Feeling disrespected

by Amy
(San Francisco)

I am often feeling disrespected at work and at home. Do you think this contributes to my high stress?


Very good question. I actually feel that the answer to this question is one of the key strategies for coping with stress.

Stress is a reaction, or a response that occurs naturally in our brain to a real or perceived threat to our body. The stress response happens without thought.

So, a real threat would be if you were walking and someone started following you. Your stress response would get triggered because your brain has assessed that follower as a threat to your survival. And, your body would respond physiologically to give you the best chance at surviving the stressor.

Once you took the appropriate steps to ensure your safety, then the relaxation response would be activated and bring your body back into balance. That is the desired cycle required to avoid chronic stress.

What most people don't realize is that it is your thoughts of uncertainty, i.e. fears, worries, and threats to one's ego, that are predominantly triggering the stress response.

So, feeling disrespected can be a huge trigger for stress. What can be hard is that stress is stress. That feeling of disrespect is still a call to action from your body to respond appropriately to eliminate that perception. The bottom line is that it is how you think about the situation that makes you feel disrespected that is important. How you think about that stressor is more important in managing stress than the stressor itself.

Managing stress boils down to making healthy choices and being self-aware enough to understand what is needed in the moment to bring yourself back into balance. It may sound daunting, but it is a true place of empowerment.

Contact me if you would like to talk about it.

Thank you for the question,
Cathi

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Stress Tip Of The Day!

Throughout each day, the primary cause of stress is because of threats of uncertainty.

It is thoughts of fear and worry that are triggering the stress response.

Staying focused on maintaining a positive attitude is an important stress technique.



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M.S., a woman in her late forties with progressively more and more disabling rheumatoid arthritis since childhood, whose most recent problems have arisen over the last two to three years as complications of immunosuppressive therapy for her disease. The complications have been associated with the severely disabling chronic pain of recurrent herpes neuralgia for more than three years, and for the past 15 months, recurrent osteomyelitis in her right lower mandible.

The second, more alarming (even life-threatening) problem has caused months of diagnostic and therapy confusion among her many consultants, three successive resections of the bone over the last six to eight months, and the still ongoing threat of more relapses of the smoldering bone infection and chronic pain only made bearable by chronic, massive doses of opiates.

In the few months since M. began to work with Cathi with several modalities: stress management, therapeutic touch, guided imaging, and others, her life has become more livable, as she has become able to bear the pain and the discouragement of unresolved disease.

She has relied on many of the methods for maintaining hope and getting through overwhelming discouragement by using the inner resources she has learned with Cathi.

My hope as her primary physician, is that Cathi and M. will be able to continue to work together to maintain that inner strength and hope as she faces yet more months of pain, and further repeated surgery.

Thank you for the healing guidance you've been able to give her thus far.
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