The High Price Of Stress — How Much Are You Paying?
- Aug 3, 2021
- 4 min read
Written by: Karen St. Clair, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Do you take stress for granted these days as “just part of life”? While we occasionally experience Eustress, the healthy positive stress we feel when we’re planning our wedding, riding a roller coaster, or taking on a fun challenge, we can spend many more hours per day in Distress, the chronic unhealthy and damaging stress of fear and anxiety.
What Can We Do About It in the Present Moment?
The answer is simply to use the profound benefits of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), commonly known as Tapping, a mind-body stress reliever. Tapping gently on nine specific meridian points while repeating out loud what is causing the stress physically reduces the Cortisol (stress hormone) level in your body. It sounds too easy and too good to be true until you experience it for yourself! The result of using EFT Tapping is a feeling of relief as the mind and body release stuck energy or “Chi” restoring your energy flow from the Sympathetic nervous system known as “fight or flight” to your Parasympathetic nervous system, defined as “calm-rest and digest.”
Being stuck in the past could be costing you money, time, or even your future.
Here are samples of stress indicators that you may be experiencing daily.
Can You Relate?
Neurological Symptoms
Difficulty concentrating
Trouble making decisions
Negative outlook on life
Anxious or racing thoughts
Constant worrying
Emotional Symptoms
General moodiness
Irritability or short temper
Feeling lonely and isolated
Agitation, anger, inability to relax
Feeling overwhelmed with life
Physical Symptoms
Aches and pains in the body
Digestive problems
Nausea, dizziness, vertigo
Chest pain, rapid heartbeat
Loss of intimate desire
Behavioral Symptoms
Eating more or less
Isolating yourself from others
Procrastinating or neglecting life’s responsibilities
Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax or in excess
Nervous habits
Any one of these or a combination of two or more may be costing you your ability to move forward easily in your daily life.
Our Thoughts Are In Charge
Consider that we have 80,000 thoughts per day, with 85% of those being the same thoughts that we had yesterday and the day before that. Our subconscious mind continually serves up repetitive negative thoughts for the sole purpose of keeping us safe, its primary focus. It can continue, day in and day out, as the cost of stress grows larger by the minute.
Emotional costs are not always measured in dollars and cents. Our behaviors can cost us that pay raise or promotion. They can show up in our lives in many different forms, like the costly limitations created by the fear of using an elevator or fear of driving on the highway.
Empowering Results with EFT Tapping
I decided to test this theory by creating an EFT Tapping group of adults to find out what the perceived costs of stress were in their current lives from unresolved past experiences from childhood.
Each participant was asked to share what was costing them emotionally in their daily lives. The group’s feelings seemed to flow easily as they shared their responses:
“My anger and frustration with my job cost me the promotion that I deserve.” (Monica)
“Cigarettes and booze are costing me a decent relationship.” (Dean)
“My IBS condition is costing me the joy of taking a vacation because I can’t travel.” (Keith)
“Believing that I’m not good enough keeps me in an abusive relationship and costs me my freedom.” (Rebecca)
They could clearly identify the emotional costs that we're translating into daily stress but felt powerless to change it.
The act of identifying their personal costs unleashed their potential to feel the riches of unlimited emotional currency.
“How would you like to turn these emotional costs into stress-free currency?” I asked.
“YES” won the day!
Dean was the first to raise his hand! “Cigarettes and booze are costing me a decent relationship.”
As we worked through some of the preliminary questions, Dean shared that he started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes when he was 13.
Dean felt ready to shift the daily habits that had become his way of life.
“What was happening in your life at 13?” I asked.
He said, “My Dad died suddenly in a car accident.”
“What did you feel in your body when you learned of the accident?” I continued.
“Scared and abandoned,” said Dean.
We gently tapped on the EFT Tapping points using Dean’s words over and over until he realized that he hadn’t yet accepted or grieved his Dad’s death but had turned to alcohol and cigarettes as a coping mechanism to soothe the overwhelming emotional pain that he was experiencing.
The subconscious mind stores traumatic experiences in real-time as part of its full-time job to keep us safe. In Dean’s case, real-time meant age 13. He had been carrying the emotional weight from that moment on. Reliving the moment of getting the news about his Dad’s death seemed palpable.
On a scale of 0 – 10, Dean’s level of feeling scared and abandoned was a 10.
As we tapped through each feeling, Dean’s level of stress slowly came down to a 1. He was able to let go of the fear and abandonment that his 13-year old inner child had been carrying for so many years.
To this day, EFT Tapping is Dean’s go-to stress reliever for big and small emotional costs.
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase; just take the first step.” Martin Luther King
If you’re ready to take that first step of releasing stressful patterns from the past and start experiencing emotional freedom in the present, let's talk about how EFT Tapping can start helping you today.
Book a free consultation with Karen at her website or connect with her on LinkedIn or Facebook.
Karen St. Clair, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Karen St. Clair is a multi-business owner and CEO of two divergent companies; Touch Point Studio, an Energy Psychology Practice, and St.Clair Media Group, a full-service advertising agency.
She has mastered the art of combining the energy of consumer-facing advertising with the inner Soul work necessary to create abundant outcomes for her clients. Known for her expertise in the use of research-based modalities, Karen practices as an Accredited EFT Tapping Practitioner certified by EFT International, a Psych-K® Practitioner, and Usui Reiki Master of Masters. She specializes in identifying, addressing, and resolving often intertwined personal and professional challenges. Her years of corporate experience and master-level energy psychology training create ease of trusted success within her practice.
Karen proudly volunteers her services on the Reiki Team at Maine Medical Center and facilitates EFT Tapping Groups for frontline healthcare workers of Maine Health, helping to alleviate stress and anxiety.
