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Troubador Publishing Ltd - K. Chandiramani

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103 pages

English

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There is no need to slow down to de-stress yourself - just let go of your emotional baggage so that you can run faster. Emotions and Stress: How to manage them encourages you to deal with your own stress in a way that allows you to keep moving at the same pace. But first you must ask yourself two questions: Do I really need to run? and Am I running in the right direction? This book attempts to bring together modern psychiatric and psychological practices with the ancient traditions of mankind. Based on K. Chandiramani's own work using a combination of approaches, it is designed to help anyone suffering from almost all forms of psychiatric problems including anxiety, depression, anger, psychosomatic disorders, relationship issues and work-related stress. The book is also likely to help even those who do not suffer from any psychological problems but would like to have a greater control over their emotions. Some of its chapters address existential issues that afflict all human beings, while others contain spiritual elements that facilitate the promotion of mental health and access to inner piece. Emotions and Stress can help you transform your negative emotions into positive ones. It explains the science of emotions, how they are processed in our mind, how they influence our thoughts, opinions and actions, how to be free of them and above all how to regulate them. It is a fascinating and insightful read for anyone looking for an answer to their problems, as well as those interested in or studying psychology.

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Sociologie, société et politique

Psychology

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 janvier 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781784627904
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright 2015 Kishore Chandiramani
The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1 What Is Stress?
Chapter 2 What Causes Stress?
Chapter 3 Understanding the Mind
Chapter 4 Our Emotions: Friends or Foes
Chapter 5 Lifestyle and Stress
Chapter 6 Love, Sex and Relationships
Chapter 7 What Is Psychotherapy - And How Does It Work?
Chapter 8 Coping with Stress
Chapter 9 Recovery Process
Chapter 10 Spirituality: The Fourth Dimension of Life
Chapter 11 Excerpts from Audio Sessions
Chapter 12 Tweets on Stress Management
INTRODUCTION
This book brings together all the insights that I have come across in my life and found them helpful in dealing with my own stress and that of my clients. I see no major contradictions between modern psychiatric and psychological practices on one hand and the ancient traditions of mankind on the other. This book is an attempt to bring together all of those approaches under one umbrella and also to integrate them as far as possible.
I have found these approaches work for clients suffering from almost all forms of psychiatric problems, psychosomatic disorders, relationship issues, work-related stresses and also for individuals who do not suffer from any psychiatric problems, as some chapters address the existential issues that afflict all human beings, which may be in different proportions.
There are also spiritual elements that reduce stress, facilitate promotion of mental health and allow access to inner peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kishore Chandiramani has worked as a psychiatrist for more than thirty years across cultures and countries. He has tried to understand the mind from a number of different perspectives and this quest led him to study not just psychology and psychiatry but also philosophy and spiritual practices. He is currently in private practice in England and runs a stress management programme (Chandiramani, 2014) both for psychiatric patients as well as for psychologically healthy individuals who want to increase their immunity to stress.
DEDICATION
I dedicate this book to the late Mr S. N. Goenka, my Vipassana meditation teacher who taught me a new way of being in this world, which has helped me work on my emotional baggage and also taught me how not to create new stress in my mind. I understand Mr Goenka went through the whole book and was pleased to give his approval and blessings .
This book brings together insights from modern science as well as ancient spiritual and philosophical traditions with the sole objective of helping people deal better with emotions and psychological stress.
Kishore Chandiramani
CHAPTER 1
What Is Stress?
People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them ; this nearly 2000-year-old quote from Epictetus, a Greek philosopher, has received support from scientific research in recent years. Research suggests that individuals who do not perceive a stressful situation as stressful are very much less likely to experience the adverse effects and are able to cope better with stressful events. This does not mean that the actual quantum of the demand is immaterial; it does play a part if the demands cross a certain threshold for the individuals. It s just that the scientific opinion supports the notion that the perception is more important than the actual quantum of the demands.
We see ourselves taking different views of the same thing at different times, at times just the opposite of each other. We see someone as friendly and caring in the morning and a few hours later realise that they have been very selfish, unhelpful and uncaring. How to know which of these two thoughts represents the reality?
Just because a thought is there in my mind does not mean that it represents the reality out there or my true feelings. It may be a random thought, a wild thought, an adopted thought, an induced thought; and, as opposed to all of those, a thought that truly represents my core identity and inner feelings.
Unfortunately, we become advocates of our thoughts as soon as they enter our minds, leaving very little room to challenge them. Different forms of therapies and meditative practices, including Vipassana, help us recognise our true feelings and thoughts and they also help us see the reality as it is and not as it appears to be. This can enable us to deal with situations more appropriately, thereby reducing our stress.
Stress is defined as the gap between one s perception of the demands placed upon the individual and one s ability to cope with it. It s a very popular term and almost everyone understands it. Almost all psychological problems, be it anxiety, depression, anger or relationship problems, are forms of stress and the use of this term does not help distinguish one from another. When discussing mental illness, the word stress often causes more confusion, as it fails to convey the precise nature of the problem.
Mental health professionals use the term stress disorders only when they fail to categorise the condition into the neat categories of anxiety disorder, depressive illness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc.
To simplify the matter one can say that stress is an overarching term and it manifests differently in different individuals depending upon their personalities and mental state. It is the cause and also the end result of psychological disorders. The same stress can cause eczema in one person and alcoholism in another, depending upon their mental makeup.
Stress can therefore be understood in terms of the following three ways:
As a stimulus: Environmental events such as war, earthquake, famine and accidents can cause stress even when the coping abilities of the individual are good.
As a response (mental and physiological reaction): A stress-prone person experiences high levels of stress even in situations considered normal by most individuals.
As an interaction between the individual and the environment (e.g. relationship problems).
A washing machine for the mind: Most of our daily actions and interactions produce stress, as our psyche is mobilised from the resting state to a state of action in order to meet a demand. The pure mind gets exposed to the environment and picks up stress, very much like our clothes, which pick up dust and grease during the course of the day. We put our clothes in a washing machine for cleaning and the cycle takes about an hour or two.
What about our minds? Where is the washing machine for the mind? What do we do to undo the stress? Just as we wash our clothes every day, we need to de-stress ourselves every day.
Stress management should be seen as a prevention rather than a cure of a problem when it has already resulted in illness. It should be practised daily, similar to cleaning our teeth every morning. We clean our teeth every day irrespective of whether they feel clean or unclean. In a similar fashion we need to practise stress management strategies even when we don t suffer from any stress disorder.
I normally ask people what they do to de-stress themselves and a common answer I get is, I fix a drink or switch the television on. Unfortunately, there is very little scientific evidence that these two activities will undo stress. We feel that way because these are step-down activities rather than anti-stress ones. Drinking alcohol creates a wall between us and our inner selves so that we don t feel stressed; watching television distracts us from our normal preoccupations and worrying thoughts, but makes our minds react emotionally in a subtle way that we don t perceive as stress.
Most people who experience stress do not have a psychiatric illness and do not require professional help, but it is a condition that requires proper understanding and careful self-management as it could affect almost every aspect of one s life and eventually lead to psychiatric illness.
The following could be used as a rough guide to assess your stress levels.
Knowing how you feel first thing in the morning: You are connected to the inner most reaches of your mind during sleep and how you feel soon after waking is a good parameter of your inner mental life. Clients with high levels of stress report feeling unwell, unrefreshed or tired first thing in the morning and the feeling may disappear soon after, as we get busy with the activities of the day. Just because we do not feel stressed during the day does not mean we do not suffer from stress, as it is likely that we operate successfully in the external world from the superficial layers of our consciousness during our daily life, hence remain cut off from inner stress until a breakdown occurs.
How you feel at work: Occasionally wishing you did not have to come to work and wanting to go home can be normal, but if this happens often, it can signal stress. Feeling the need for frequent cups of coffee, tea or smoking to keep you going and being desperate f