A surprisingly simple solution to stress

A creative professional, at the top of his industry, sent out with his newsletter a query of how to deal with stress more easily. He mentions a colleague who is comparably in demand for whom it all seems to come very easily. Said colleague spent 3 years full-time rock-climbing. This is the answer I wrote to him:

I have a thorough answer based on my experiences as a healthcare provider using a neurophysiological treatment modality, so there is some weight behind my following elaborations.

Firstly, you gotta understand that you are by no means alone with that conundrum, quite to the contrary. I will provide you with a philosophical-psychological explanation for this problem, then give a clearcut practice that indeed needs practice (despite its relative banality at face value) and also weave in why your rock-climbing colleague seems to have so little trouble with it and what to take from his practical exemplary story.

The fundamental human flaw is cognitive valence attribution. We relatively inevitably give things and occurences a certain black/white meaning, which necessarily causes us to miss out on the whole picture. More on the basis of this later. Ultimately, the problem is not seeing objective reality for what it is but having our attention captured by a small sliver of subjective experience, which puts reality through a more or (often) less beneficial filter. 

The modern knowledge worker, which includes every job without the majority of the effort being physically exerted, suffers from more stress and neuro-muscular tension than would be natural. Occupation with assessing and manipulating information for dozens of hours per week would distract anyone from their normal subjective baseline of being a physical being. A project-deadline is neuro-endocrinologically indistinguishable from a lion chasing us through the savanna. And there is always the next deadline chasing us. And there is never an extended period of rest for the nerves between bouts of exertion, since the mind can not really stop moving - and one is not paid for stopping cognitive efforts in this or any other economy.

The meaning we place on these constant demands is life or death. 

And not only do we optimize that spreadsheet, looking at it as if our lives depended on cranking out an extra two percent either with that spreadsheet or via the extreme hectic with which we work on it - we also see all the ways in which we could do it too but won't, and the nagging boss or client's negative past feedbacks which we want to prevent, and the interpersonal conflict of two colleagues we are reaponsible finding a resolution for, and the interpersonal conflicts at home, and the personal project we would like to work on but don't find the time for. All of these negatively colored stressors nag at us, but since there is a series of neverending tasks to complete and things to consider, we never look at the internal consequences of this all. We have a sensation of vague disarray but don't spend appropriate attention to where it sits within us. We don't clarify and rebalance it. There is no time for that in our culture.

Obviously this stress must come from the outside. The external demands are the cause for this internal discomfort, so we keep focusing on resolving those superficialities.

Which is it now - subjective or objective stress? It is not looking at either clearly, seeing  whatever it is for what it is.

This is the aforementioned human flaw, captured in the story of adam and eve. We developed positive valence attribution as a result of recognizing the benefits of ripe fruit being more sweet and therefore more nutritionally dense. And we developed attribution of negativity by being subject to the tragedy of arbitrary death, e.g. fatal snakebites not even with the purpose of food acquisition. This search for benefits and avoidance of disadvantages is hardwired within humans now and made us very powerful. The problem is, we can't stop it. Everything is viewed through this binary lense and nothing just taken as it is.

So, is there negative valence to be attributed towards binary valence attribution? Well, it is what it is. We have to live with it - but we can also conquer it. If one does not want to be perpetually dissatisfied and neither running the hedonic treadmill, they must conquer it daily - even eternally momentarily.

This theory serves the purpose of showing how normal it is to get unreasonably stressed out by life. It is the human condition but can be dealt with effectively. 

This brings us to the seemingly simple solution to practice.

In a nutshell: Neutrally perceive what is objectively real.

This means merely acknowledging the external and internal circumstances for what they are in any given moment. 

If the mind is racing because of a piling up taskmanager while actively working on a creative project, focus back on that creative project, whenever the mind fills itself with something that is not the actually active task.

Most easily mental self-distraction can be overcome by at first focusing on the personal physical reality. In other words, feel your body.

The mind can only focus on one thing at a time, so getting out of your head is easiest via getting into your body. After a few moments, continue focusing on what you actually are supposed to focus on right now.

If cognitive confabulations are very heavy, be it because of particularly distressing news about some interpersonal relationship, business occurrence or world event, it is recommendable to familiarize yourself with the objectively real presence for a slightly extended period of time. This might also include becoming aware of the physical location of one's body and including objects within that perimeter of objective reality as well. That is a simple yet powerful crutch to get out of a disadvantageous phase of imagination.

A slightly more advanced but necessary form of this practice of perceiving reality for what it is includes neutrally observing internal emotional patterns.

Acknowledging how it feels to be so upset, sad or confused as soon as it occurs is disarming whichever emotion astoundingly effectively.

Staying a neutral observer while doing so can be tricky though. It is easy to get upset at oneself for being upset about something, so the acknowledgement should go towards that as well when it happens - sometimes you might have to dig to find the actual current emotion.

Emotions can sometimes be quite elusive, a quick workaround for which is to return to the bodily sensation they are accompanied by. Actively distracting yourself from tiredness for example or just compensating it via stimulants is a very unhealthy practice. Instead allowing yourself to feel tired but just continuing down the set path of actions in a slightly slower manner or just taking a short breather without any other active or passive distractions will lead to a quick recharge.

Being stressed, angry or sad have specific physical effects attached to them, unique in each occurence. Becoming conscious of any of these helps dissolve the associated emotional charge automatically.

All emotions are mere neurophysiological reactions to extrinsic or intrinsic stimuli. Letting the system run its course of renormalization by not engaging and therefore exaggerating them but instead neutrally observing and thereby relaxing despite the discomfort, is the most comprehensive way of dealing with heavy occurences of any sort. It also grounds one in the factual sitation as quickly as possible, whereby one is able to clearly determine and proactively follow the best ensuing path forward.

Being continually aware of the internal and external reality is relatively impossible, which one must be aware of too. Getting back to it as often as possible is a very helpful practice, for each of the situations to which it gets applied but also with the compounding effect of developing a natural and easy process for processing distress.

So, why does your rockclimbing colleague have such a relaxed disposition and way of dealing with stressful tasks? He practiced what I layed out here for hundreds and thousands of hours. When he was travelling vertically along a mountain, he had to always be absolutely in the present. And whenever his mind tried to go somewhere else, he had to return to it as quickly as possible before doing any other move. Otherwise it could have cost him his life. He had to become literally absolutely conscious of his whole body. He perceived where and how he was positioned for countless moments. He had to always stay relaxed as much as he could in each of the bodyparts that were currently not in demand, else his endurance would have been drained too quickly - put differently, he was maximally relaxed but focused exactly on what needed attention and action in that very moment. He was surely afraid and nervous more often than he could recount when about to do some more challenging leaps but had to collect his calm again before going through with that move instead of acting while occupied by that emotional charge. That means he trained self-regulation without any external sources of distraction or relaxation and being aware of himself and his surroundings for years. This leaves a mark. Investing so many hours to make this process second-nature sets a good benchmark for not beating oneself up over falling back into old patterns of exaggerating emotional reactions - there is also no cliff to remind you of its potential side-effects for most of us.

Hope this helps.

If you want any clarifications or have other questions, feel free to message me anytime.

Kind regards,

Felix Kammerlander