Dr. Mort Orman here, and today I am concluding this three-part series on what stress is really costing us.
In part one, I talked about Career and Financial Costs.
In part two, I focused on Family, Relationship and Happiness Costs.
Today, I’m going to end this series by talking about Health Costs, one of the most serious category of costs of all.
You Already Know This…
As a physician with almost 40 years of professional experience, I could say many things about the Health Costs of too much stress.
But you know what? I’m not going to take up your time (or mine) to spell this all out.
Why? Because you already know that stress can be damaging to your health.
You already know that stress can cause physical symptoms and problems in your body.
I would rather spend our time today talking about two other related issues:
- The high cost of stress-induced addictions
- The fact that most of us ignore the Health Costs of stress
Stress And Addictions
Once again, we all know that addictions are a major and growing problem in America today.
Alcohol, heroin, cocaine, narcotic pain pills, uppers, downers, hallucinogens, even good old favorites like nicotine and caffeine.
And don’t forget the addiction to food for people who call themselves “stress eaters.”
What we don’t usually acknowledge, however, when it comes to understanding addictions, is that many people end up getting addicted because they lack the needed skills for effectively dealing with stress (and with life).
When people turn to alcohol, drugs, food or other chemical coping “solutions,” they may feel better quickly and temporarily, but have they really dealt with the underlying stressful problems that originally caused them to turn to drinking, drugs, etc?
The answer is NO…they haven’t.
And every time they turn to chemical coping relief again, especially if it “works” to take the edge off their psychic discomfort, what have they learned about dealing with life more effectively.
Answer: NOTHING, NADA, NYET!
So they perpetually remain plagued by a deficit of life-mastery knowledge and know how.
Stress Also Leads To Addiction Relapses
Even worse, for those who do manage to cast off their addiction, as difficult as this might be, they often end up relapsing very quickly.
Why? Because they still don’t have needed life-mastery skills, the original deficit of which caused them to get addicted in the first place.
So stress rears its ugly head again, and they are right back where they started.
Now I am not suggesting that everyone who gets addicted falls prey to this because they lack stress mastery and life master skills.
But I am saying it’s a very big, big percentage of them.
Many Of Us Are Almost Just As Bad
This brings me my last point of this series.
If you are not a person who has succumbed to a chemical addiction, you might have a tendency to think you are way better off than those who unfortunately do.
And to an extent, you would probably be right.
But aren’t we also damaging ourselves slowly, more gradually over time, because we know stress is truly bad and unhealthy for us, yet despite this widespread knowledge, many of us act as if we are addicted to having stress!
NOTE: Forget the stupid myth that some amount of stress is good for us—this is pure BS.
We put up with high levels of stress in our lives, and sometimes we even wear our stress as a badge of courage.
We persist and accomplish and achieve despite being highly stressed, yet we know deep down inside this is probably going to catch up with us (much later we hope),
The fact remains, however, that we too are still relatively deficient in stress mastery and life mastery skills, and this is also costing up big-time.
Someday This Will Change…
Someday in the future, we are going to take our stress much more seriously.
Someday, we are going to start taking stock of all the many ways, directly and indirectly, that stress is slowly draining the joy, health, satisfaction and peace of mind out of our lives.
And when that day comes, whenever it may come, one by one we are going to stand up and proclaim “Hell no…I’m not going to take all this stress anymore!”
And then, we are finally going to commit ourselves to finding out—really finding out—not just how to manage our stress—but how to banish it from our lives instead.
To your health, happiness and success,
Dr. Mort Orman, M.D.
International Speaker, Author And Founder Of The Stress Mastery Academy | http://DocOrman.com
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