Homeopathic Guide to Stress: Safe and Effective Natural Ways to Alleviate Physical and Emotional Stress

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Important Note to the Reader:

Dedication

Acknowledgements

How to Use This Book

Introduction

Understanding Stress

What is Stress

Working with Stress

Understanding and Using Homeopathy

What is Homeopathy

Prescribing

Sample Cases

Emotional Stresses

Introduction

Betrayal

Boredom

Bullying

Conflict

Criticism

Depression

Disappointment

Embarrassment

Excitement

Failure

Fear

Guilt

Homesickness

Humiliation

Jealousy

Loneliness

Loss

Mental Strain

Reprimand

Resentment

Shame

Shock

Transitions

Uncertainty

Worry

Physical Stresses

Environmental Stresses

Everyday Stimulants and Sedatives

Food

Illness

Injury

Medication

Physical Stress and Strain

Rest, Relaxation and Sleep

Weather

Homeopathic Remedies

Aconitum napellus

Ambra grisea

Anacardium orientale

Apis mellifica

Argentum nitricum

Arnica montana

Arsenicum album

Aurum metallicum

Baryta carbonica

Belladonna

Borax venata

Calcarea carbonica

Calcarea phosphorica

Capsicum

Carbo vegetabilis

Causticum

Chamomilla

Cocculus indicus

Coffea cruda

Colocynthis

Conium maculatum

Gelsemium sempervirens

Ignatia amara

Kali phosphoricum

Lachesis

Lycopodium

Natrum carbonicum

Natrum muriaticum

Nitricum acidum

Nux vomica

Opium

Phosphoric acid

Phosphorus

Picric acid

Pulsatilla nigricans

Sepia

Silica

Staphysagria

Stramonium

Sulphur

Tarentula hispania

Veratrum album

Zincum metallicum

List of Remedies and Abbreviations

Indexes of Stresses

Emotional State

Emotional Stresses

General State

Physical Stresses

Appendices

Glossary

The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale

Organizations

Further Reading

Index

Also by Miranda Castro

Miranda Castro

Copyright

IMPORTANT NOTE TO THE READER:

It is advisable to seek the guidance of a physician before implementing the approach to health suggested in this book. It is essential that any reader who has any reason to suspect that he or she suffers from illness check with his or her doctor before attempting to treat it with this method. Neither this nor any other book should be used as a substitute for professional medical care or treatment.

For Jeremy

Acknowledgements

The stress of writing books in addition to being a homeopath, a single parent and human being have stretched me, at times, to my limits. I joined a town choir and found that singing twice a week released some of that strain, and created more physical relaxation, more inner joy and more peace than ten hot baths or a day on the Yorkshire moors. It took me forty-two years to find a way to sing the notes that rattled around in my head! Because my life is (willingly) rather stressful, singing is the first place I look to when I become over-stressed or need a massage for my body and my soul.

I would like to thank the following friends, family and colleagues for their encouragement, feedback, input, support (moral and otherwise!) … and, of course, for their part in alleviating the stress of writing this book: Barbara Levy, Daniel, Ellen Goldman, Joy Chang, Hazel Orme, John Morgan, Mary Clarke, Jeanne Ellin, Jeremy Castro, Maggi Sikking, Mike Jackson, Miranda Walsh, Rachel Packer, Rob Barker, Rosie, Sue Morrison, all at the Society of Homeopaths’ office, Victoria Pryor, and finally, all at Macmillan UK.

Seattle, Washington, USA

February 1996

How to Use This Book

The goal of this book is to enable you to use homeopathic medicines safely and effectively so that you can treat some common stresses and stress-related complaints after consulting with your medical professional. I hope it will also encourage you to enter into a lively, on-going relationship with your own stress responses, by understanding them within a holistic, homeopathic framework.

Understanding stress

This section discusses some common stress responses, suggests ways to identify stressful areas in your life and outlines steps to take in order to deal with them.

Understanding homeopathy

This chapter looks at the history and principles of homeopathy, and ends with twenty cases from my practice which bring the theory to life.

Emotional and physical stresses

These sections focus on specific stresses, including practical advice for avoiding a particular stress and/or working with it, as well as a brief discussion of homeopathic solutions.

Homeopathic remedies

This part describes forty-three common homeopathic remedies for acute or recent stresses. Each one describes the emotional and general state, as well as some common physical symptoms.

Stress indexes

You can use these as a short cut once you become familiar with the pictures outlined above. Or you may want to look up a particular stress or symptom in order to see which remedies are appropriate.

Appendices

Here you will find stress charts to help you work out how stressed you may be, as well as a glossary of terms and a list of books and organizations.

Introduction

When I first ‘discovered’ homeopathy I felt as if I had ‘come home’. One of the main reasons for this feeling was that my homeopath took a wide view of stress, one I hadn’t experienced or heard of in any other medical discipline. It was such a relief to know that there was a place where medical professionals not only saw that each individual was unique, with particular strengths and weaknesses, but that each person was potentially vulnerable to different stresses, or would at least respond in their own way to different stresses – whether they were physical, mental or emotional. This made tremendous sense to me.

In my early years in practice, however, I found myself somewhat perplexed when patients would tell me at the beginning of a consultation that they had come to see me because they were stressed, or because their doctors had diagnosed them as having stress. I would ask them to tell me more and I would also ask what they meant by the word ‘stress’. Some of these patients would look at me somewhat suspiciously, even irritably, as if to say: ‘What kind of homeopath are you? Don’t you know what stress is?’ And they would repeat their original statement, but speaking a little slower this time, as if they were talking to someone whose first language was not English. Some patients would go into a lengthy explanation about stress, in a genuine attempt to educate me. Others would shrug their shoulders and look at me baffled as if to say: ‘Well, if you don’t know what I mean then I certainly don’t.’

In the past, doctors who were having difficulty helping certain patients would often, if all tests came back negative, make a diagnosis of psychosomatic illness. They might add that the patient had to learn to live with their complaint, that there was nothing they could do. This has always seemed to me to be a rather cruel blow to deal to those who may be running out of hope anyway.

Then there came a time when the diagnosis changed to ‘stress’. It was an easier word to say (and spell!) and tripped off everyone’s tongues without any trouble whatsoever. Doctors now added that the patient had to learn to live with their complaint, that there was little advice they could offer except, maybe, to learn to relax.

The trouble is that stress, like psychosomatic illness, is almost completely meaningless as a diagnosis. It is like taking your beloved car to the garage, saying that it has a worrying knocking sound every time you brake hard, and that you have noticed some other peculiar symptoms as well. Your mechanic takes a close look and performs many sensible tests but is not able to find what ails it. He then hands it back to you saying that he cannot therefore treat it, and you will have to live with it. You know that it is just a question of time before something goes wrong. Your mechanic knows it too, but neither of you say anything. You don’t want to make your mechanic feel bad, especially since he has done his best to uncover the cause of the problem.

It has been suggested that the human body is like a car. That we have to attend to it with the same degree of loving care and attention. If only it were that simple! We cannot take it apart, lay all the parts out on the garage floor, clean them and put them back together again. We cannot easily replace parts that have become damaged. And we do not run on fuel alone. Our vitality and our energetic processes are not fully understood. The sheer complexity of the human body should be listed as one of the seven wonders of the world.

Any system of medicine that seeks to treat the human body as a mechanical object is going to be limited in terms of its ability to offer serious healing. Patients have learned to rely on doctors more as mechanics than anything else … presenting a straightforward complaint and expecting and getting a simple solution which treats the complaint (a prescription). The problems start when the complaints become more complicated and do not respond to standard drug treatment.

A car is mostly a three-dimensional object, operating within fairly comprehensible boundaries. A body is multi-dimensional, multifaceted. And so is life. My task as a homeopath is to make a four-dimensional jigsaw puzzle out of the mass of information that each patient presents, one that makes sense to both of us, one that I can prescribe on, that takes these many facets into account.

I have learnt to ask my patients about the stresses they have experienced and to describe the effect they have had. As they tell their story I listen carefully, in order to pick up clues about their emotional responses to a stressful situation, to build up a picture I can understand and work with. For many people, everyday stresses include those which are mundane (like poor diet, commuting or lack of exercise); unpleasant (living with an abusive partner or a sulky, angry adolescent); or severe (the death of a close friend or relative or redundancy). For some people traumatic stress is a tragic reality, either as a one-off (a disabling accident or sexual abuse) or in an ongoing way (those caught up in war-torn areas or nursing staff on an accident and injury unit). The stress of being shot at in Bosnia or Northern Ireland is very different to that of being stuck in a traffic jam on a motorway.

Alternative medicine in general, and homeopathy in particular, can offer much to patients who have been encouraged to dismiss or ignore their complaint because it has been diagnosed as ‘psychosomatic’ or ‘stress-related’. There is almost unlimited help available in the homeopathic medicine chest, whether the stress is physical (headaches caused by a head injury, a cough caused by teething, or an earache after a chill); emotional (depression due to a difficult relationship or resentment due to an unpleasant work situation); or mental (exhaustion and inability to make decisions after an exam, or a period of overworking). A well chosen homeopathic remedy can heal emotional pain as well as physical symptoms, and enable people to recover their vitality and sense of well-being.

This book is intended as an introduction to homeopathy with a specific focus on stress. It isn’t a comprehensive guide to either stress or homeopathy. I hope that you will use this book to begin to build a healthy relationship with stress: to identify your own unique responses to particular stresses, to understand what affects you and when, to check out ways to balance out those stresses, and to explore the part that homeopathy may play in helping you on your path to health.

Miranda Castro

Seattle, 1996

Update to introduction with video: http://mirandacastro.com/main/eStress.html

UNDERSTANDING STRESS

What is Stress?

Stress is an integral part of life’s rich tapestry. It is an on-going, ever-present ebb and flow in all our lives. We need to understand its place in our lives and work with it rather than sink hopelessly into it, or worse, see it only as something to eliminate.

I hope to provide a wider, holistic view of stress that acknowledges the many forms it can take: physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual; healthy and unhealthy; chronic and acute; everyday and traumatic.

Working with everyday stress is about how we interact with life and express ourselves in all our relationships and at all levels. We need to understand that it is neither a good nor a bad thing – necessarily – it is our response to it that makes it healthy or unhealthy, energizing or draining.

Health is more than simply the absence of disease. It involves a sense of well-being, of feeling good, of being in balance and in harmony, that is hard to dislodge. It is, above all, the ability to respond appropriately to stress.

Under stress we each react according to our strengths and weaknesses. We all have different Achilles’ heels – and these weaknesses may be our greatest assets. Some people only know they have been under pressure when they get a migraine or have difficulty sleeping. We need to respond to these calls for help and not ignore them. That way we can begin to see them as a resource for preserving our health rather than as a nuisance, which seeks to undermine us when we least expect it. We can look on illness as a warning sign that there may be some stress or stresses in our lives that need attending to or balancing out: to make choices about which healthy stresses to add in, which unhealthy stresses to cut down on or even cut out; or what additional support or practical measures (including medical treatments if appropriate) are necessary to help us through this particular time.

The homeopath largely ignores the label of a disease, being more interested in how each individual experiences it, and what stress or stresses led up to their becoming ill. No two people with a cough, for example, will have the same symptoms and neither will the stresses that precipitated the cough necessarily be the same. Where one person may develop it after the emotional stress of, say, feeling betrayed by a good friend, another can develop it after a physical stress such as getting chilled in a cold wind.

I hope that you will use this book to identify areas where homeopathy can help you, where you can easily, safely and swiftly treat yourself, and where and when you need to seek professional advice. If self-prescribing isn’t appropriate and the stresses in your life are affecting your health, then I hope that the information in this book will encourage you to seek out constitutional treatment from a professional homeopath.

My goal is to provide a model for understanding stress within a framework that takes into account the whole person, so that you can identify your own responses to it and begin to build a healthy relationship with stress on a daily basis – to harness it as a positive enlivening force in your own life.

STRESS RESPONSES

A healthy response to the many stresses of life enables us to be alert, to have plenty of energy and feel fully alive, to be creative, adaptable, approachable and to express ourselves appropriately: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Stress can be enlivening, exciting, stimulating – providing us with challenge and stretching us.

Or it can be a pressure, a strain. At times we may be understressed – feeling unchallenged, or unmotivated, tired, apathetic or even depressed; and at others overstressed – feeling tense, tired, anxious, irritable. Once we are overstressed it becomes harder to relax. Conversely, if we are understressed, it becomes harder to get going. Either way, we are not able to deal with stress as effectively and appropriately as when we are more relaxed and in balance.

Every cell in our body contracts and expands continuously throughout our life. All our bodily processes pulsate, have their own ebbing and flowing – as do our feelings and our thinking processes. To live in a healthy relationship with stress we have to be able to relax: mentally, emotionally and physically. Stress stimulates (causing contraction), after which we need to relax (causing expansion), after which we can contract again. This natural rhythm involves a constant movement between tension and relaxation.

We are perhaps most familiar with the stress reaction known as the ‘fight-or-flight’ response which gets switched on when we are frightened, shocked or need to perform at a higher level than normal. This response involves all of the body’s systems, all organs, all cells, and interrupts our natural rhythms. Chemicals (neurotransmitters via nerve impulses and hormones via the blood) are triggered by, say, the stress of a shock, causing measurable physical reactions: the heart rate and respiration increase in anticipation of action, hormones (especially adrenaline) are released, which in turn trigger the release of stored body sugar to provide a surge of energy – in other words, our body goes on ‘red alert’. In a dangerous, difficult or life-threatening situation this response is vital, because it gives us a heightened awareness and extra energy.

Problems arise when this fight-or-flight response becomes habitual, when everyday events (getting stuck in traffic, waiting in a supermarket checkout, going for a job interview) evoke it regularly, because the body is constantly flooded with adrenaline. A constant state of tension develops and it becomes difficult, and eventually impossible, to relax. Jaw clenching, tooth grinding (especially when asleep), a chronic stiff neck are all typical physical symptoms of this type of overstress.

When the demands, which can be either physical or emotional, exceed our available resources, our system gears up to deal with the challenge. This is when the overstress can tip us over into distress. It is only when we are distressed, when our stress levels exceed our ability to cope with them, that we can become completely exhausted and even burnt out.

‘Burnt out’ is the term often given to people who are seriously worn out. It is an emotive term which gives the impression that everything has fused inside! Which, of course, it hasn’t. We have simply become run down and our battery needs recharging. The term ‘breakdown’ would be more accurate. Once we have reached this state we often need a complete rest for as long as it takes for our vitality to return.

You take a risk with your health if you don’t listen to your own warning signs telling you that you are overstressed, or heading for distressed. You can take precautions to avoid becoming distressed or even burnt out. But first you need to be familiar with your own symptoms.

If you can answer yes to most of the following questions it is unlikely that you are suffering from either under- or overstress.

• Do you feel good and on top of your life?

• Do you feel full of vitality?

• Are you eating well and regularly?

• Are your energy levels high without the use of tea and/or coffee?

• Do you sleep well and easily at night and wake feeling refreshed?

• Are you happy with your friendships and relationships?

• Is your work satisfying?

• Are the following a regular part of your life: fun; exercise; creativity; rest; relaxation?

If you answered ‘no’ to many of the above questions then you may want to use this book to help you reassess how stress fits into your life.

The immediate effects of stress and strain are that people often feel tired and tense and compensate by overusing caffeine, sugar, cigarettes, alcohol and other ‘drugs’ (including prescribed drugs such as the minor tranquillizers often given to people suffering from anxiety and/or insomnia). Chemical stimulants boost our hormones artificially if our natural energy levels drop. Chemical sedatives force us into an artificial sleep. Overstressed, and some under-stressed people, tend to mix these, either daily or with occasional binges, using caffeine to get going, sugar to keep going and alcohol to switch off. They may also be making things worse by missing meals or eating badly. This creates a shaky equilibrium, an internal roller coaster, as people balance stresses by using this form of over-the-counter self-medication instead of taking practical, health-preserving steps to deal with the stresses.

Prolonged abuse of stimulants and sedatives simply stresses the body further. The long term effect of having the body flooded with chemical stimulants is damaging, especially for those who are sedentary. Adrenaline, for example, needs burning off, needs physical activity for it to be used up productively otherwise it leaves acidic residues.

If the body needs rest and instead the hormones are artificially stimulated to respond, then the whole system will eventually destabilize, will become more and more run down. Our natural chemicals are an emergency resource, not something we should be stimulating on a daily basis.

If we become overstressed when we are awake, we generate stress chemicals which will prevent us from sleeping well at night, chemicals that are designed to promote alertness and combat sleep. We prepare for sleep during the day and so we need to weave rest into our waking hours, so that by the time we get to bed we can switch off. Otherwise we can set up a vicious cycle that is hard to break, where a bad night’s sleep leads to waking tired so we use more stimulants to keep our energy levels high and have difficulty sleeping.

Rest isn’t the only answer, the ‘addictions’ need dealing with, the patterns of overstress or understress need facing, the automatic response of the body to flood with stress hormones needs help to switch off. Exercise, diet, rest and relaxation, as well as fun and play time, adjustments to work schedules to create a healthy balance between work and rest – these all need dealing with for the sake of our long-term health.

Our brains operate a complicated juggling act with hormones, or chemical messengers, sending and receiving trillions of messages daily that deal with all the functions of the body – physical and emotional. When we are under stress, it is our hormones that are responsible for the initial warning symptoms – the lack of energy and enthusiasm, inexplicable aches and pains, sleep difficulties, changes in appetite and mood swings.

Typical symptoms of overstress include: headaches, back pain, stiff neck, nausea, physical tension and/or stiffness anywhere, dizziness, indigestion, constipation and/or diarrhoea, skin rashes, hair falling out, difficulties with menstrual periods, piles, stomach upsets, nosebleeds, cystitis, problems with teeth and gums, sweating, palpitations, cramps, twitchy legs, difficulty swallowing (a sensation of a lump in the throat), difficulty breathing (a sensation of not being able to get enough air), anxiety, irritability, poor concentration, memory loss, indecisiveness, ‘gramophone’ thoughts (going round and around), a general slowing down or even an overwhelming lethargy. In addition, we can become more susceptible to infections such as coughs, colds, sore throats and flus etc.

When symptoms surface at one level, other levels are often affected. For example, a head injury (physical) can initially cause shock (emotional) and amnesia (mental) as well as pain (physical). A difficult, aggressive boss may create an emotionally stressful environment for his or her staff, who may produce physical ailments such as headaches, indigestion or neck pain as a response to unexpressed emotions.

People are sometimes told that little or nothing can be done about the complaints that accompany or follow emotional stress. These may be termed psychosomatic, which implies that the patient has made him or herself ill. It is an outmoded view of disease that needs questioning. Nobody should be led to believe that they have made themselves ill on purpose. Or it may be suggested that the ‘correct’ mental attitude (or positive thought) is necessary for healing to take place. The message received by the patient if healing doesn’t take place, is that again, they are responsible or even that they may be incurable.

Those who don’t feel physically unwell as a result of emotional or even physical stress need to be especially careful, and may indeed need to balance out the stress in their lives more routinely since they won’t be receiving warning signals when something is wrong.

If the relatively minor symptoms of under- or overstress are ignored and/or if people do not make some basic but essential lifestyle changes, then more serious chronic illness can develop. Disease is not necessarily a bad thing. It simply may be the body letting us know that we need to attend to some housekeeping. Any approach to dealing with disease that involves treating the underlying stress or stresses will be of greater benefit in the long term than treating the symptoms alone.

Working with Stress

Life is stress-full. We need to stop and assess our stress load on a regular basis if we are to work with it effectively.

We need to understand where tension comes from in order to be able to relax. In stressful situations we have a tendency to react in the same old (stressful) ways over and over again – ways that we may have learnt as children. And when we grow up, in spite of knowing that these ways of responding are unhealthy, we can find it difficult to react differently.

It can be hard to change old habits. It isn’t possible to change simply by wanting to. There are a number of steps to take, just as with learning any new skill. Use the following steps to help you to do this.

KEEPING A LOG

Start by keeping a diary of all your activities, and inactivities! Over a week, log in everything you do and how long it takes. If you have a complicated life, with changing schedules, you may need to plot your activities for longer than a week in order to get an overall picture.

You can use the charts or make up a system of your own. Classify your activities into work, school, home (household chores including shopping, cooking, cleaning, tidying, etc.), family time, travelling, eating, rest and relaxation, sleep, exercise, time off or fun (social) time, time spent watching television and anything else that matters to you.

At the end of the week add up the hours. What does it look like? What patterns do you notice? Understanding where stress fits into your life is an important first step in being able to deal with it. Are you surprised to find that you are working a thirty-two hour week when it felt like fifty? Why? Is it because you aren’t getting enough sleep or exercise and are tired all the time? Or are you shocked to find that you have been working sixty hours a week without realizing it?

If you are unemployed it may be just as important to find out how you are spending your time. I know one man who was shocked to discover that he was watching television every day for between six and twelve hours. He wasn’t taking any exercise either. It was hardly surprising he felt depressed. Children of all ages may also find it enlightening to learn how many hours they are spending in front of a television and/or computer screen. Those caring for elderly parents or disabled children or the sick will find it sobering to see how little time is left over, especially if they are caring around the clock seven days a week.

Those who are keeping many balls in the air may feel mystified about how they fit it all in. This is one way to find out. What are you cutting back on in order to be Superman or Superwoman? Working parents find that after a forty hour week at work, ten hours travelling, sixteen hours housework and shopping, twenty hours cooking and eating, forty-two hours sleeping, there aren’t many hours left in the week to spend with their children, partners, friends or just by themselves. If they don’t plan carefully, they are going to slip into feeling overstressed without any difficulty whatsoever.

ADD UP YOUR STRESSES

Use headings to help you identify stress in different areas of your life, work or school, home, relationships, time off. As you list each stress also write down your uncensored response to how this stress has affected or is affecting you. Is it acute (a one-off) or chronic (ongoing)? Is it preventing you from doing something you want to do? Is it affecting your health? How stressed are you really? How long is your list? Are your day-do-day stresses manageable or do they feel like hard work? Is it difficult to imagine how you have coped or have you sailed through some choppy waters with relative ease?

On a separate piece of paper, think over the past year and list the stressful situations you can remember – the traumatic or extraordinary stresses. Use the Holmes and Rahe charts here to help you, or talk it through with a friend – someone close to you may well remember things you had forgotten. Make a note of whether each stress was physical, mental or emotional; mild, moderate or severe; a one-off or on-going; and whether it was an everyday or a traumatic stress. How many of these stresses are still present in your life?

Compare them with previous years. Have you had one stress-filled year after another? Stresses that have come and gone may still be having an effect. Maybe your beloved pet died four years ago and you still feel bereft but are ashamed about feeling so sad about an animal and have no one to confide in. Now look forward and list any imminent stresses.

Become an interested observer of your everyday life and notice how you react in different situations. What makes you feel tense, pressured, anxious, frustrated, frightened, and, conversely, what relaxes and energizes you or makes you feel good? Collect this information, without being judgemental or critical. Start noticing your patterns, the sorts of stresses that are familiar as well as your responses to them.

ADD UP YOUR PERSONAL ASSETS

An awareness and appreciation of your strengths and your fine qualities will see you through tough times and make the good times more enjoyable. Start with your strengths: for example, a strong constitution (good health/vitality); a sense of humour; a strong will; common sense and so on. Many people have learnt to be most aware of their weak points, to the exclusion of their assets. Part of your success with handling stress will be accepting your strengths along with your limitations. They are neither good nor bad but are the cornerstones of your individuality.

List your resources: people who will help out when you need them – friends, family, neighbours, etc., a friendly bank manager! It is all too easy to forget that you are not alone in stressful times.

List your skills: your areas of expertise which enable you to do with relative ease the tasks with which others might struggle. You may have learnt them on a course or at work. Many people do not count the cost to themselves of not having, for example, basic administration skills when it comes to dealing with paperwork, or basic accounting skills for book keeping in a small business. Neither budgeting nor filing comes naturally – any more than breastfeeding, parenting, communicating, cooking, driving or gardening!

LIFE SKILLS

Some skills are worth learning to help you cope more effectively with stress. People who lack assertiveness, and/or are bad at managing their time, and/or have never been encouraged to listen to their intuition, can find themselves muddling along, becoming increasingly frustrated or upset, not coping as well as they would like to and not getting what they want – or getting it, but at a high price.

Assertiveness training, time management, planning and problem-solving work hand-in-hand and you might consider taking a stress management course if you want to look at these areas of your life in a more structured way.

ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING

Our interactions with others can be a source of stress. Assertiveness is a learnt skill that comes more naturally to some than others: some learn it from their families, mainly by example, but many don’t. Many people are now learning about human behaviour, often unconsciously, from the television. Unfortunately, ‘assertive’ characters in adverts, films or soap operas often perpetuate unhelpful, stereotypical behaviour. For example, when women get angry they may say nothing and storm out of a room, sometimes slamming the door; when men get angry they may become physically violent. Both of these are stressful ways of expressing anger in the real world.

Assertiveness training can reduce stress by helping people learn to stand up for their rights without being aggressive but without being bullied. Being assertive means having respect for one’s own needs and rights as well as those of others; expressing thoughts, feelings, beliefs, likes, wishes, disagreements or confusions in a direct, honest and appropriate way, which is respectful of others and their feelings – without taking responsibility for them. Above all, an assertive person can laugh at him or herself, can keep stressful experiences in perspective and deal with them so that no one is damaged in the process.

MANAGING TIME

Be aware of time and how it fits into your life. Balance the time you spend at work with the time you devote to your family, friends and yourself. If you know you are working ridiculously long hours then start by cutting back half an hour a day. Spend it doing something that recharges you.

If you have become stuck and bored, are either unemployed, retired or doing a repetitive job, make time in the day to do something that will get you going again, that will stimulate your creative juices: an exercise or evening class, voluntary work, anything to give you some energy.

If you are a person who habitually rushes, develop rituals that slow you down: take things one at a time – you will find everything easier to remember. People who lose their keys are often people who do one thing while thinking of something else. Get up earlier in the morning so that you can have a leisurely breakfast; take a minute (or even two) just to sit before leaving home – it takes several minutes to go back and get the things you have forgotten in the stressful rush to get on your way. Make lists and always have them at hand to add to when you suddenly remember things. Build idling time into your daily routines, allow extra time for all journeys, be philosophical about delays – see them as a ‘gift of time’ and use them to think, relax, meditate or daydream.

Television has become a huge time-killer. Be ruthless with your planning and only watch the programmes you’re really interested in. Avoid spending too much time on trying to get things perfect: make peace with yourself and agree that the housework, your job or whatever, is going to be done ‘well enough’ for now – especially if your priorities lie elsewhere. To have more fun, for example.

PROBLEM SOLVING

Your next step is to plan how you might handle your stresses – less stressfully. Your stress scales aren’t static, neither will they ever be equally balanced.

When it comes to problem-solving with a particular stress you may get stuck with the idea that there are only two solutions – neither of which seems satisfactory. This is rarely true, but may be a measure of how stressed you are. Once you end up thinking that there isn’t a satisfactory way out of a difficult situation it is easy to want to blame others or yourself for what is happening in an attempt to deal with feeling helpless. Be kind and considerate towards yourself and interested in how stress is affecting you and how you are going to deal with it.

Start by thinking through the situation, taking your feelings into account. Ask yourself what you really want, and what outcome you would ideally like. Is it different from what you need or think you need, or what others want from you?

Scribble down alternative solutions, without censoring the weird and the silly as well as the sensible. Then sleep on it and/or talk it through with people you trust. Ask a friend, someone who knows you well or who deals well with the sort of stress you are facing to share their solutions. But remember that your stresses and your solutions may be different from theirs.

A vast untapped resource for solving difficulties is intuition or mental