Radio interview on NPR on facing stress and uncertainty.
For many years I traveled throughout Europe, the former Soviet States, the Middle East, and Central Asia responding to crises and helping the humanitarian workers in those countries. I was in Ukraine when Russia was invading Crimea, in Hungary from the beginning of the refugee crisis, and in the Balkans during the Kosovo War. This work allowed me to see people in the middle of their darkest days and taught me a great deal about stress and resilience.
Stress Is About Pressure and Change
The word stress comes from physics and engineering. Picture an engineer taking a metal beam and putting pressure on it to see how the metal reacts. Does it bend or does it break? Stress is all about pressure. We have pressure because of what is important to us. Stress is also about change. Change can be negative, like losing a job, or positive, like having a new baby. When we have a change in our life, we have to adjust our life, and this adjustment is experienced by our mind and body as stressful.
Anxiety Is About Control
Anxiety is different from stress. Anxiety shows up when we do not feel in control. If you are driving a car in the winter and hit a patch of ice, you will lose control of the car. This increases anxiety. We experience anxiety when we do not feel we have control over our circumstances or the outcomes we want.
Four Steps To Manage Stress and Anxiety
There are four things we can do to manage stress and anxiety. To learn more, click here and listen to this interview on NPR radio where I share the keys to managing stress and being resilient.
