Stress Managment- A Biblical Perspective

Stress Management - A Biblical Perspective

Stress is a well known problem. It is a common knowledge about stress that stress is the biggest killer on earth.

- What is your idea about stress? When do we know we are stressed? What are the symptoms?

- We will try to find out our own stress levels and see how we can effectively use the principles of God to fight the problems related with stress

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There are three aspects to a successful stress management plan, Understanding, Preventing and Releasing stress. We will try to understand each of the aspects from a biblical perspective.

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So let us try and understand stress. Stress can simply be defined as physical or mental tension.

How do we view stress… are all stresses bad?

Do we believe that if we are blessed we will never have any stress?

In John 16:33, the Lord tells us that we will go through tribulations. In Psalm 139: 13-14, the psalmist tells us that we are “fearfully” and wonderfully made. If we are fearfully made. There is some thing that we need to fear. And any fear results in Stress. Some times, or may be most of the times the stress that we experience is the prime motivation for us to give up some bad habits, change some things, mature, take better care of our health, stop us from over-speeding. God made us in such a way that when some thing threatens (real or imaginary), our safety, our peace, our life, or anything we consider important, we develop a “stress response. The intensity and amount of stress can some times be very crucial to our lives. So being stressed itself is not bad. However if the stress situation continues for along time, even after the stimulant is removed then it becomes a problem, it becomes what psychiatrists call as chronic stress.

Chronic stress makes people sick. Many of the stress related diseases like hypertension, chronic head ache, ulcers etc are result of Chronic Stress. Anger is another form of Chronic Stress. Prolonged enmity or resentment against some one else causes our body to be in a continued state of arousal. In Ephesians 4:31, Paul advises us to put away all forms of anger and malice. for this reason. Paul also tells us in Ephesians 4:26 not to let the sun go down on our wrath. Prolonged anger is not good.

The next form of stress is what we call the Traumatic Stress. Unlike Chronic stress, this can be caused suddenly. This is caused when some thing bad happens to us suddenly, like a death of a near and loved one, or when we are robbed or attacked, or meet with a serious accident, when natural calamities like Earth Quake, flood etc strike us etc. When such situations strike us, it takes generally longer for us to turn off the stress reaction. Some people are unable to turn off the stress at all. This then results in to what psychiatrists call as the Post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD people with PTSD continually re live the traumatic experiences that they went through, and hence continue to be stressed about the experience which might have been long over.

The last type of stress that must know about is funny kind of stress. Not all stress is caused by bad things. Even good things can cause us stress. Like falling in love, like getting married, like getting a baby, or even taking a vacation. This type of stress is called the Eustress. For Leadership trainer like me, I encourage this type of stress, I believe that this is the type of stress that drives people to achieve greater things in life, to go that extra mile,. In 1 Corinthians 9:24 Paul encourages us to run every race as if we have to win, though we know that only one can win the race. However Eustress is good only if it lasts in short spells. If we continue to be in a state of eustress, that will result into chronic stress which is never good.

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Having understood a little bit about stress, let us try to assess our own stress levels. I suggest that first we do a self assessment by reflecting and thinking about the following three questions.

What are the stressful experiences in my life?

When do I feel Stressed?

How do I deal with my stress?

We will use the results of this self introspection as we go along.

After the self introspection I suggest that you do a test called Holmes Rahe test. This test gives us an idea about our stress-ability due to life changes. You can take the test on-line at many web sites. One of the web sites where you can do the on-line test is http://www.geocities.com/beyond_stretched/holmes.htm