I've stopped saying, "I'm stressed". It is not because there aren't times I do not feel feelings that are canonically bundled into the catch-all knapsack of stress. I do. But the word is problematic for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it's a passive participle. That means I'm, linguistically speaking, a patient, someone who has had something done to them by an outside force, which is what is to blame.
This is a two-pronged attack on reality. Firstly, I'm denying my agency. Secondly, I'm falsely attributing agency to an outside entity.
When I discover myself "stressed" (in other words tired, frightened of external circumstances, feeling inadequate to those circumstances, various combinations of disgruntled, upset, angry, and bored), I am doing it to me in response to situations.
It's perfectly possibly to have so-called traumatic events happen and yet remain poised and cheerful. The events are not traumatising. My response is what traumatises me. What is my response? My perception of the facts, my interpretation, and my extrapolation in terms of what those events mean for me. Physical pain and physical tiredness are not matters of perception or interpretation, but even with those there is considerable scope for wildly differing emotional responses.
When I catch myself saying, "I'm stressed," I've retrained myself to say that I have failed, morally, spiritually, and psychologically: I've permitted my own negative reaction. I've lost poise morally: I've given in to defects of despair or contrariness, for instance; I've lost poise spiritually: I've forgotten the endless bounty of God's providence, direction, and strength; and I've lost poise psychologically: the dog is off the leash, the newsreels are running, the bucketful of milk is pouring along the gutter and down into the sewers.
Unless I recognise I've failed, I cannot do anything about it. Once I know I've failed, I can error-detect and correct.
This principle can be applied with many other states described using the passive participle. The old chestnut is "offended". I've never been offended. I've often, however, taken the opportunity to adopt a position of self-righteous, moral indignation at the supposed faults of others, to take personally a situation that has little or nothing to do with me, to falsely construe ill motives, conspiracies, injustices, and malevolence where none of these obtain (or at least none of sufficient note to license the loss of equilibrium). When I'm "offended", I've failed. Rather than learning to survey the world and discern truth from falsehood, good from evil, and beauty from ugliness (the three transcendental parameters of discernment) in a dispassionate way, I have intrumentalised the occasion to attack, by first construing myself a victim, and thus entering into the falsehood, immorality, and ugliness of the weaponised persecution complex. If that is not failure, I do not know what is.
This relentlessly points the finger back at me: the only person I can change.
What can I do when "stressed"?
- Pare down the schedule
- Eat well, exercise, and sleep
- Cut out work and chores after a certain time each day
- Take time to appreciate the world
- Cultivate courage, cheer, and equanimity
- Trust infinite God.
- Remember the saying about pots and kettles
- Reframe the situation objectively, truthfully, and dispassionately
- Reframe the situation with kindness and pragmatism
- Re-recognise God as the centre of the universe
- Dethrone and de-centralise myself
- Ask instead how I can constructively contribute to the situation.