I saw this comic today and it made me laugh so much!
This was exactly me, when I first came across the 3P about 9 months ago...
I had experienced 5 years of severe chronic pain and since I knew it was stress-related, I had become hyper-hyper-vigilant about avoiding stress.
This was the 'anti-stress-routine' I was following:
- coherence training (a breathing exercise) three times a day for 20 minutes (hated it by the way)
- wearing a 'breathing-tracker' which constantly reminded me of breathing more deeply (it vibrated when my breathing became too shallow)
- taking about 15 different supplements/herbs that are supposed to calm the brain down
- pacing and monitoring myself constantly, planning my day, trying to avoid pain flare-ups
- trying to manage my moods, so that I wouldn't get too angry or annoyed and by that aggravate the pain
- avoiding situations in the outside-world that I perceived as stressful
- doing 'neurofeedback therapy' once a week (where they basically do an EEG while you sit in front of a screen, trying to calm your brain down and getting feedback about how you're doing on the screen)
- researching all kinds of stuff about diet/resilience/chronic stress disease/neuroplasticity etc.
...
As you can imagine, I was quite stressed.
It seems very funny to me now in hindsight, but back then it was the best I knew to do. I had been meditating for 20 years before getting sick, so that obviously hadn't helped, so now I went with all the techniques I could find.
What I can see now is that I had no understanding about what stress actually is and where it is coming from. I am deeply grateful for meeting Chana and being introduced to the three principles. Somehow it really 'clicked' for me and so much has changed.
I'm doing none of the above anymore - once I got a deeper understanding of myself, of how my mind works, of the real source of the stress, it just didn't make any sense anymore.
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