Stress Relief

As a physician I see perhaps 100 people per week with a wide variety of maladies.  One common thread running through a majority of them is stress.  I have been asked to give a talk on stress-induced illness so in the process I’m going to reveal health secrets that people pay me thousands of dollars to know.

Stress
Defining stress is very difficult because life is different for everyone. 

An ongoing study reported by Dr. Kabat-zin and colleagues at Cambridge University is very revealing on the sources of stress.  Periodic blood samples are taken for the purpose of measuring stress hormones.  People tend to stay within a certain range, and whenever there is a spike, they are asked what happened.  The answers are not surprising, “my dad died,” “I was in an accident,” “I lost my job,” and so forth.  All of them are significant life-changing events.  What’s interesting is that using the stress hormones as a measure of the amount of stress, there is little difference in how the person feels about the event.  The birth of a baby is about the same as the death of a loved-one.  Marriage is about the same as divorce.  Whether the experience is happy or sad, the amount of stress on the body is the same.  Stress is more simply defined as CHANGE!

There is one other aspect of stress.  I have a picture of two of my children going down a steep incline on a roller coaster.  One has her hands in the air and a smile on her face, obviously having fun.  The other has the most horrifying grimace with white knuckles clenching the safety bar.  Though these two are in the exact same environment, or the same change in altitude, they are obviously having different experiences.  One is joyful, the other stressed.

Stress is not entirely relative to our experience.  There is nothing in life that is intrinsically stressful.  All stress comes from within.  It’s not what happens to us, but what it means to us that creates the level of stress.

So, there are two ways to prevent stress:
1) Avoid all change.  Don’t allow any change in employment, death, marriage, births, technology, injury – any joy or sorrow.  Or,
2) Learn to enjoy the roller-coaster!  Since the first is technically impossible, I’m going to discuss the second.

Repentance
Avoiding stress creates a dilemma for those who desire to follow Christ because the second principle of the Gospel is change -- The word, “repentance” is synonymous with “change.”  Listen to the word of the Lord:  Mosiah 3:19

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

What could be more stressful than changing your very nature?  Everything that comes naturally to us must be sacrificed, burned up on the altar, and yielded to God.  I love the way King Benjamin says it because I can relate to “put off the natural man.”  Letting go of everything we want, need, desire or love is the heaviest of burdens to bear.  This is what is meant by “a broken heart and a contrite spirit.”

How?
How do we change?  How do we deal with the incredible stress of a broken heart?  How can we possibly bear this burden?  Jesus Christ tells us:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30

Hidden in this is the key to joyful, stress-free change.  It is found in verse 29.  Jesus tells us He is “meek and lowly of heart” and this brings rest to the soul.  I have hundreds of patients seeking rest – they just can’t get enough sleep to feel rested because it never works.  Rest actually comes from humility, the ability to accept change with gladness.

The Apostle Paul was a great example.  He took a dramatic change from persecutor of Christians to being their strongest advocate.  Lest you think he had it easy, when Ananias said, “I can’t bless him – he’s a bad man…"

But "The Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel:

For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake."  Acts 9:15-16

Paul later recounts to the Corinthian saints some of those things he suffered:

2 Corinthians 11:24-30

“Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.

Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.  Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches...

If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.”

Paul wasn’t complaining, but rather gloried in his sufferings for Jesus Christ.  This is humility.

I’m going to tell you how to have a stress-free life – like Paul!

1)    King Benjamin tells us how: “Yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit.”  Do what God wants you to do instead of what you want to do.  This makes you “meek, humble, patient, [and] full of love.”

2)    Make and keep commitments.  Working towards goals gives a sense of accomplishment, and moving forward keeps stress down.

3)    Keep a schedule – a predictable routine maintains our stress hormone levels.  Whatever else is going on around you, there are habits you can maintain:

a.     Pray three times per day on your knees, like Daniel

                 b.     Search the scriptures every day, like Lehi

c.     Exercise regularly

d.     Eat only nourishing foods

e.     Write in a journal 

If you will be humble and prayerful before the Lord, “Willing to submit to all things the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [you],” then you will have a stress-free life in spite of all the changes that go on around you.  Change will happen.  You will encounter problems.  You will have burdens, but they don’t have to weigh you down. As noted by Helaman: 

Helaman 5:12

“And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.” 

I testify that Jesus Christ can lift your burdens and make them light.