When we talk about stress, the most important thing to do right from the start is to understand that there are different types of stress. Of course, we could divide them up in many ways, but basically, there is stress that appears at a given moment in time: it arises here and now. (Type One)
Examples of “instant” stress:
- Your child’s temperature suddenly spikes to 104°F (40°C).
- Someone steals your money on the street (a large sum).
- You break something (for example, a glass in the kitchen).
This is stress that appeared right here and now, today. Sure, it can stretch out a bit, but it’s essentially that state which didn’t exist 10 minutes ago.
The second type is stress that’s always present. This means you wake up in the morning already stressed, you wake up in the middle of the night stressed, you wake up during the day stressed. There’s certainly an extreme side to this, and many describe stress from the standpoint that if you’re waking up in the night feeling stressed, that’s already severe. But I want to show that there can be considerable variation here.
Examples of “constant” stress:
- You constantly feel stressed when you meet with your wife.
- You constantly feel stressed when you’re home alone with the kids.
- You constantly feel stressed when you have to talk to your boss at the office.
This constant stress has various ranges. I would link it to understanding how stress arises in different situations.
Right now, we’re not talking about whether you know the specific reason it’s happening—we’ll get to that later.
Key Differences in Approaching Different Types of Stress
You have to work with each type of stress differently. Another question arises: can we ever reach a state where stress doesn’t exist at all?
One approach to personal growth is to eliminate the immediate stress so you can calmly recover.
For example:
- Your child breaks an arm—you want to respond calmly and at the very least remain observant.
- Not fall into a psychological or physical breakdown if you learn a loved one has died.
- Or be able to gradually steady yourself when you notice stress arising in the evening, in the morning, or when meeting with friends or discussing salary with your boss, and so on.
But there’s another part: how to structure your life so that if stress does arise, you can remain in a state of observation. In other words, it’s never something that completely envelops you and leaves you unsure of what to do.
The Main Mistake in Dealing with Stress
Here we reach the main mistake: someone hears a certain stress-management technique somewhere and starts applying it without understanding the reason for the stress in the first place.
When we want to address stress overall, it’s important to grasp what we’re dealing with.
- If our goal is to resolve the very cause of stress in our system, aiming so that over the next year we experience fewer and fewer stressful situations, then some methods will practically be ineffective.
- If something serious happened right now and we need a quick fix, we might, for instance, just sit on the couch for 10 minutes with our eyes closed, back straight. Always, absolutely always, those 10 minutes will bring some balance to the system. But if you spend 10 minutes sitting quietly every day, then spend four hours yelling at people, the root causes of your stress won’t go anywhere.
So, using certain techniques depends on understanding the causes of stress.
Why Are You Fighting Stress?
Another key point: why are you fighting stress?
- Is it because you want to come out on top in a situation and not look foolish? Maybe you don’t want to feel out of control at work during a conflict? Sometimes people want to stop crying from stress—not to actually solve the problem, but just so they don’t “lose face” in front of others.
- Sometimes people want to deal with stress because they become aggressive and might harm those around them when stressed.
The difference in intention is critically important. I’m not saying you need to work on stress only so as not to hurt other people, but don’t deceive yourself about your true motives.
Personally, it’s very important for me not to harm others when I’m under stress. If I want to recover quickly right now so I don’t look bad, I’ll use one set of tools; but if what matters is not being aggressive or harming people in the first place, I’ll use a different set of tools.
Stress Diagnosis and Awareness
When we say, “How do I deal with stress in my life? I’m tired of being stressed,” or conversely, “I don’t have stress, but my wife does,” it’s important to understand- what type of stress you have, how well you can diagnose it
- and why you’re working on your stress in the first place.
Only after that should you correctly choose a method. Otherwise, you might end up even more stressed or negative in the future because you trusted someone’s advice, tried a technique, and didn’t get the result you needed.
For example:
- Someone goes to a psychotherapist on a friend’s recommendation, not realizing that different therapists have different methods. The person becomes disappointed in their friend and in therapy as a whole. Or, for instance, they withdraw further into their ego and now believe no one can ever help them.
A Fundamental Task: Understanding the Causes
The key part of dealing with stress is understanding its causes and clarifying your goals.
I’m not insisting everyone immediately tackle something massive and comprehensive, but it’s important to know how it works and how to strengthen your efforts.
By way of example: brushing your teeth. Everyone says you should do it, but there’s a difference between quickly brushing with a simple brush for a minute “just because,” or brushing for four minutes with a Philips Ultrasound. They yield different results.
The same goes for stress: people often lack micro-actions, small steps that can produce a radically different result.
Methods for Quick Stress Relief
Let’s take a stressful situation and consider a “quick fix.”
- I mentioned you can sit with a straight back for 10 minutes.
- Or turn on a certain type of music for 20 minutes.
- Or call a specific person who brings you back into balance 9 times out of 10—assuming they themselves aren’t stressed at the time.
There are other actions as well:
- You can do 400 jumps in place—this will definitely snap you out of a certain level of stress.
- Or sit down and write out 30 reasons why you’re stressed at this moment.
The very act of focusing on the question “why?” already puts you in an observer’s position.
An important detail: people think the key is knowing how to get out of stress, but the most essential rule is understanding why you’re in it.
This is crucial. When you know “why,” you can apply solutions more skillfully and avoid harming yourself in the future.
Local vs. Global Solutions
If you need to resolve stress here and now, you can take certain steps—even if they might harm you later but help you survive the moment.
- Example: You’re attacked on the street, and you have to show aggression to protect yourself. That might be necessary right then, but it doesn’t mean you should always be aggressive in life. In other words, it’s good locally, but globally it may be destructive.
- Another example: You want to sleep better at night, so you use certain practices, air out your room, stop using your phone before bed. But on a larger scale, it might turn out that the reason for your nighttime stress is your husband sleeping next to you. If you decide to sleep separately, in some families that can ruin the relationship. So you’ll need a different approach.
Awareness of Different Stressful Situations
It’s very important to realize that we never truly know what kind of stress might arise in the future.
A person might think, “If I get rid of this stress, everything will be great, my salary will go up, and life will be smooth.”
But people at different ages, in different places, times, with different partners, or different numbers of kids or friends experience different kinds of stress.
The stress you feel now might be nothing compared to what’s to come. Understanding this drastically changes how you approach life, helping you notice the real reasons for what’s happening and stop relying solely on quick fixes.
Comparing Yourself to Others
One of the first things to do is stop comparing your stress to someone else’s. Don’t compare your situation to what you read in a book or saw on a video. Don’t compare yourself to your neighbor, your friend, or your wife. Any comparison is a mistake that leads to incorrect solutions, because you’re unique, and your combination of stress factors is unique.
Yes, there are methods that often work for many people—sitting for 10 minutes with a straight back, playing music, etc. But each person might get a different result. For one, exercise (like boxing) helps release aggression, while for another, it might actually increase it.
A Practical Example of “Sitting in Silence”
I had an interesting experience in 2012. Two friends and I were hanging out at my place, and one of them wasn’t familiar with any esoteric or spiritual practices—he knew nothing about it. I told him, “If you sat on the couch right now for 30 minutes, eyes closed, back straight, you’d understand something.” He went, sat down, and came back an hour and a half later saying, “Wow, what was that? I just sat on the couch for an hour and a half!”
He entered a state he’d never felt before. Yet the next morning, it was as if that state disappeared. He found a tool to enter a special state, but he didn’t reinforce it.
This goes back to how some quick solutions can help yet fail to produce a long-term effect if you don’t understand “why.”
Advice
People often get the advice: “Go see a psychotherapist,” but they don’t understand that there are different types of specialists. If they become disappointed, it only increases stress or negativity. So the key is to understand the causes and understand why you want to deal with stress. Choose your approach with awareness.