You don’t need to manage stress…

…You just need to change your relationship to stress

Newsflash: Something is wearing you down, but it's not stress.

Stress is a widely misunderstood concept invented in the last 100 years that has trained all of us to be afraid of life.

Stress supposedly describes the cumulative wear and tear on the body and mind from the activity of living.

According to the stress/relaxation model, any activity we engage in will require our body to adapt, and those adaptations will gradually deplete our energy. In this model, the only remedy for stress is the cessation of activity, which we describe as relaxation.

So the mantra of modern life has become, "I'm so stressed out. I'm doing too much. I wish I could relax"

But you're not stressed out because you're doing too many things. You're stressed out because you've been taught to fear the activity of living.

It's not activity that's wearing you down, it's fear.

Your body and mind are built to adapt and, in fact, can gain energy from those adaptations. In response to stress (the need to adapt) we naturally engage in a whole host of "stress responses" in addition to fight, flight or freeze, including seeking connection and relationship, exploration, play, curiosity and challenge.

Our "stress response" is not a bad thing - it is a vast continuum with layers and subtlety that encompasses all the different ways we engage with life.

What we've been taught to call our "stress response" is actually our habitual response to threat.

Ironically, our threat response is now being chronically activated by a misguided, unscientific understanding of how our nervous system works.

So it is true that there are a lot of things we can and need to change in our environment, our schedule and our priorities to adapt healthfully. But if we want those changes to be lasting and sustainable, the first thing we need to change is our relationship to stress itself.