Stress management made simple

When I came across a book called "Stress Management Made Simple" by physician Jay Winner, I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical.

Stress? Simple? Tell that to the hundreds of people I know who struggle to pay bills, clean out the gutters before the next rainstorm and do what is necessary to maintain minimally acceptable sexual relations with an equally stressed-out mate.

I called up Dr. Winner to see if he really could make stress management simple. He obliged with providing four stress-busting "opportunities" for all of us stressed-out folks to take advantage of.

1. Learn to relax for a specified period of time per day. Most people don't know how to relax so they need to learn it just like they would any new skill... through practice. Winner suggests that the best way is to do this is to make a commitment to start out with a short time every day devoted to this task. On his Web site, www.stressremedy.com, he provides a six-minute relaxation exercise that can get you started. (Click on "relaxation.")

2. Incorporate relaxation into your life throughout the day. There are many ways to do this. It can be as simple as feeling the ground massage your feet as you walk down the street. Another way is to counter stressful feelings by literally focusing on enjoying the next breath you draw. In fact, learning to breathe "diaphragmatically" (taking a big belly-expanding breath in, followed by drawing your diaphragm up as you exhale) is a certain stress-releaser. Throughout the day, become mindful of where you hold your stress in your body and then release it through deep diaphragmatic breathing.

3. Learn to "reframe" your stressful thoughts. Winner makes the psychologically astute point that most of our stress is not really created by the situation itself but by what we think or interpret about the event. He cites an example that I unfortunately relate to: the grocery store line.

There I am in my local market, thinking I am so clever by scoping out the shortest line, only to realize that I only succeeded in getting in the line with the only person in the store who is going to pay for her week's worth of groceries with a bag of pennies.

This can be a place where stressful thoughts run rampant. Or, according to Winner, this is a situation where I can "reframe" this into an opportunity: a found moment to break from my busy day, a chance to read that trashy magazine that I would never think of buying. I could even take the more advanced step of doing an "empathic reframe." For example, instead of deciding that she is using her penny bank to torture me, I could imagine that needed those pennies to buy her hungry family food.

4. Learn to keep life in perspective. This is definitely one of my personal favorite stress-snappers. I have noticed that most of us, when in a state of distress, have started narrowing our focus, usually on the negative. We lose sight of the beneficial full-spectrum vision.

Winner points out that most of stress is not about life and death situations. "One of my favorite ways to get perspective is through gratitude," he says. "The brain can only focus on a certain amount of information. If we can list the things that we are grateful for, even say them out loud, then we can bring the minor things back into perspective."

Dr. Michael O.L. Seabaugh, a Cape Girardeau native, is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Santa Barbara, Calif. Contact him at mseabaugh@ semissourian.com.