Stress Management & Belief Systems

A lot of stress results from our beliefs. We have literally thousands of premises and assumptions about all kinds of things that we hold to be the truth - everything from, "You can't fight Government" and "The customer is always right," to "Men shouldn't show their emotions" and "Children should make their beds." We have beliefs about how things are, how people should behave and about ourselves ("I can never remember people's names"). Most of our beliefs are held unconsciously so we are unaware of them. This gives them more power over us and allows them to run our lives.

Beliefs cause stress in two ways. The first is the behavior that results from them. For example, if you believe that work should come before pleasure, you are likely to work harder and have less leisure time than you would otherwise. If you believe that people should meet the needs of others before they meet their own, you are likely to neglect yourself to some extent. Several friends have told me, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." They do not delegate well and tend to get overloaded.
In the above three cases, the beliefs are expressions of people's philosophy or value system, but all lead to increased effort and decreased relaxation - a formula for stress. There is no objective truth to begin with. These are really just opinions but they lead to stressful behavior. Helping people uncover the unconscious assumptions behind their actions can be helpful in getting them to change.

The second way beliefs cause stress is when they are in conflict with those of other people. An example would be a father having a fight with his son because the child wore the same clothes several days in a row. If you ask why it bothered him and he would most likely reply, "Because you should change your clothes every day." If you ask him where this idea originated: "Well, my mother taught me that. Everyone knows you should change your clothes every day." If you told him that this was not "the truth," but merely his opinion based on the way he was raised and people lived in cultures where they did not change clothes often and nothing bad happened to them. This would help him see that this was a premise he held but one which was not shared by his son. The argument was not over the clothes themselves but merely about a difference of opinion. Once this hypothetical person recognized his belief was not "true," his anger would be diminished.

For most men the belief that a man can not show emotion and he must be the main source of income for the family can cause an enormous amount of stress. However, I believe that childhood experiences can play a significant role to the preconceived ideas held by many men. It would be simply disingenuous to assume that every man you talked to about being emotional and letting go of their fears would actually do this. Some men can watch a news report on television about Iraq and bring them selves to tears while other can show no outward or inner emotion. Their are some men that would see this as a challenge to their sexuality as others could accuse them of being feminine. The reasons for these beliefs may be due to watching their fathers and other piers while they were young. The fact of the matter is that a man can be emotionally connected to himself and others and still have all the other masculine qualities that society stereotypically expects from him.