Animals don't get stressed by thoughts alone

By Gunila Pedersen • • 2 min read

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How many times have you been stressed about something that hasn’t even happened yet? Like worry about:

  • Being late
  • Not knowing enough
  • Bills that need paying at some points
  • What you have to do next day
  • An upcoming consult or surgery
  • ….

Humans have the capacity (should I say curse) to get stressed by thoughts alone - thinking about something that happened in the past, or anticipating what might happen in the future.

I mean, it can be a good idea to prepare for whatever you’re going into, but we almost always take it to the next level of over analysing and spinning in dread and anxiety.
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That’s why it’s so important to be aware of our thoughts. They can make us feel like we’re in danger right now, which is a distortion of reality. When it happens over and over, we end up being chronically stressed, and this is a maladaptation to our current world.

I mean, if you’re reading this, it’s likely you have a roof over your head, electricity and means to eat. So basically safe.

When our thoughts are constantly around past events we can’t change, or a future we can’t do anything about yet (and may never happen), we end up living in survival mode. We are often then unable to escape this mode, where all we see are problems.

You’ve probably heard about the importance of “being present”, over and over. What this means in practicality is to notice when our brain is skidding around in the past or the future, churning out unproductive thoughts that make us feel stressed out and powerless.
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How do we handle this? By writing down our thoughts, and seeing them in black and white, so we can gain a perspective. This alone can take a lot of wind out of their sails, and calm you down.

If you’re a crack at meditation this can also help, but until you’ve done it for a while it can actually stress you out even more because you just sit there spinning in the same thoughts, while you try not to think about anything, and then judge yourself for thinking.​ In that case, you might want to try out a guided meditation, there are quite a few good ones on YouTube - I love Sam Harris, for example.

In your corner,