There are techniques to cope in even most dire circumstances
Are there times in your life that get real trying for you where you wonder, “How the heck am I going to get through this?”
Do you find that as stress builds and builds in your life that you have difficulty coping with any and all situations, even the small ones? Well, it’s time to learn to stop sweating the small stuff so to speak!
There will be times in your life when you feel that the proverbial wheels are falling off.
Ironically, when it rains it pours in terms of stress. You literally become a stress magnet when bad or not so great things start to happen and they seem to become compounded. You take or allow any small situation that is quasi-distressing and allow it to gain momentum to the point that it appears to be the end of the world.
Why does this happen? How can some small irrelevant situation which has minimal bearing in your life all of a sudden seem like an incredibly distressing situation?
Simple: Stress!
Some of the greatest minds in self-help have taught us that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% on how we respond to it. One person can have the most stressing situation press upon them and not be phased.
Another person can have something so minutely influential come into their life and they fly off of the handle. This is caused by stress.
This stress is caused by perception of what is going on around them and knowing how to handle it, or not being able to handle it. Perception is all based on the choice for how to respond to any and all situations.
The key to responding and coping with any situation is to look beyond the situation.
This means seeing yourself outside of it. What that situation means to you means something all together different for someone else. That means it is not the situation that matters most, rather your perception of the situation.
You first need to collect your thoughts before responding to any situation. That is of course if the situation doesn’t require a quick reflex response such as driving and steering away from an instant potential accident!
Most people cope with situations from a knee jerk reaction based on prior experiences.
Unfortunately, these prior experiences are often times driven by emotion that was based negatively on previous outcomes. People have a habit of bringing those emotionally-charged perceptions and memories forward with them and use those means to cope in the present.
They key to coping is to look at each situation as different from others because they are – different time, place, people involved.
The key to coping is to live in the present moment and treat the moment as a unique experience which previous problem solving skills from the past can be used only after the current situation has been analyzed.
Only after you have treated the current experience as a unique situation do you explore the possibilities for dealing with it based on past perceptions.
What is most important here is to remember that past perceptions are not the same as current perception!
Coping with any situation is one of the fundamental topics Erika Slater, CH deals with in her Confidence and Self-Esteem at her Metrowest Boston clinic. Look for more in this series.
Dr Peter
Staff Writer
Free At Last Hypnosis
5 Goss Pond Road,
Upton, MA 01568
210 Worcester Street
Grafton, MA 01536
Hypnosis Therapy Services for Metrowest Boston MA
