During a discussion with a student who complained that the internship program was stressful, it struck me that all my advice about relaxing, yoga, meditation, positive thinking made no impact. Then I realized that I was addressing the symptom and not the cause. Here was a young adult who was new to the city and the job of selling, who could not relate anything he had done earlier to this new experience. Stress was not the issue. The reasons for his helplessness were the only issues.
From that interaction I understood that stress management is a misnomer, that no such thing called ‘stress’ exists. What exists is a ‘problem’. Being late is a problem; having no priorities is a problem; not being organized is a problem; laziness is a problem.Behind all stress is a problem that needs to be addressed. Identifying the problem and finding a remedy for it is the surest way to beat stress. For instance, if you are frequently late to the office, the answer is to start early. All the breathing exercises or other tricks would not solve the stress you would feel on arriving late to the office. After all, you cannot treat the shadow and expect the person to be healed.
There are I understand broadly two schools of thought regarding stress. One is that stress is a result of our thoughts than because of the external environment. Thoughts, in human beings, can produce Adrenaline. Adrenaline causes anxiety or stress. Anxious thoughts in turn produce Adrenaline. The cause-effect-cause is cyclical. One leads to the other and so it goes on.
In fact, Silvia Hartmann aptly calls anxiety or stress as Adrenaline allergy. The key according to this school of thought is to bring the Adrenaline back to normal. This, according to Silvia Hartmann, is done through acupuncture, acupressure, faith healing, energy healing, Reiki, meditation, Karate, Yoga, and other powerful and practical techniques. The predominant principle of this school is that there is a connection between our thoughts and our energy system. And that it is our energy system can be easily regulated than our thoughts. By calming our energy system we calm our thoughts and normalize the Adrenaline in the body.
