It is not uncommon for me to have conversations with men on the topic of chronic stress only to learn they have been dealing with this constant anxiety that has been existing under the surface. I frequently hear from guys they must hold it together and appear as if there is absolutely nothing going on underneath the surface. This eventually leads to even more stress and more extreme reactionary interactions with the people they love.
While we know that women generally report feeling more stress than men, this does not eliminate the existence of the problem. I just had a conversation with a gentleman where he explained years of shouldering burdens that seemed to get heavier with time and seemed to feed his anxiety until it became chronic.
When we live in separation from the body and in sole existence within the mind we are subjecting ourselves to the innate nature of the mind as problem solver, always seeking problems in need of solutions, and round and round we go on the hamster wheel of worry and stress. Over time this also begins to lock in auto-pilot patterns of negative thinking, rather than observing the silver lining within a situation one immediately gravitates to the negative explanation. In the long term, existing within this headspace will begin to minimize your energy levels and might also impact sleep quality as well.
In order to begin rewiring what can quickly become ingrained patterns in the mind and nervous system you need to begin educating your nervous system on how it feels to experience safety in the body, and feeling calm and peaceful. It is important one uses personal experiences of these sensations, cultivating them as a gardener cultivates and grows his vegetables. Once you have cultivated your vegetables to a point of full maturation, then you can begin undoing this pattern of chronic stress and negativity in the mind.
We do this by making the positive much greater than the negative as if the positive experience always wins the race and the negative experience is beat out every time. The more one increases their frequency of practice the stronger and more ingrained the pattern becomes much like becoming an expert at the violin or tennis. To finish with the analogy of the gardener tending his vegetables we feed and cultivate with loving kindness what we want to exist in our vegetable garden, and we weed out and remove with daily attention the weeds and the pests that might compromise the growth of our vegetables.
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