Do you have aging parents that you are involved with?  This is becoming much more common as people are living longer and having children later in life.  It is not uncommon to have the double stress of having children still at home AND having to care for aging parents as well.

As our parents age and start to lose some of their abilities, we find the roles starting to reverse, with the children becoming the “parents” and the “parents” becoming the dependent children.  This can be very stressful for everyone because it usually doesn’t happen overnight.  It is a gradual process. 

Understandably, the aging parents do not want to lose their independence and many times do not see or won’t admit that their abilities are decreasing.  They are used to having the authority and their independence and to lose that is very stressful for them.  They will often resist their children’s efforts, interpreting it as interfering.

Another aspect of this change that can be especially stressful is when there are well-established and often negative, habit patterns in the way we interact with our parents.

For example: my father was a big, strong willed man who was amazing in many ways.  He was very talented, could do anything and had lots of interests.  He was also intolerant of anyone he thought was less intelligent than himself - which was just about everybody.    He didn’t listen worth a darn and I don’t think that he ever saw me as a real person. 

When he got sick with cancer, it was shocking to see him deteriorate into a sick old man.  But he didn’t feel that way in his mind.  He was still the demanding, intolerant person he had always been but without the physical abilities to be independent anymore. 

He was also a big man at 6 feet, 2 inches tall.  My poor mother was worn to a frazzle trying to care for him.   When his illness finally required him to be hospitalized, he drove the nurses crazy.  Nobody was going to tell him what he could and couldn’t do, even when it was obvious that he no longer had the physical ability to do what he wanted.

I have tremendous empathy for those people who are going through the stress of trying to be the caregivers for their aging parents.

So far, the types of stress that many people face on a a daily basis have been listed as: relationship stress, parenting stress and work stress. 

Today’s blog is about the stress you can experience if you are involved in any kind of volunteer or community service organization.  Examples of this could be: church work, clubs, associations, organizations, sports or teams.

Actually, any time you are involved with people, either in a leadership role or just as a participant there is the potential for stress.

The reason for this is that you have to communicate with different personalities,  communication styles, background conditioning and levels of understanding.  All of these can be stressful.

Under the best of circumstances, communicating effectively can be challenging.  That is because people don’t necessarily hear what you say.  They hear their interpretation of what you’ve said - which could be completely opposite to what you were trying to convey. 

In a later blog, we will talk about why there can be such a difference between what you say and what someone else hears.

In the last couple of blogs, I have discussed different things that might be considered stressful to a person.  The first one was being in a relationship and having to adjust your wants and needs to accomodate another person.

The second source of stress can be having children.  One thing I didn’t mention in the last blog is that it doesn’t matter how old your children are.  Actually, in many ways, the older they are, the more stressful they can be.  Being the mother of five adult children, I have found that I have no control any more.  All I can do is listen and make suggestions, if they are willing to listen. 

I have also found that as my children marry and have children, the number of people I now have to be concerned about grows. I can now worry about my children’s relationship with their spouses and the welfare of my grandchildren.

The next area of stress for many women is working outside of the home.  (If you do, I’ve just thrown you another ball, which you need to juggle with the others.   Read the rest of this entry »

In the last blog, I had a diagram of a woman standing on a balance board and compared that to life.  I said that it was our job to stay balanced on the board of life while we tried to juggle the balls that life threw at us. 

We talked about how being in a relationship can be stressful.  Today, let’s look at another area of stress.

Do you have children?  If so, how many?  (If the answer is yes, pretend that I have just thrown you another ball and you have to try and juggle them - while still keeping your balance).

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know what a Balance Board is? 

It is a flat board that is attached to a curved board beneath.  The curved board causes anyone standing on the flat board to rock from side to side; requiring them to use their hands and legs for balance.

This Balance Board represents our lives.  Our job is to maintain our balance and to successfully handle or juggle the things that life throws at us. 

Let’s see what some of these things are.  I want you to imagine that you are standing on a balance board right now.  You will see that it is possible, but not easy to maintain your balance.

Now I’m going to ask you some questions.  For each “Yes” answer, imagine that I am throwing you a ball.  You are supposed to throw the ball(s) in the air and juggle them.

Let’s see how well you do.

Potential Cause of Stress # 1:  Are you married or in a relationship?

If the answer is “Yes”,  I have just thrown you a ball and you are to juggle it.  Can trying to live with another person be stressful?  Absolutely it can!

In the next blog, I will ask you some more questions.  The purpose is for you to realize the number of “Potential Stress” balls you could be trying to juggle right now.

To the right is a diagram of the Wheel of Life.   It demonstrates eight areas of our life that affect us.  They are: Spiritual, Career, Money, Health, Friends and Family, Significant Other, Personal Growth and Recreation.

The ideal would be to divide our lives into a series of compartments so that we could totally focus on the compartment we were involved in at the moment. 

For example; every employer would be thrilled if  their employees were able to leave their personal life behind when they came to work and would give 100% of their thoughts, time and energy to their work efforts.

But we know that for the majority of people, that kind of focus and compartmentalization is not possible.  We do bring our personal problems to work with us and they do interfere with how well we perform our labors. 

At the same time, we bring our work stress home with us - which interferes with our relationships at home.

It is our job to try and juggle or balance all of these areas of our lives so that we can function in each them.

If you are like most people, you will have listed the following as being the most common stressors in life: Family, Relationships, Time, Money, Health, Failure, Loss of Control, Guilt, Sex, Work.  Did I miss anything?

But you know what?  You’re all wrong.  these are all just external events.  But they are not stressors - only if you make them so.

Imagine that I have two people standing in front of me and I pour a jug of water over each of their heads.  One of them might laugh and say “that feels refreshing”.  The other person could be furious.

They both had the same experience or event - but their response was completely different.  One person is stressed by the event and the other is not.  Why would that be?

It all depends on your perception of the event!  I will talk about that more in the next blog.

The main organ for the body’s defense system is the Thymus gland, found right in the center of your chest.  Did you know that Cortisol, the major hormone that is released when you are stressed, can shrink the size of the Thymus gland by 50% in 24 hours.

Experiments have been done where they have taken healthy adult parents, with a normal immune system blood count of 12,000 and shown them very high stress pictures of children being killed and mangled.  Then 3 to 5 minutes later, the immune system blood count was taken again and was found to have dropped from 12,000 to 600!  The emotionally traumatized parents virtually had no immune system left!  These experiments demonstrate how closely related immune system diseases are to negative emotional stress.

I want to share part of an article called “Mind Over Matter” in Shared Vision Magazine, written by Olga Sheean.  She interviewed Dr. Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist from Stanford University and author of the book “Biology of Belief”.

Quoting Olga Sheen: “For generations now, we have been led to believe that our health is determined by our genes.  Cellular biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton believes otherwise.  ‘Cancer does not run in families’ he maintains, ‘because there is no cancer gene.  Cells become cancerous only when they are told by the mind to do so.’

He says that individuals have the ability to control their own well-being and to reprogram their cells by changing their beliefs.

‘Once we realize that we are already infected with every organism in the arsenal of virulent diseases’ says Lipton, ‘we can begin to understand that it is only when we create a favorable environment for them that they can take over our system.’

Yeast, for example, exists in everyone, yet only a small percentage of the population suffers yeast infections. You cannot get rid of the yeast, says Lipton, without killing off all other life in your body.  So when someone gets a yeast infection, it stands to reason that something has changed - either the yeast or the individual.  Since the yeast is ever present, the infection can only be due to some environmental change which, in turn, is the consequence of mental attitude.’

The body’s immune system is triggered by our mental attitudes, becoming strengthened or exhausted, depending on the mental message it receives.  Therefore, Lipton maintains, AIDS can be brought into existence by the mind, and not necessarily as a result of contracting the virus.  And it can, similarly, he says, be cured with a thought.

Disease in the body tells you that your mind is not in harmony with nature and that some aspect of your mental attitude needs to change.”

In the previous blog, we talked about how stressful triggers are created.  Today, we will discuss what happens when our body goes into stress. 

You have probably heard about the “fight or flight” stress response.  Basically, your body is instantly prepared to either fight or to run away to save your life .  If you are in physical danger, this is a good thing.  You need to react instantly in order to save your life!  However, our minds cannot tell the difference between physical danger and emotional upsets and will respond the same way.  It will respond as if our lives are in danger! Read the rest of this entry »

In the last blog, we talked about how negative emotional conditioning causes stress.  Today, I’m going to go into more detail about this because it is vitally important that we understand how this works.  With this understanding, we can then break the negative conditioning and act in more positive ways.

Say you’ve gone through a difficult or frightening time.  For example:  Let’s say you were walking down a dark alley as a child and a big dog lunged at you.  At that exact moment, everything that was happening was locked in cellular memory.  The position of your arms and legs; what you saw, what you heard, where you were, what you felt, etc. 

You might not even remember the event.  This is because our subconscious mind buries memories that are too painful for us to handle.  However, every sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and experience is locked in cellular memory in your body.  Your subconscious mind never forgets anything and until the emotional pain has been acknowledged and released it will continue to be a source of stress for you.

Now, years later, you are functioning normally at the age and stage you are supposed to be at - UNTIL - you are exposed to something that triggers the feelings from the buried memory of the dog’s attack.  You might be walking down a dark street alone.  Or you see a big dog or hear a dog barking or— do you get the idea?

Suddenly, you are no longer functioning as a responsible adult.  Instantly, you have reverted emotionally to the age and stage you were at when the negative emotional experience took place.  You are looking at the world through the eyes of that frightened child.    You will react the same way every time you are triggered by one of the locked in memories.  We call it a negative emotional block.

We’ve used the example of a dog attack here.  But the same conditioning takes place with every negative thing that has happened in our lives.  Can you see how we can be controlled by past events, which are causing us stress today?

In the next blog, we will talk about what happens to you physically when you experience one of these negative emotional block triggers.