A friend of mine, who hasn’t had much experience with computers, has been learning some software for editing and sending photos via e-mail. She managed to send a whole slide show last night, and we were both celebrating her success.
Then this morning she was going to ask me to send them to her husband, when he pointed out she could do it herself. That was one of those “Duh!” experiences when our mind gets stuck and it takes us a while to see the obvious. As she said, “Amazing, how anxiety turns the mind rigid. I see that all the time in clients.”
And that’s what exactly what I mean by the stress trap. It’s when we’re in a new and/or somewhat scary situation and our minds shut down. Our energy is diverted to our muscles so we can either fight or run. That’s not a very helpful reaction to most of the pressures we face in this modern world. Tomorrow we’ll start discussing more helpful responses.
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