I would summarize all the difference choices you make to stress into two categories. You can react to stress. You can respond to stress. The words sound the same, but there are subtle differences that can help you in dealing with stress.
Getting Clarity Through Mindfulness
John Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (Full Catastrophe Living, 1994). Each part of that definition is important if you are someone who is struggling with trauma, and the other feelings that go with it, like anxiety and depression.
Stress and Change
Stress…And Stressors
We all have our own version of stress. When I share with someone that I help people with stress reduction, it is not unusual for them to respond, “I could use some of that.” Stress is something that we all experience; the word has become a term we use for the various struggles and pressures and challenges that we face in life.
The Monkey Trap
Just Because You Think It, Doesn’t Mean It’s Real
In their book, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Move Through Depression and Create a Life Worth Living, Kirk D. Strosahl and Patricia J. Robinson describe these two parts of our thinking as the reactive mind and the wise mind. Most likely, the reactive mind is the way of thinking that you are most familiar with. The reactive mind helps to make sense of the world around you.
A Mindful Relationship
What Do You Really Want?
It is easy for people who suffer from depression to get caught up in thoughts and feelings that allow the depression to become entrenched. It can reach a place where these depressive thoughts and feelings become a lens through which you look at and interpret the world. The depression shapes and forms how you see yourself and how you see others; it begins to give direction to the actions and choices you make.
Entangled In Your Thoughts
If you have experienced trauma, control might be a big issue for you. By definition, trauma is an event that creates a high level of stress or fear, but you do not have the chance to escape or get away from it. When thoughts or feelings about the trauma show up later, it makes sense that you would want to avoid these negative internal experiences. So, you exert control, and you can do this in lots of ways.
Thinking Self/Observing Self
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and suddenly realize that you have heard little of what they were saying? Have you been talking among a group of friends and suddenly realized that your mind has wandered? Perhaps you have had someone complain that you aren’t listening. It is not unusual to respond to that complaint with something like, “I’m sorry; my mind was somewhere else.” So where, exactly, is that somewhere else, and how do you get back to here?