fairly obvious. The death of a spouse is going to be a far greater stress for a devoted partner who depended on the one who died than for a partner who was already contemplating divorce. Travel is a major stress for people who like a structured life with a steady routine whereas for those who are easily bored and like constant excitement it is a delight, and so forth.

It all comes back to the basic premise that is worth repeating over and over. There is nothing that is inherently stressful. It is your subjective assessment of the situation that determines whether or not it will be a stress.

This is a good time to consider the dictionary definition of stress. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary it is: (i) a constraining or impelling force; (ii) effort, demand upon energy; (iii) emphasis or; (iv) force exerted between contiguous bodies or parts of a body. Another way stress is described is as some outside factor that impacts on you the object. In these definitions there is no suggestion that a stress is either good or bad. The stress of the wind on the yacht’s sails is what keeps the yacht moving once the helmsman masters the art of harnessing this stressor.

Pleasures may also be stresses. Anything that takes you outside your routine may involve a stress. Going on holiday involves the stress of deciding what to pack. Having a party involves the stress of extra cooking. A new and exciting job involves the stress of leaving old friends. There are stresses that you welcome and enjoy and call excitement and there are stresses that offer no pleasure.

Life without stress or challenge would be very dull and boring indeed. To avoid this and to avoid the pain of unwanted stress you need to convert all the unpleasant stresses into challenges, non-events or pleasant stresses.

It is time to start. If you think your problems are purely physical you may want to have a quick look at Part II and attend to whatever you feel needs attention. However, I strongly encourage you to work with Part I in depth. If you can sort out your reasons for thinking of things as stresses and learn to respond differently to them you may not only solve your emotional problems, you may also start to treat your body differently. The physical problems of Part II may disappear and thus their consequences may cease to be perceived as stress.

In other words you could be in a catch-22 situation. The thoughts and emotions you find unpleasantly stressful could be causing you to do things that are contributing to your health problems which in turn could be reducing your capacity to deal with situations in a non-stressful way.

Finally

Most of the contents of this book apply to most people but certainly all of the book does not apply to all people. As has already been said, it is common to find that something you thrive on worries someone else and things that other people take in their stride cause you considerable anxiety.

For this reason there may be times when you want to put the book down or skip a section, insisting it is not relevant in your case. This may be true but beware. If you feel irritated, impatient or uncomfortable with a section it may well be that it is in some way making you nervous by triggering off an emotion or concept that you have managed to bury. This may be the very section from which you can benefit the most.

The ideas expressed here have been developed over many years in clinical practice and in workshops. During this time thousands of people have, directly and indirectly, contributed their experiences and their response to this approach to dealing with stress. Very few ideas are original. Much of what any one person creates is a combination of many inputs that are then gathered together and developed further by the individual concerned. So it is here.

Many different techniques have been included in this work. Some have been successful; others less so. Over the years these have been distilled into my own particular way of working. I owe grateful acknowledgement to many sources often now long-forgotten. Most of all I owe thanks to the many thousands of people who have entrusted me with their confidence and shown a willingness to explore their innermost thoughts and experiences, out of which has come, hopefully, their opportunity to create a happier and much less stressful future.

Overall it can be said that the results, achieved largely through the efforts of the individuals concerned, have been impressive. Some people have made major gains, others have been willing to take only small steps. The most unexpected people have shown a willingness to make huge changes in their lives, to push their fears to the limit and to face up to and explore their inner anxieties, their uncertainties and past traumas. They have had the courage to take a good look at their past and their own attitudes and out of what they have learnt in this way to create a new and independent future, largely free from stress. You too can do this.

I have learnt many things during these years. I have learnt never to second guess what is bothering someone. The moment I do we get off track. Only you know what you feel. Only you know what is right for you. Only you can make the changes. I have also learnt that, by using the methods described in this book, people have been able to deal with a wide variety of stresses and come through smiling. The more willing you are to work with these ideas and explore them fully, the more successful you can be and the better your life can be in the future.

Finally, I have learnt to have great respect for every single person, not to judge them but to value them just as they are. Each individual is a single and valuable entity. Each individual is perfect, just as they are, for their present step on the pathway of their own chosen growth and development. This is true however much they plan to change and grow in the future, both immediate and distant. You too are perfect, however much you want to grow and change, and as soon as you can value yourself in this way you can have a happy and stress-free life.

One further point is worth emphasizing. The object of this book is to enable you to be in control of your life, your emotions and your responses to situations, to give you a clear base from which to enjoy your life and its relationships. It is you who can alter and improve your life, no-one else. For this reason you are not encouraged to lean on anyone or anything, including this book. At no time will you be told that it is all right in this particular situation to blame someone else, to depend on someone else rather than yourself for support and succour, to lie back and say that this time, just this time, the stress is too much and you cannot cope. You will always be encouraged to find your own way out, to rely on your own inner strengths. By all means relate to other people, share your emotions with them and welcome their concern for your welfare. But what happens if you are depending on them and they are not there for you? If you are relying on them and they don’t help, you have yet another stress with which to deal.

By not relying on others you are not becoming heartless or cut off. By being independently strong, centred and focused in such a way that you do not have stresses in your life you are not cutting yourself off from the normal interplays of emotions and relationships. On the contrary, when you are self-sufficient and centred you have much more to offer to other people. You no longer relate to them in a way that involves blame or guilt, strength or weakness. You will no longer try to manipulate situations, emotions or people, nor will people be able to manipulate you. Your relationships will be much more clear, honest and harmonious.

There may be times when the approach may seem to be heartless. It is not, nor is this the intent. There is a fine line between empowering you and seeming to be uncaring. The aim at all times is to empower you. I care too much to want to deprive you of your ultimate resource – yourself and your own strength.

This is a very practical book. You will be given a lot to think about and a lot to do. The result should excite you. Start reading – and enjoy.