COPING WITH STRESS

Polly just moved to Plano for her husband’s new tele-

WESTBOUND LBJ-



com company when he was killed in a car wreck going to work. She had given up a successful arts marketing position to move to Dallas and the only work she could find here was near downtown. Her daughter has a learning difference and needs tutoring; her son graduates this year.

Let’s see. For death of a spouse, Polly gets 100 points. For changes in financial state and business readjustment, 39 points each. Forty-four for her daughter; 29 points for her son’s impending departure for college. Changes in her living conditions, work hours, residence, personal habits, recreation, and sleep add up to another 114 points.

Polly scores high on the Holmes-Rahe scale, a test devised to measure stress levels in everyday life. Scoring more than 300 points in one year greatly increases your risk of illness-no wonder Polly winds up with TMJ, a chronic cough, and depression.

Did we mention that Christmas is coming? Thai’s another 12 points right there.

Maximum stress can mean major illness. Even moderate stress-200-249 points- can lead to depression.

You’ve just driven an hour, bumper to bumper, to a job you don’t even really like. But your kids are in a great suburban school-where one of their classmates just committed suicide in the bathroom. You can’t quit your job, of course, because you have a house on a zero-lot line you can’t afford and too many credit card bills piled next to the $3,000 computer that lures you away from your family with e-mail and faxes each evening. Talk of downsizing buzzes around your Diet Coke and donut breakfast in the office kitchen.

Serious stressors in our lives include our families, jobs, illnesses, finances, and those fast-approaching holidays. But that’s not all we have to deal with. We also live in a stressful city.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area is the ninth largest metropolitan area in the nation and the largest in Texas. We live with more than 4.8 million people, all with demands on our time, space, and patience. In Dallas County atone, there are 5,425.6 people per square mile.

Of course, they all own cars. Ask most people what the No. 1 stressor about Dallas life is and traffic immediately springs from their pursed lips. (Three of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the nation are right here Beltline at Midway in Addison, Park at Preston in Piano, and Belt Line at Preston in Dallas. During any given 24-hour period, the eastbound side of Preston Road at LBJ sees 299,000 cars; 288,000 are going westbound.)

Shouldn’t a Calgon bath be offered somewhere in this scenario? Of course, but who has the time?

Home is no stress-free haven, either.

In 1998, there were 15,870 weddings in Dallas County and 9,984 couples who went through divorce court. In Collin County, 3,827 heard wedding bells, and 1,861 decided they didn’t like the tune.

And we’re more mobile than ever before-moving from one state to another, from downtown to the suburbs and back again. According to the 1990 U.S. Census, more than half of Dallas ’ residents moved between 1985 and 1990-517,579 people packed up everything they owned and moved to a new house in a new neighborhood, many to the suburbs. Undoubtedly, they all had to deal with cable companies. The population of Piano has tripled in the past two decades.

Pile all this in with the insanity we have created around the holidays, and it’s no wonder we’re popping pills like Elvis.

Where can we turn for a little serenity? If you want to seek a higher source, we’ve got plenty of churches-1,974 in Dallas County. Park space is a little more difficult to come by with 296 parks in the county-that’s 6,929 people per park. Not much serenity there.

But you’d better do something. Stress is not just worry. It’s a series of biochemical changes that prepare you for an emergency. When you’re stressed, your blood pressure soars, your adrenaline level increases, your heart starts racing, your muscles tighten, and your breathing turns quick and shallow, This is the “fight or flight” response our ancestors (who were chased by the local Tyrannosaurus Rex) needed. Although this reaction is most helpful in life-or-death situations, our bodies react to each day of modern life as if it were a life-or-death situation.

Maybe our bodies are right.

“The body mobilizes itself for action,” explains Dr. Robert Bradley, a clinical psychologist/neuro-psychologist at Timberlawn Mental Health System who has treated people “with stress from everyday life to those suttering from post-traumatic stress disorders in the Air Force. “You might have a single traumatic incident, like the Oklahoma City bombing, and that’s an incredibly stressful single event. But when the arousal is prolonged… people keep themselves in a chronic state of arousal, depleting their resources. They get burned out, discouraged, tired. That’s when it becomes emotional.”

Every day, it seems, we are in a constant state of alert-the sense of danger never leaves-so our bodies never get back to normal. That’s when stress-related disorders occur-skeletal, muscular, gastrointestinal. Chronic stress can damage your system, causing respiratory problems, a rise in cholesterol, jaw and joint ailments, headaches, fatigue, skin problems, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, poor nutrition, anxiety, thoughts of suicide. Prolonged stress leads to chemical imbalance in the brain-mainly serotonin production-that leads to clinical anxiety and depression. That’s why 38 million people worldwide have used Prozac since it hit the market.

So breathe. From the gut.

Central Expressway. 4:53 p.m. On Friday. The Friday before a long weekend. Some guy in a black Lexus cuts you off because he’s paying more attention to his cell phone than to your bumper. You briefly wish you’d taken advantage of Governor Bush’s concealed weapon freedom.

Is your heart pounding? Are the muscles behind your eyes tensing? Ready to move to Dawson, Texas, where the population is less than 1,000, the old farmers still spend afternoons playing dominos, and their wives pick pears to make pear cobbler?

That’s one option. Another is to … breathe.

From your gut, remember. Now try it again. Take only a moment, and you can relax your muscles, slow your breathing, your pulse, your racing brain.

The problem is most people don’t take thai minute–or that half-hour-to let go of all the tension the kids, the job, and west-bound LBJ build up in our bodies.

Bradley looks at stress in three ways: the events in our environment, our own physiological reactions to those events, and the mediating factor of the meaning we assign to those events. Meaning that some persons might be overwhelmed because they can’t handle all the demands of a busy office while others might relish success at that same busy office. It’s all in how you look at it.

But it’s also a matter of what your body can handle (some people can handle more stress just like some can lift more weights) and your personality-two facets over which we have little control.

The good news is we are slowly beginning to recognize that we are too stressed and that our bodies just can’t take it anymore. Stress is bad. Say it to yourself 10 times. The better news is that we are also beginning to recognize that we can do something about it-we know lots of new ways to make ourselves happier and healthier. Unfortunately, this awareness means nothing because most of us don’t do anything about it. according to Dr. Ann Wildemann, a local psychotherapist.

“If you ask somebody, ’Do you have stress?” they have no problem owning it,” Wildemann says. “But if you say to them, ’Would you like to do something about it?’ they say, ’Well, I might consider that,’ but they don’t. There is no follow-through.”

Drs. Glen and Anna Silver, Dallas chiropractors, started a side business called “Stress Masters Inc.,” trying to take stress out of the workplace with chair massages and seminars on time management.

“Many managers say that’s great but that they didn’t have time for it,” Glen Silver says.

Typical. But we’d better start making time.

“If you boil it all down, all of the health behavior we keep trying to gel people to change-eating, smoking, drinking-all boils down to an inability to cope with the pace of life,” says Dr. Deborah Kern, a Dallas health coach who speaks and consults on general wellness and recently wrote a book on the subject entitled Everyday Wellness for Women. “People are engaging in behavior that reflects our chaos. One expert says we have to process more information and make more decisions in one day than our ancestors, 800 years ago, did in a year. We’re overloaded.”

You’re working eight hours a day (slacking by today’s standards), taking care of your mother who’s dying of cancer, your three kids and, oh, there’s the laundry, the bills, and you still need to feed your family a dinner of more than frozen pizza rolls and Dr Pepper every now and then. Friends tell you to take a little time off, take care of yourself Instead, you plan Thanksgiving dinner for 25 to cheer everyone up. You ignore the advice as your head pounds, your back aches and your guilt keeps you motivated. After three months, you end up horizontal on some psychiatrist’s couch, watching him write out a prescription for Prozac while you wonder what went wrong.

The problem is “stress” isn’t a bad word like “depression” or “mentally ill,” Wildemann says.

“There is no stigma attached to having stress. But there is a stigma to doing something about it. to admitting weakness. We identify stress in our lives, but nobody does anything about it until stress manifests itself in ways such as depression, substance abuse, domestic violence, hypertension. That’s what brings them to my office.”

“To be truly healthy now, you have to be a complete radical and go against cultural norms,” Kem says. “Our society says we must do more and do it faster to acquire more. All of those things are health risks.”

Kern, Wildemann, and other experts have three basic recommendations for destressing your life:

simplify your life

make your fantasy your reality

meld your body, mind, and spirit



ACQUIRING STUFF WAS THE THINKING OF the ’80s. And look where that got us. These days, it’s simplify, simplify, simplify. But Dallasites have a hard time giving up their material possessions, even for less work and less stress. Because most of us are stressed about acquiring more.

“Part of the irony is that we’re creating a lot of this stress,” Kem says. “The average square foot of a home in 1949 was 1,060. In 1993 it was 2,10C. We have fewer people living in twice the square footage, and we need to work harder to pay for that. It’s a little bit nuts.”

Wildemann recommends each person have what she calls a “safety zone,” somewhere one can spend 15 to 30 minutes a day alone. Maybe it’s a peaceful corner in your room where you read, curl up with your cat, or meditate. For Wildemann, it’s a pink bathrobe.

“I keep getting it patched, and I could get a new one, but I’m very comfortable with this. Everyone should develop their own pink bathrobe.”

If you’re running from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m., what kind of example are you showing your children? Doctors are saying they see more stressed children these days than ever before. They ’ re stressed about TA AS tests, their looks, their friends. And this manifests itself in eating disorders, the inability to sleep, depression. But have you taught your kids to slow down? Or how to cope with pressure?

Wildemann says, “We wonder how these things are happening in the world. But we don’t address the bottom line. For example, we learned from Columbine how many kids are really hurting, how important it is to teach children good coping skills. If you don’t cope well, how can you teach it?”

Psychiatrist Bob Beavers puts stress in two categories: external and internal. The external stresses are things like traffic, work, your toddler, teenager, or sick mother. They are unavoidable. But if you take that work home with you, it becomes internal. If you stay awake at night worried about whether you’re a good mother, it’s internal.

Beavers says, “We live in a complex world, and people are not in touch with what those internal conflicts are. But then there are people who will “” drive an hour in traffic, get into a parking lot, use their cell phone, and they aren’t stressed be-cause they are accepting what is.

“The conflict is that the fantasy is different from reality,” Beavers says. “If you ’d rather live downtown, do it. There are a lot of kids in New York City being raised just fine in high-rises. Follow that fantasy. My definition of mental health is getting fantasy and reality as close as possible.”

AFTER FORTY-SIX YEARS, A DIVORCE, an earthquake, a cross country move, a bad contractor, and two major surgeries, I find myself facing menopause and Medicare. Leaving the office for lunch is my aerobic activity. Friends who once called me “perky” found a new vocabulary. Headaches, heartburn, insomnia-I ended up with an internist probing cameras where cameras were never meant to go.

I discovered it was all in my head and began my quest for unconventional relief.

Yoga, Pranayama, Meditation

It was time to change my mantra from “red wine” to something more meaningful. So I contacted Yoga Master Pramod Kumar Chouhan, who spends six months teaching at his Himalayan ashram and the rest of the year de-stressing Dallasites.

“Put together heels both now. relax, and start your salute to the sun,” he said in a heavy Hindi accent. I struggled to wrap my amis and legs into unnatural postures, playing a bizarre game of Tibetan Twister as 1 learned the asanas (positions) of yoga.

Gradually, my body adapted and my breathing exercises (pranayama) helped me transcend the material world. I finally had a toehold on serenity.

Once I could float like a butterfly and stand like a flamingo, Pramod gave me my mantra. I celebrated with a lovely Bordeaux.

Pramod Kumar Chouhan. Yoga Master. 972-250-1626.



Acupuncture

I decided to forgo another prescription and opted for acupuncture with Dr. QiongBai. who squeezed me in between two of his celebrity pincushion clients, Jerry Hall and Courtney Love.

Dr. Bai explained that in Chinese medicine, negative emotions lead to disease. Inserting tiny- they look like little pieces of nylon fish line-needles into points along the meridian releases blockages so toxins can enter the blood stream. He started with my ears-stick, tap-tap-lap, around my jaw, temples, ears, and chin. I tingled and twitched with little jolts-my chi (energy) started to flow. When he finally pulled the needles out, I sat up, opening and closing my mouth. Amazing. I had no pain in my jaw. Going home, I caught myself singing, “Hey, hey we’re the Monkees” in bumper-to-bumper traffic-mouth wide open. Dr. Qiong Bai, 5924 Royal Lane, 214-739-5535.

EEG Neurofeedback

Dr. Gray Atkins, a clinical psychologist and director of the Neurotherapy Center of Piano explained neurofeedback to me. During prolonged periods of stress, brain waves can get stuck in high alert frequencies (a theta state). The body breaks down into physical symptoms-fatigue, headaches, and muscle tension. Neurotherapists isolate wave patterns and tailor programs for clients to prompt the brain into lower activity.

Registered nurse Dee Edmonson fidgeted around the therapy room like the mad scientist. She twisted wires on my fingers, murmuring about microvaults while four colored lines spiked up and down across the screen. After I was fully connected. Dee had me perform four tasks for two minutes each: sit still with eyes open, sit with eyes closed, read Readers Digest-I was doing fine until Dee stunned me with a math problem. The red line surged to the top. “Interesting, a theta alert, you’re avoiding the problem,” she muttered knowingly. Suddenly she reminded me of my fourth grade math teacher. Distressed that I failed. Dr. Atkins just gave me more homework-Relax. Neurotherapy Center of Piano, 2317 Coit Road, Suite C, Piano, 972-612-9787.

Hot Rocks

I’m a grinder. No. not an exotic dancer, I clench my teeth all the time. My temporo-mandibur joint (techno for jaw) aches constantly. Deciding to fight fire with fire, I called Tee Torre.

Tee’s treatments aren’t for the weak. I became fully aware of that as she held a lighted match next to my palm to stimulate my endorphins. (It did.) Next, she covered my face with a steaming towel and slid hot river rocks along my neck and back. Once my muscles relaxed, she kneaded the stones deeply into my feet and hands. Ouch. Was this massage or torture? “The heat from the rocks loosens me muscles and allows me to massage more deeply,” she reassured. It wasn’t long before I was cooing “harder.” After all, no pain, no gain. This treatment works.

Tee Torre, 214-871-2211.

Clairvoyant

Channeling is something I do with my television, not with my past lives. Bui according to clairvoyant and spiritual counselor Dougall Fraser, former experiences affect our current lives and understanding another dimension leads to de-stressing your life.

He doesn’t read his deck of tarot cards, he just likes to focus on the pictures while he interprets what the spirits are telling him about the “blueprint of my life.”

Turning over acard, he frowns and says, “You were married before, and I have to tell you I don’t like your ex-husband.”

Hey, this guy is good.

“You are going to meet a man in the medical profession with a name that starts with the letter J. He’s tall, with dark eyes, and he will be different from any man you’ve ever met. I was swept up in the moment. Maybe things do happen this way. Dr. J, if you’re out there, my number is in the book. Dougall Fraser, 214-360-9173.



-Nancy Nichols 214-939-3636.