"Common Sense - Coping With Stress".

By J J Kusnell w/ Karen B Turner, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist



COMMON SENSE COPING WITH STRESS
(“you eat life or life eat you”)

Managing Stress

Introduction

In the movie, “Mutiny On The Bounty”, Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando) has led a mutiny that has taken over the HMS BOUNTY from the evil Captain William Bligh (Trevor Howard). Following the mutiny, Fletcher is overcome with remorse. Despairing that he will ever again be able to return to England, Fletcher sails the Bounty back to Tahiti where it had stood at anchor the previous four months. Once safely back among friends, he anchors his ship and proceeds to drink himself into a guilt-induced stupor.
Brando’s love interest in the movie is the beautiful Tahitian princess Maimiti (Tarita). When the ship anchors and Fletcher fails to appear, a concerned Maimiti asks the sailors about him and is told that he remained in his cabin on board the Bounty.
Fearful for his welfare, Maimiti swims out to the Bounty and boards the ship. Making her way down to the Captain’s cabin, she is appalled to find Fletcher drunk and living in squalor. In a dramatic scene, her disgust fueling her anger, Maimiti rushes around the dirty room cleaning up, all the time screaming epithets at him: “You pig, you all-a-time pig”.
Finally Maimiti calms down and, turning her attention to Fletcher, begins nursing him back to sobriety. In the process, she tells him that it is wrong to let his emotions ‘get inside of him’. That it is wrong to let his guilt render him so totally ineffective that he is no good to himself or to the men under his command. That what he has done to himself is a worse offense than the mutiny itself. Finally, she offers this counsel: “in Ta-hi-ti, we have saying. Tahiti peoples say, “you eat life or life eat you!”
With that admonition, she leaves Fletcher and jumping from the ship, proceeds to swim back to the shore. Shortly thereafter, Fletcher, now recovered, joins her.
“You eat life or life eat you.” That phrase summarized the message of this book. Certainly, you can phrase it in any number of ways. “Just deal with it”, is one; “when the going gets tough, the tough get going,” is another. But to me, few phrases have the power of suggestion that is carried by that simple Tahitian maxim: “you eat life or life eat you”. This simple phrase carries a message that stays with you and for that reason it shall become the mantra of this book and I shall refer to it often.
Stress is best defined as uncontrolled emotionalism. Worry takes over an individual’s mental processes and the result is he is left weak and unable to cope. Powerful hormones surge through his body and before long, he has sweaty palms and a pulsating heart and is reduced to an emotional wreck. When this happens, the immune system comes under attack and bad things happen.
Thanks to Dr. Ester Sternberg, director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), we have now become aware of the link that exists between the brain and the immune system. According to Dr. Sternberg, chronic stress results in the brain pumping out excessive streams of hormones with the result that the immune system become weakened and ineffective in its response to viral or bacterial attacks leaving us susceptible to illness.
There are in each lifetime, a myriad of unexpected problems of varying magnitude that are presented to us to resolve. Some are easy, many are difficult but they all generate stress. How we handle this stress will determine the amount of happiness we experience in our lives.
We are never going to be stress-free as we are never going to be problem-free; that simply isn’t the way life works. Far more often, resolving one problem simply opens the door for another. Regardless of the problems, how we manage our stress, will ultimately determine how we are able to live our lives.
There is a secret to dealing with problems whether big or little and it has nothing to do with magic. The secret is to stay cool. Be detached. Get tough. Don’t allow yourself to become your own victim.
Excessive emotionalism won’t help but it most certainly will hurt. If you are confronted with a problem whose outcome you cannot change, then you must accept that outcome and deal with it. You wouldn’t stand in front of a brick wall banging your head against it, would you? Of course you wouldn’t. Why not? Because the wall is not going to move and the only one who will be hurt is you. That’s the reality. To continue to pound your head against that wall would only end up with you having one hell of a headache while accomplishing nothing.
Life is like that wall - implacable. It keeps coming at you. No matter how you prepare yourself – no matter how you steel yourself for the struggle - you can’t change life and you can’t overcome all of its existences. What you can do however is to learn how to deal with its problems – how to manage life in a way that limits its effect on you and on your life.
Each of us will at some time be faced with problems that threaten to overwhelm us. We can’t escape it. Yet, throwing in the towel – giving in - in my opinion is not an option, not if you want to hold on to your sanity, not if you want to make it through this life in one piece - not if you want to be happy.
Instead, if you understand and accept the fact that you cannot get through life without having to deal with a lot of problems, problems that generate a lot of stress, then you will also understand the importance of stress management. The importance of learning how to cope.
Coping is nothing more than a technique, a mental gymnastic, a skill that for some comes naturally but for others must be acquired. The good thing about it is, once you acquire this skill, it will stay with you for the rest of your life - so learning is well worth the effort.
First a word of caution. There are those who, no matter how hard they try will never be able to learn to deal with crises. They too-quickly succumb to stress and fall into a malaise that renders them incapable of functioning without outside help. These people need to consult a professional and this book is not meant for them.
There are also those individuals that suffer from stress-related emotional disorders such as post traumatic stress disorder. P.T.S.D. is usually the result of an event of such catastrophic impact that those who experience it cannot easily forget it. These people – some of them – are so traumatized that they find themselves re-visiting the disaster over and over in their minds. Such events as the bombing of the Federal Building in Omaha, Nebraska a few years ago or the terrorist attack on World Trade Center in New York City on September 11th, 2001. For those people, these memories are more than they can bear they cannot forget them no matter how hard they try. They need the help of an on-site, trained professional because no amount of self-discipline or prioritization is going to help them deal with their personal trauma.
For the rest of us, however, for those who deal with more ‘normal’ types of stress activators, this book can help. It offers an outlook that can bring your life into focus and give you a better hold on your affairs. Emotional self-control is the goal and it is well within your grasp if you are just willing to make the effort. .
“You eat life or life eat you.” It’s your choice and your emotional survival lies in the balance. This is why I say get tough.
Now saying ‘get tough’ is obviously a lot easier than getting tough. I know that and you know it too. We are each of us, products of our environment and of our nurturing, and by the time we get around to reading a book like this, we already have firmly entrenched behavioral patterns imbedded in our psyche that dictate how we want to respond to given situations, particularly stressful situations. If you handle them well, you don’t need our help. If you don’t - if you often find yourself feeling overwhelmed - then it’s likely that you do. Remember:

“you eat life or life eat you”.

End of Introduction


This and other works at Amazon.com: Copy and paste to your browser:
http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1231617282/ref=sr_pg_1?ie=UTF8&rs=133140011&keywords=J%20J%20Kusnell&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3AJ%20J%20Kusnell&page=1