Dear Natural Health Friends,

When I ask people about stress and how they handle it, they often mention exercise, reading, listening to music, or something like that. These things are all good! But they’re more of an escape or distraction from stress. These activities don’t address or handle the stress itself. And it is possible to do this. Let me explain:

Dr. Sheehan’s Stress Story

Years ago, I was massively stressed out and realized I had to do something about it. I had done a lot of psychotherapy, meditation, prayer, exercise, among other things, and yet I was still very stressed. It’s because I had a lot of stress in my life (I know, amazing realization, right?) And all the work I had done to that point was trying to take care of the stress after it had happened, rather than preventing it in the first place!

One day, I woke up in the middle of the night, and by what I would recognize later must’ve been divine inspiration, I had an idea. I decided to write out all the things that were stressing me out. It was a list of about 20 things. Ok.

That helped, but it didn’t give me any relief going forward. So, I decided to write down what I could do about all these stressful things. I saw that of those 20 major stressors, there were about 10 things that I could do something about it pretty quickly.

The next day, I set about changing those 10 things. I just took action to solve those 10 easy things. No problem.

Then an amazing thing happened. I felt less stressed. By focusing on what I could do, rather than what I couldn’t do, I changed my frame of mind into being more cause, less effect. In other words, I made myself less of a victim of my circumstances and more in charge of my destiny. I realized that I couldn’t change all the stresses in my life, but I could change some of them, and in doing so, I was able to reduce my stress load.

That’s when I realized that we all have a certain amount of stress that we can take in life, and if it goes over a certain amount, it really starts to tear us down. (And your adrenals, those little glands that help with stress adaptation, tend to suffer as a result.)
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Stress’s Effect on Your Life and Health

To give you a visual, just imagine that you have a gallon jug that you can fill with stress. Well, if you can prevent this jug from filling by getting rid of things that stress you out, the jug never fills up and overflows. You can’t get rid of all your stressors, so just start with the easy ones. Also, whenever we handle stressors in our life, it means we’re taking action. Taking action is often a better way of handling problems than sitting back and letting them destroy your life. (Obviously, right?)

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Another thing that I realized was that about 95 percent of the things that were stressing me were things that I could’ve taken care of in the past if I had just been more honest with myself or other people. I know, easier said than done. I should’ve stopped taking all insurance in 2010. I should’ve started running basic blood testing on everybody in 2010. I should’ve listened to Laura more than I did. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. If I had just been honest with myself and others, I could’ve avoided decades of stress. Hey, this realization took about 40 years, but better late than never!

The Stress Relief Writing Exercise​
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So if you’re looking for another way to decrease your stress load, I’ll tell you what I did. I’m big into writing things down—writing them down makes them more real and concrete, getting the stressors out of your head and onto paper. Also, writing is better than typing. Writing uses a specific neurological pathway in our brain that helps us learn. Typing does not have the same effect.

So, write down all your stressors. Be really picky about it. I mean, really picky. This is the time to let it fly! But like they say, complaining about something without offering a solution is just whining. So, after you write everything down, write out what you could do about these problems. You don’t have to commit to doing it just write down what you could do.

Here’s the key, you don’t need to solve all your problems. And even if you can only handle one problem, you will feel immensely better. Do this practice every day, and in a week you’ll feel much better. You might only have a little bit less stress, but you’ll feel a lot better from doing what you can. And what’s left over won’t stress you out as much.

The Self-Honesty Exercise​
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If you want to go one step further, here’s another exercise. It’s a little harder than the one above, but it’s worth it. For every stressful thing that you’ve written down, write out in any way, shape or form how you were dishonest with yourself or another person about something, that most likely inadvertently led to the stressful event.

I’ll give you an example. Back in the day, insurance companies caused our office massive amounts of work, work for which we did not get paid. How was I dishonest that led to this? Well, we finally got out of insurance at the beginning of 2020, but my wife, Laura, told me that we should get out in 2010. I chose not to listen. Why not? Because it seemed like that was the only way to practice at the time. If we had gotten out in 2010, it would’ve been better in the long run, much better, but in the short term, it was very stressful. You get the idea. This part, where you admit your dishonesty, is very difficult—no doubt about that.

One word of caution: don’t judge yourself when doing these writing exercises (or at all). We don’t avoid hard things or telling the truth because we’re bad people. It’s just because it’s difficult, and it seems easier to take the easy way out. Unfortunately, life isn’t always easy. And if we can learn to deal with it when it’s not easy, that’s a major accomplishment.

Once you’ve taken the step to reduce your stress using the writing exercise I just talked about, you’ll know what I mean. Try it! You’ll be glad you did.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Keith Sheehan