If you want to leave a normal life, you can either adapt to stress, or eliminate the stress cause

There are many ways to deal with stress but basically they boil down to only two – fight or flight. There is an old saying that recommends to join your enemy, if you can't defeat it but certainly this does not apply to stress, though to some degree you can adapt to stress and learn to live with it. Actually, this seems to be the case with most of us – we have become used to stress. Or at least we think so. But is this the best approach?

Is Flight From Stress a Defeat?

One of the approaches to stress in medicine is called “fight or flight” - i.e. you either try to eliminate the stress cause or leave, if you are helpless to fight it. It might sound a little shocking but actually flighting is not always a defeat for you. For instance, if you quit a job that is demanding but not rewarding (or at least not for you) or a relationship that is exhaustive for you (you work 15 hours a day to make money, while your wife stays and home and her only problem is how to spend your money) this kind of flight is not a defeat in any sense. Your employer might miss you, your wife certainly will but you will be no longer under stress, just to make the others happy.

As a matter of fact stress in the family and at work (school) are the two most common forms of stress. For many people this just goes unnoticed, at least not before the first unexpected heart attack. They take it as normal – unhappy marriage, boring job, money problems – who does not have them? This is part of life and why worry too much about it when I will somehow manage to survive? Yes, this is part of life (for some people) and complaining about it does not help but how about solving the problem and removing (fighting) the cause of stress?

Well, this step seems to be to tough for many people, even if they are aware that they are under stress and this is slowly killing them. I don't mean that these people have consciously chosen to perform a long-term suicide but if they are too weak to fight and too proud to flight, a miracle must happen to save them. If you are in a stressful situation, you can dream that a miracle will get you out of it but it is much better to be the master of your own fate and take the necessary steps to get out of trouble.

Know Your Enemy – Identify the Cause of Stress

The first step to getting out of stress is to identify the cause of stress. After you have identified the cause of stress, you can decide if there is a point to fight it or it would be better to flight. Sometimes the decision is very tough and can cause you additional stress till the problem is solved but the worst you can do is to deny that you are under stress and pretend everything is OK, when it isn't.

So what can you do to eliminate stress from your life? Well, maybe you can't eliminate it completely but even reducing it to bearable levels is OK. First, you might learn to overcome it, though when the situation is out of your control and you are the victim, you can hardly do much but pretend to be a hero. In this case avoiding trouble is certainly worth.

Other approaches to dealing with stress are to try to reduce the stress levels or to find a stress reliever of some kind (sports, music, going out with friends, etc. but no drugs and alcohol, please). Actually, there are many stress relieving approaches that can help you to survive and the other articles in this section of the site will give you a lot of ideas how to do it!