STRESS HANDLERS
It’s the third group, called stress handlers, who seem instinctively to know how to deal with stress. As a moderator at the Second International Symposium on the Management on Stress, in 1979, I introduced a man who summed up the stress handler’s approach, saying, “Don’t sweat the little things. And just about everything in life is little. If you can’t flee and you can’t fight, then flow with it.”
Stress handlers realize that most things in life aren’t worth getting upset about. If the occasion demands, however, they can stand up for themselves. And if they can’t resolve a problem, they learn to live with it by changing their perception of the facts.
Let’s say the neighbor runs her noisy electric lawn mower every Saturday at 6 A.M. The stress seeker will jump out of bed, stomp out of the house and—heart pounding, muscles tense and blood pressure sky-high—angrily confront the rude neighbor. If the woman refuses to turn the machine off, the stress seeker will threaten to call the police, call his lawyer, run his own lawn mower at 5 A.M., and so on. For the stress seeker, the situation is a battle that must be won at all costs. His blood pressure will top the charts, and stress hormones will flood his body until he wins— or his “doctor within” gives out.
Every time he hears the lawn mower he’ll be reminded of his helplessness. These thoughts will slowly wear away at his immune system, making him more susceptible to disease.
Stress handlers, however, will calmly discuss the problem with the neighbor, tell a few jokes, and maybe work out a compromise. They’ll make every effort to resolve the situation and keep the peace. The stress handler may be forced to handle the situation through the legal system. But, if it turns out there’s no way to make the neighbor step, the stress handler will change his perception of the facts by deciding it’s a good idea to get up early and go jogging or read the newspaper while the lawn mower is running next door. In other words, the stress handler will not allow himself or herself to become sick over a lawn mower, or any other problem.
Stress handlers subconsciously know that the most important thing in life is their good health and happiness. They want to keep their endorphins and other good biochemicals flowing in goodly amounts. And they do. Stress handlers tend to be healthier than stress seekers or stress phobics because they keep their body chemistry in balance. Stress seekers may push and push until they win the point, but stress handlers are the ultimate winners: they keep their health and happiness.
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