Actions to relieve stress-related illness and disease

A. Immediately

Diminish or leave your participation in less important but stressing activities:

Look over your work situation by altering or diminishing the amount of work.

Diminish or abandon social activities that are not pleasurable to you.

Diminish or abandon contacts outside your family that are not necessary or pleasurable.

Diminish or abandon non-necesarry commitments of duty in society and/or family.

Make room for:

Sufficient sleep.

Daily moments of rest and relaxation.

Daily moments of silence.

Moments of pleasure, alone or together with others.

Enjoyable physical exercises.

B. Soon

Study and practice techniques aimed at lowering stress levels:

Muscular relaxation.

Mental relaxation.

Meditation.

Do this 2-3 times every day for at least 6 weeks.

C. When the stress level is lower

Analyse and affect stressors in 4 sectors:

The world outside myself

Load of work.

Working environment.

Relations to people on my job.

Activities that have no direct relation to my job.

Relations to people outside family.

Relations to members of family.

Actual home situation.

My body

Get more insight into stress and stress-related symptoms of illness and disease.

What are adequate counteractions in my life situation?

My mind

Insight into stressing emotions and thoughts.

Insight into early or later attained reactions of thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

My own existential experience

My deepest identity. Who am I? Who do I feel I am forced to be?

Roles I have to play in society. Concious or unconcious?  Voluntarily? Involuntarily?

Inner longing and meaning of life.

Grief because of fragmentation between outer and inner life.

Disappointment, disillusion or anger for things that life inflicts/has inflicted. 

Ways to detect, understand and dimish stressors on different planes

The surrounding world

Stressors can be affected here by trying to understand the outer situation and then try to change it actively. If this is not possible we can use techniques, for example Mental Training and others, and try to alter our understanding of the outer situation in order to diminish the effects of its inherent stressors. If nothing helps it may be necessary to leave a situation that includes very strong stressors.

My body

If physical symptoms appear priority must be given to medical examination and therapy. Personal efforts can involve regular training in methods which offer muscular relaxation and pleasurable body exercises. Trying to understand the needs and limits of my own body is important.

My mind

There are a lot of techniques, derived from psychology, psychotherapy, Mental Training, Yoga and more, which can be used to gain more knowledge of our inner images and ideas in order to alter less useful reactions and actions.

My own existential experience

Dialogue between myself and somone who is capable to communicate at this level can be useful. An experienced fellow human being may be able to help as much as a professional when it comes to existential questions and problems. Engaging in those methods and techniques which are mentioned above will also be of benefit here. Still, it’s worth remembering that many psychologic and psychotherapeutic concepts more or less avoid answers to existential and spiritual questions and problems. Religions have historically taken responsibility in helping people with their existential worries. In our times the traditional images and linguistic symbols of religions may be seen as outmoded and difficult to understand by many. But if we bother to study basic thought and philosophy of these teachings we will very often find easy recognizable descriptions of human life and its existential conditions. If nothing else, this can help us to a better understanding of the existential dimensions of our own life.