Was it drugs? Was it love? No, It was stress elimination.

Anna Magee finds she remains calm by changing her reaction to stressful triggers.

Stress.Google the word and you’ll get 708,000 hits. Good going for a word that was only invented in the 1950s when a German scientist noticed his patients –all with bona fide medical conditions – had all dealt with a degree of mental pressure throughout their lives. After studies on rats, Hans Selye concluded that stress was a very real by-product of demands on the mind and body. A little bit is normal, he said, but lots of it could eventually cause real physical disorders like high blood pressure and even heart disease.

Thanks Hans. Since then, we’ve heard your mantra a gazillion times. Today it’s the basic premise of countless articles, television and radio broadcasts, not to mention those 'I'm so stressed out conversations. A little bit of stress is natural, essential even. Just mind your self against too much.

So, when a girlfriend – old, educated and jaded, enough to know better – recently boasted about having learned the tools to become stress-free in nothing more than a two-day workshop, you can imagine the level of pooh-poohing that came from chronically cynical, perpetually stressed me.

Hadn’t she seen the posters: ‘stress management’ they screamed, not stress deletion? Hadn’t she read a single self-help book last century? Each certified a single, unwavering idea: the great stress monster is out there, it’s coming to get you in the form of bad bosses, screaming kids, overdrafts, mortgages and more.

But no. Newly Stress-Free Friend (NSFF) insisted that was completely bogus. We don’t need stress to function, she said. We function just as well without it, the huge payoff being our own happiness.

Intrigues at anything that rivalled my stress management regime (mainly featuring Anadin Extra, Haagen Daaz and crying fits) I asked about the famed ‘workshop’. ‘Stress Elimination’ she said proudly. I’d heard about debt elimination, even toxin elimination but stress elimination? It’s hardly like our prime stressors are lodged in our colons – you just can’t, er, remove them. Then again, NSFF had seemed impossibly happy lately. Her skin glowed. She met her deadlines without the customary whinging the rest of us employed. Even ‘words’ from irate phone-calls seemed not to phase her. Was it drugs? Was it love? No she persisted. It was stress elimination.

DISCUSSION: having been on enough workshoppy – anti-stress-type-thingies in my day, I prepared for two days deep breathing, American motivational hoo-ha, ‘role play’ and navel-gazing. Instead I got logical grown-up discussion laced with sober Socratic questioning that seemed to bring participants to their own conclusions, hints of Zen philosophy made into simple practical tools that could be applied to any stressful situation and a good dose of dry ‘let’s not take this too seriously’ Irish humour.

SURPRISE: The greatest surprise though – and here’s a sentiment echoed by all nine other course participants, including a frazzled insurance broker, super-cynical IT man and hard boiled company director – was eventually reaching the conclusion that while stress is real, we create it for ourselves.

“I don’t think so,” I declared. “deadlines and editors’ demands make my stress, not me.

Mr. IT agreed. “When I’ve got a network of company computers down at 3pm on a Wednesday and 500 employees unable to do anything until I fix it, you can bet that’s making my stress, not me.”

Thank you very much.

That leads to a very heated discussion with teacher Brian Mc Geough. We weren’t about to take an entire shift in our thinking lying down. Eventually though, Brian’s constant questioning, and our muddled and, at times, bemused answers seemed somehow to deliver the realisation organically.

Not at all like ‘being told’, it hit like lightening: the common view- our view- was that people, events and circumstances in our lives cause us stress. But that thinking is obsolete because we simply cannot control any of that. The cause of our ordinary experience of stress is not in the external elements themselves – be they tight deadlines or network failures – but in what we bring to those elements; our own internal responses to the people, events or circumstances that we’re convinced are causing us stress. Ultimately, our response is all we can control. If your mother-in-law causes you stress, acknowledge that you’ll never really change her behaviour. Butchange your reaction to that behaviour and you remove the real cause of your stress. Get it?

TRIGGER: Take that favourite stress trigger, traffic. You’re stuck on the M50, it’s bumper-to-bumper and you’ve a child that needs collecting in 20 mins. The drive home looks destined to take 40. You sweat, curse, bash the steering wheel before taking what seems the only available route – tears. But the traffic isn’t creating that physical response in you, you are. Imagine acknowledging there’s nothing you can do to change the traffic. Imagine remaining calm. The energy you save could be used to make a quick call and other arrangements. Sound a little too simple? It’s supposed to be.

Case study: The course was nothing like I expected. I thought stress was something in all our lives that we have to learn to cope with, so naturally I assumed it would be about relaxation techniques, deep breathing and all that. Well, what a shock. The greatest revelation for me was that we cause our own stress. I now realise that the external event we think causes our stress is actually irrelevant; that it's our reaction to it that makes us stressed. We were encouraged not to take notes on the course, but surprisingly, I remember nearly all of it - perhaps because it was so practical. It really gave me the tools to not only change my thinking about stress but to change my reactions. I do the senses exercises daily and use OLGA to stop the constant 'whirring' that goes on in my head, mainly worry about the way I think things might turn out. That has been so freeing. Now I feel so much more calm and get more true inspiration.

Another important idea for me was that disappointment arises from expecting people and events to behave and proceed the way we want them to; that if we can move towards acceptance, many of our negative feelings can be eliminated. It makes you see things clearer. Knowing that, I don't get as worked up about things any more.

I now give my full attention to whatever task I'm doing, so everything seems to get done on time and properly - minus worry, minus negativity, minus stress.
Jane - advertising executive, 32.

Stress Elimination Tools

OLGA: One of the key ways we create stress in our lives is through internal conversations. That divides our attention, it leads to scenarios we think might happen playing in our heads and negative self talk, none of which has any basis in fact. The antidote is to give your full attention to your present, to whatever person, task or thing is in front of you at any given time. Next time you notice your mind having internal conversations with itself about supposed events, outcomes and other negative thoughts, try this:

Observe your mind chattering and wandering from the present task - whether it's brushing your teeth or completing this month's budget. Let go of any thoughts that divide your attention from your present. Attend to the task, person or thing in front of you.

CONNECT TO YOUR SENSES: Called the Senses Exercise, this quick two-minute break is super-simple yet it can work wonders to help you re-connect with the present and bring on genuine calm. No navel gazing required.

Twice for two minutes daily you sit balanced and erect on a chair or lie down comfortably. Connect with your senses one at a time, and let the body, mind and heart come fully to rest. Don't rush, don't try too hard, just let it happen. This exercise helps to raise our level of awareness of the present, ensuring that we're most effective in it.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: For me, this was the hardest concept to grasp, but ultimately the most beneficial. Negativity, we concluded eventually, arises within us due to our wanting people to behave and events to proceed the way we want them. Sure I'll be happy if I win, unhappy if I lose and so on. By accepting as the best any given event, person or circumstances that we're faced with - no matter how much we might dislike it - we come into the present. That automatically leads us to take the action that will be right. This is just another way of freeing our minds from negative feelings, ideas and attitudes.

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