How to Gain Control Over Stress . . .

The most powerful control over stress, which all of us have, is cognitive control. This means learning to control our reaction to a bad situation to reduce the stress it places on us. Cognitive control stems from the belief that we can change the hurtful impact, both the psychological and the physical impact, of a situation, or challenge, by how we interpret the problem, how we look at it. When we begin to choose to view our losses, hurts, and frustrations from more positive perspectives, we develop power over what can otherwise cause us damage.

All of us have the ability to think, and choose how we handle our thoughts. Some people who are high in hardiness (mental health) and low in illness use what is called transformational coping to deal with their challenges. Transformational coping simply means modifying events so they are less stressful. To be able to do this, we must interact with the events, thinking about them in a more promising way and acting toward them with self-confidence can help to reduce stressful experiences.

On the other hand, some people who are low in hardness and high in illness use what is called regressive coping, or dwelling on negative events and acting ambiguously (with no plan in mind) to avoid contact with them.

Thus, effective coping, which is our ability to increase our resistance to both mental and physical illness, consists of three factors:

1. Viewing challenges with less negativity, which will help to reduce how hard they hit us both psychologically and physically,

2. Taking some action to change those challenges (our environment), if change is possible, and

3. Relieving the physical and mental effects of the challenge by exercise, relaxation, and other healthy behaviors. Breathing exercises, meditation, and eating habits are great examples of what can be used.

All this, incidentally, is addressed in my website, which I have linked here.