Have you ever said the words, “This job/my life is so stressful!” Or something else along those lines?
Most people believe that stress is something that happens in their lives. They believe it is the result of outside circumstances beyond their control. We are stressed if our work is too difficult. We get stressed when people in our lives arent doing what we want them to do. We are stressed when its been too long since a vacation. We get stress over deaths, weddings, major purchases and a host of other things. We talk as if stress is something outside ourselves—a condition of things in our external environment. It’s not.
Health professionals will tell us that stress is a contributing factor in many physical ailments—heart attacks, asthma, high blood pressure, stroke and many others. There are several diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV, the diagnostic tool of therapists and psychiatrists that describe many stress-related disorders. Stress is a killer. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to handle stress better than others do?
One individual may have all the life circumstances purported to cause...