The way our thinking causes stress

The other morning as my hubby got ready for work - I watched as he transformed from the fairly easy going man he normally is, to being on edge and short tempered. I could see him visibly and energetically transform before my eyes.

👉 He was thinking about how the traffic would get worse the later he left the house and transform his 45 min into a 70min plus commute to the city.

👉 He was thinking about the temporary role he’s taken on at work to help everyone out, that has added additional pressures and problems so that he's not enjoying work at the moment and counting down the weeks until its over.

Have you ever paid attention to the thoughts that go on in your brain?

We mostly feel stress because of our thought patterns. This is one example of how it usually works:

🛑 a situation or event happens (you have a fight with someone / someone says something that disturbs you / you get caught in traffic)
🧠 your brain starts processing it and coming up with thousands of thoughts (Has this happened before? What does it mean? Am I going to die from this? What happened last time?, etc)
❤ as you process those thoughts it ignites emotions and you start to FEEL things ( anger, frustration, fear, worry, etc).

And our humanness is very clever - every time you rethink about that event or situation, you ignite the same emotions and can feel them to same degree - even though you aren’t actually having that experience anymore.

You’ve created a loop of stress just by thinking about that situation again even though it happened- yesterday, last week, last year.

Are you aware of the situations and events that you’re reliving by thinking about them and feeling those same emotions- and are keeping you stressed?

Are you doing anything about it?