You Might Be More Stressed Than You Think

When you’re okay, but really not okay. (photo: Produtora Midtrack)

We can be slaves. Or we can be free. So here’s the way to liberation; even if we don’t think we need it.

We’ve become so numb to the word “stress”, and even more numb to its early warning signs in our bodies, so even if you don’t think you’re stressed right now, check in with yourself anyway. And then read on as neurodiverse advocate Natasha van Zyl (BA Psych [Hons]) shows us how we can liberate ourselves from what’s actually an ongoing state of panic.

The simple truth is that if you’re living on this planet, you’re probably stressed

Just because you’re not feeling stressed out doesn’t mean that you’re not carrying it. Our bodies are so brilliant at adapting that we could be walking around stressed to the nines and not even know about it. So many of us convince ourselves that we’re “fine” while our stress indicator tests are sky-rocketing.

Whenever my clients wonder how a test could show stress when they’re not really feeling it, I tell them that any human living on this planet, is almost definitely stressed. In fact, the only people who aren’t stressed are those who are so medicated that they don’t feel anything, and those who have, one way or another, detached themselves from society.

It’s in the narratives in our souls and the marks in our genes

Wars, famines, genocides, violence, poverty, suppression … the society that we live in comes with so much inherited baggage and trauma. We don’t just carry these intense narratives in our souls, we carry their marks in our genes. There are generations and generations of emotional and collective turmoil that we just haven’t dealt with. It doesn’t matter that we’re not conscious of it, it’s still there, and it’s still simmering within us, affecting body and mind in ways we’re still learning about.

And then there’s the living stress that we all carry

Health, relationships, finances, work, knowing your place in the world; if you’re entering the game of human society, these are just some of the given worries of everyday existence. It’s the inherent nature of the matrix: our society has conditioned us to be voluntary slaves.

When we stop to think about it, we’re all just like Pavlov’s dog, acting out conditioned behaviours in response to certain triggers. We like to think that we’re in charge, but our super-conditionable minds have become habitualised to keep us busy.

And it starts as early as the education system. With all its homework loads and constant demands, our brains have been trained from a very young age to get busy and to keep busy. Always. Never stopping, never resting.

There’s no time to pause, contemplate, or play

There’s no time to think about all this busy-ness because we’re so busy doing all the things that are keeping us busy. Our conditioned minds keep telling us all the stories why we have to keep so busy, and so we keep playing the game, ever filling an endless cavern of demands. And so, for many of us, our stress has become naturalised. It’s not that we’re not stressed, it’s that our baselines are higher than they should be.

Here’s how we heal

Ultimately, we need time to pause and contemplate and play. It’s a simple antidote, but it’s not as simple to put into practice.

Especially because we’re so lost that we don’t even know how lost we are. So even if you don’t feel stressed, take a pause anyway. Do it. And do it now. Even if you just take one minute. Stop. Check in with yourself. Give yourself some quiet time where there’s nobody but you. Where there’s no thought but gentle awareness.

Breathe. Meditate. Even better, go outside and be with nature. Or get a massage. Sing. Play. Dance. Do whatever you have to do to give yourself your own private downtime, and do it often.

And for those times when you really feel the stress, when you feel like something is “chasing” you, or you feel overwhelmed, pull yourself into awareness and look around you. Open your eyes to your immediate environment and look at what’s really happening. What’s in front of you, in your line of sight? Is there a lion ready to launch itself right at you? No? Okay then. So consciously acknowledge that there isn’t actually an immediate threat to your life … you can slow down … you can breathe … you can release all those tight spots in your body … you can exist in this moment, where it’s all okay. The more you practice a state of peace, the easier it is to access.

This is how we start liberating ourselves from that constant state of panic.

The real magic is that our brains are conditionable in all directions. We can be slaves. Or we can be free. We just have to build our own neural pathways by gifting our brains with different habits, and ultimately, different realities to play with.

And that’s when we’re free.