Contents
It is considered to be the culprit of most diseases of the body and nerves. However, as studies show, the stress that poisons modern life contains an antidote.
Speaking about the causes of global stress, we usually mean bad ecology, the specifics of a stressful life in a metropolis, high social requirements, and in our country there is also not a very friendly climate. In a word, a whole complex of factors causing excessive tension of all body systems. In fact, the phenomenon of stress is closely related to one of the most important psychophysiological mechanisms in the human arsenal – the ability to adapt to change. If all stress disappeared from our lives, we would face imminent death: an untrained organism becomes simply unviable. As one of the famous researchers of stress, Canadian doctor Hans Selye, believed, we cannot avoid it, but we can use it if we better know its mechanisms and develop an appropriate philosophy of life.
What’s this
“Stress is different from stress,” explains the professor of the Department of Psychology and Psychiatry of the Clinic. Korsakova Nina Tyuvina. – The so-called acute stress is any emotionally significant situation, for example, the death of loved ones, a natural disaster, military operations. Chronic stress is a negative situation in which a person is indefinitely long: difficult work environment, problems in the family, dissatisfaction with personal life. Acute stress causes a special psycho-physiological reaction of the body, the purpose of which is to mobilize our forces and help us adapt to the situation. Chronic stress is different in that situations do not seem so critical to us, but their constant repetition leads not to adaptation, but to the accumulation of tension.
Relax facial muscles
This exercise is especially suitable for those who feel constant nervous tension, who find it difficult to fall asleep. Learn to relax your face – it helps to relax internally.
Furrow your eyebrows, then raise them in exaggerated surprise. Repeat this exercise until you feel that the forehead muscles are completely relaxed. With your mouth closed, lightly press your tongue against the inner incisors of your upper jaw and continue to push until your both jaws open. Relax your jaws. Smile. Close your lips, squeeze them, and then relax into a smile. Start over. Feel and be aware of the feeling you get from a smooth, relaxed forehead, relaxed jaws, and relaxed facial muscles. Try to keep this feeling in mind for as long as possible.
The reason is in ourselves
We live in an environment that stimulates our pursuit of personal happiness and professional success. The requirements in these two different areas of our being increase in parallel: at work, one should be effective, in the family – a good spouse, an exemplary parent, live a full sexual life and still have time to take care of oneself. Super-responsibility is constantly pressing on us: according to modern ideas, we ourselves are the blacksmiths of our own happiness, and this gives rise, on the one hand, to expectations from our fate of something unusual, unique, and on the other hand, a sense of guilt if we fail to achieve this outstanding happiness .
endure or fight
“One of the most curious discoveries in the study of stress was the ability of a person to somatize psycho-emotional discomfort,” says Nina Tyuvina. – That is, to translate our emotional dissatisfaction to the level of the body, into a disease. At the same time, stress factors can be completely different, but the reaction to them in a particular person will always be the same, stereotyped.
The American psychologist Franz Alexander expressed the idea that a person reacts to stress on the principle of “fight or flight” according to an individually formed stereotype: someone is inclined to “fight”, that is, to react excessively emotionally, aggressively, which is expressed in a predisposition to heart – vascular diseases, and someone, on the contrary, “avoid”, restrain, self-eat, which, in particular, leads to gastritis and peptic ulcer. Further research revealed that the individual reaction characteristic of a person also depends on heredity. “Stress resistance is also programmed by heredity,” says Sergey Mosolov, head of the department of mental illness therapy at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry. – Serotonin, which is responsible for good mood, is carried by a special transporter protein. Recently, scientists discovered that there are two varieties of the serotonin transporter gene – a short and a long allele. Those with the short allele of this gene are very vulnerable to stress, while people with the long allele of the gene are very stress resistant.
Letter to your abuser
This written stress relief exercise is offered by American psychologist Susan Forward. It is especially effective for those who tend to avoid conflict by suppressing their emotions.
“The correspondence conflict that you experience through a letter to your abuser will give you the same psychological results as a real one,” she says. You can simply burn this letter and forget about it – this will allow you to free yourself from the accumulated tension. But if a conflict is inevitable, then after such a letter you can go for a real confrontation – a written exercise will allow you to prepare well and calmly for it. You need to start with the words: “I will tell you now something that I have never said before,” and four points must be included in the text itself:
- that’s what you did to me;
- that’s what I had to go through;
- that’s how it affected my life;
- that’s what I expect from you now.
These four points are a good basis for debriefing any conflict and help you either get rid of real conflict or transform it into something constructive.
Assess the situation, understand yourself
In order to overcome daily stress, it is better to act in two directions at once. First, to minimize those factors that cause dissatisfaction with life. Selye also said that one way to deal with stress is to “find a job that you can love and respect.” This statement can be extended to other spheres of life. “Pleasure from life is the key to overcoming stress,” states Nina Tyuvina. “Nature itself has provided such an anti-stress mechanism: when we do what we like, the brain produces endorphins (endogenous morphines), which are one of the antidotes to those destructive processes triggered by stress.” Substances that act on the opiate receptors of the brain, we can get from the outside: alcohol, drugs, stimulants also help to “relieve” stress. But at the same time, our ability to produce our own hormones of joy and susceptibility to them is significantly reduced.
Secondly, we should try to understand our reaction to stressors. “As already mentioned, one person reacts to different stressful situations in the same way,” explains Nina Tyuvina. “First, you need to understand exactly how. An ulcer, a headache, a trip to the refrigerator or aggression? Do we feel offended, annoyed, misunderstood? First understand how, and then act.
Raise immunity
“The wedge is knocked out with a wedge! – says Sergey Vinogradov, a physiotherapist. “Counter positive stress is a powerful weapon to combat the effects of chronic stress.”
Under the influence of chronic stress, the nervous system is depleted, and according to the principle of a chain reaction, this leads to the suppression of all systems, including the immune system. The production of blood cells involved in the immune response decreases, the body’s defense weakens, and a person can no longer resist seasonal diseases.
Being exposed to cryotherapy, the body instantly turns on its adaptive mechanisms, trying to compensate for the loss of heat by increasing blood circulation. Aerocryotherapy is a short-term (for 30-60 seconds) extreme cooling of the entire body surface with a mixture of air and liquid nitrogen, which has a temperature of 170-180 ° C below zero. Unlike ice water, the air mixture has a low thermal conductivity, so the procedure is very comfortable. The course of procedures in terms of its therapeutic and prophylactic effect is equivalent to several years of hardening by dousing with cold water.
Health complex “City resort”, Moscow, Michurinsky prospekt, 7; tel.: (495) 788-7391.
Don’t avoid, but manage
“Stress that falls on one system helps another to rest” – this idea, formulated by Hans Selye, helps to understand why a change of activity is sometimes even more effective in relieving stress than passive rest. The possibilities of controlled stress are used (consciously or not) by many people, for example, lovers of extreme sports and swimming in the hole. The stress that makes us constantly adapt to new conditions allows us to achieve greater concentration, mobilize the brain to solve problems, speed up metabolism – this is a scientific fact.
When the completion of one task has become impossible, then the best way out is to calmly acknowledge this impossibility and direct energy in another direction (perhaps to return to this task later). By and large, this is what it means to be able to adapt, to be flexible – and not subject to stress.
Energize
“In order to overcome chronic fatigue syndrome, it is necessary to normalize the work of the autonomic and central nervous systems,” explains Professor Sergei Fedorov, dermatocosmetologist. “This is one of the most pressing challenges in anti-aging medicine.”
Based on the latest research in the field of stress, Japanese scientists have developed a special set of physiotherapy procedures to stabilize vegetovascular disorders, prevent migraines, depression, correct weight and increase the body’s resistance to stress in general. These are hormesis therapy – immersion in a mist-forming suspension with a high content of negative ions that promote cell regeneration – and the cumulative effect of magnetic and microcurrent therapy that normalizes metabolism.
This treatment recreates the conditions of a Japanese high-mountain hot spring resort: The Ionic House is a heated Japanese pine capsule that combines the effect of a sauna, ionized air and relaxing music. Clinical studies have shown that after a course of procedures at the Ion House, heart rate indicators improve, immunity stabilizes, excess weight decreases, skin firmness and elasticity increase.
Rhana Aesthetic Medicine Clinic,Zhukovka-2, Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Rublyovo-Uspensky medical and health-improving complex of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation”; tel.: (495) 635-5038.
* Biological Psychiatry, vol. 60, 2006
About it
- Hans Selye “Stress without Distress” Wieda, 1992.
- Franz Alexander “Psychosomatic Medicine: Principles of Treatment” IOI, 2006.
- “The stress of life. Understand, resist and manage it “Leila, 1994.