Stress that strengthens you vs Stress that kills you

Published: Thu, 08/30/18

Renew Weekly

Thursday Update 08.30.18

I help people who are stressed-out and anxious to restore their well-being ... and to get greater results in their life and work while maintaining it. I do this through teaching, writing, and coaching. This newsletter is part of that work.

What you'll find in this issue:

1. A brief word about this edition's feature article

2. Joan Chittister on our tendency to make shrines to ourselves

3. FEATURE ARTICLE -- Stress that strengthens you vs Stress that kills you

4. Quote of the week

1. A brief word about this edition's feature article

Once again, the feature article in this newsletter is an excerpt from the book that will (God willing) be released later this Fall. I'm marching toward the publication of this book that's been in the works for so long ... looking forward to it getting out there into the wild!

2. Joan Chittister on our tendency to make shrines to ourselves

Joan Chittister has a way of calling us out, but also getting us to listen, and not just resist, the hard things she says. Listen to this:

“The tendency to make shrines to ourselves, however, so easily becomes the norm of our existence. Our profession, our money, our social status, our need for public recognition begin to control us. Somewhere along the line we begin to sink into the routine, the system, ourselves. We settle down with the job, the family, the career path. And we grow inordinately blind to what rules us internally, or at least oblivious of our crying need for a spiritual center beyond ourselves. Yes, it’s a natural phase in life, this exaltation of the ego. It is part and parcel of the process of human development, in fact. The only problem is that if and when we don’t grow out of it, as we should, it renders us bereft of an adult spiritual life. We become, instead, spiritual infants, adolescents suspended halfway between maturity and self-indulgence. And then we wonder why our lives, full of everything, feel so empty.

"But the chains that bind us have many faces beyond raw arrogance. We chain ourselves to wealth that impoverishes our spirit. We give way to the sense of superiority that separates us from the rest of the human condition. And, most subtle of all, we lack a consciousness of the presence of God in life. It’s then that we make ourselves the divinity within. And that message breeds the disease of privilege in us."

3. FEATURE ARTICLE: Stress that strengthens you vs Stress that kills you

"Stress is a fact of life -- but it doesn't have to be a way of life."
- Dylan Moran

What makes stress so confusing, and utopian visions of the simple and stress-free life so misguided, is the fact that stress in and of itself is not bad. We need a certain amount of stress. Stress helps us live, keeps life interesting, and keeps us engaged. Exercise is a stress to muscles and the body’s systems. When we exercise, we set in motion a process that helps build our muscles and strengthens our bodies.

The problems come when we overstress ourselves and when that stress becomes chronic. What we need is not to get rid of stress. Rather, we need to add in more recovery. We need to build patterns of oscillation in our lives. We need to establish patterns where we oscillate between full engagement with work and then restful recovery time. We need rhythm.

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"My rhythms have become clearer over the years. I know I need: Sabbath for Rest. Retreats for Reflection. Vacations for Recreation. Sabbaticals for Renewal. And if I don’t make rhythms for rest, reflection, recreation and renewal then all of these opportunities will inevitably be wasted on recovery.”

- Chris Heuertz

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Earlier, I said, “When we exercise, it helps build our muscles and strengthens our bodies.” Technically, the exercise itself doesn’t build our muscles; it hurts them. Anyone who’s read about muscle building and fitness knows that muscles actually get small tears and damage when we exercise. But when we stop exercising and let the muscles rest, the body rebuilds and repairs that “damage.” Then the muscles emerge bigger, better, and stronger. Exercise doesn’t build muscle. The rest that follows exercise builds muscle.

Ori Hofmekler was one of the early pioneers in the "Intermittent Fasting" approach to health and fitness. His theory is that fasting creates a certain stress on the body, and as long as this stress does not go on too long, and is broken up by other periods of healthy eating, actually turns out to strengthen, rather than weaken, the body. He writes,

"The impact of stress on biological systems was recognized four centuries ago by Swiss physician Paracelsus, whose finding of what is now known as 'hormesis' inspired generations of researchers and scholars to participate in this new path of scientific exploration. Hormesis is the process of adaptation: it makes stress work for you rather than against you."

But the essential point to keep in mind about hormesis is this: in order for stress to be beneficial rather than destructive, it needs to be controlled: kept in doses that allow adaptation, and combined with regular periods of relief from the stress with times of restoration and rebuilding.

Fasting and exercise are both forms of physical stress, and stress works this way in other parts of our lives, too. If not followed by times of rest and renewal, stress is bad. But if followed by times of rest and renewal, stress is healthy, and it strengthens us. That’s why the wisdom of generations has been to build lives around a rhythm of work and rest, engagement and renewal.

In the Bible, one aspect of this rhythm of work and rest is known as “Sabbath”. The Jews observed the Sabbath by taking one day every week for rest and renewal. Listen to what Wayne Mueller has to say about Sabbath from the perspective of timing and rhythm:

“When we live without listening to the timing of things, when we live and work in twenty-four-hour shifts without rest–we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and great movements of seas and stars.

"We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms…. To surrender to the rhythms of seasons and flowerings and dormancies is to savor the secret of life itself. Many scientists believe we are ‘hard-wired’ like this, to live in rhythmic awareness, to be in and then step out, to be engrossed and then detached, to work and then to rest. It follows then that the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not a burdensome requirement from some law-giving deity—’You ought, you’d better, you must’—but rather a remembrance of a law that is firmly embedded in the fabric of nature. It is a reminder of how things really are, the rhythmic dance to which we unavoidably belong.”

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“Sabbath living orients us toward that which, apart from rest, we will always miss. The root idea of Sabbath is simple as rain falling, basic as breathing. It’s that all living things -- and many nonliving things too -- thrive only by an ample measure of stillness. A bird flying, never nesting, is soon plummeting. Grass trampled, day after day, scalps down to the hard bone of the earth. Fruit constantly inspected bruises, blights. … [A] saw used without relenting -- its teeth never filed, its blade never cooled -- grows dull and brittle; a motor never shut off gums with residue or fatigues from thinness of oil -- it sputters, it stalls, it seizes. Even companionship languishes without seasons of apartness.

“God stitched into the nature of things an inviolable need to be left alone now and then. The primary way people receive this aloneness and stillness is, of course, through sleep. We can defy slumber only so long … past a certain point, we collapse. We must submit to sleep’s benign tyranny, enter its inescapable vulnerability and solitariness. …

“The tricky thing about Sabbath, though, is it’s a form of rest unlike sleep. Sleep is so needed that, defied too long, our bodies inevitably, even violently, force the issue. Sleep eventually waylays all fugitives. It catches you and has its way with you. Sabbath won’t do that. Resisted, it backs off. Spurned, it flees.

"It’s easy to skirt or defy Sabbath, to manufacture cheap substitutes in its place -- and to do all that, initially, without noticeable damage, and sometimes, briefly, with admirable results. It’s easy, in other words, to spend most of your life breaking Sabbath and never figure out that this is part of the reason your work is unsatisfying, your friendships patchy, your leisure threadbare, your vacations exhausting. We simply haven’t taken time. We’ve not been still long enough, often enough, to know ourselves, our friends, our family. Our God.”
- Mark Buchanan

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4. Quote of the week:

"We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we’re not getting those things from our communities or from each other."

- Naomi Klein

Let's keep in touch ...

I write and speak at events as director of Renew Resources. I also am leader and teacher at Loop Church in Chicago. If you're ever in the area, come join us on a Sunday morning! Places to find my writing:

https://medium.com/@markbrouwer/

http://lastingleaders.com

http://sexualsanity.com

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The Recovery Journey

Check out my 90 Day program for starting (or renewing) your recovery from sexual addiction / compulsion called "The Recovery Journey". There's also a special program for the partners of addicts.

Other Audio Products:

The Spiritual Issues and Challenges of Recovery

Eight Keys That Unlock Lasting Recovery