SGM Sept 2017 Weekly Message Two: “How to Defuse Stress Instantly”
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Welcome to this week’s edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
Do You Have An Effective Strategy for Stress?
What do you do when you get really stressed out? Do you have a reliable technique for moments of irritation, frustration, anger, fear, or overwhelm? Do you have a conscious strategy that works?
In this week’s message, you’ll learn the Freeze-Frame technique from HeartMath that enables you to skillfully defuse stress and find inspired solutions to the stressors you’re facing. Whether it’s parenting your kids, dealing with your boss, being your own boss, or facing a hurricane, this technique can shift you into relaxed, insightful, empowered action.
If you remember from last week’s message, we’re talking about how to unlock the hidden power of your heart as taught by the Institute of HeartMath and shared in “The Heartmath Solution” by Doc Childre and Howard Martin. Research from HeartMath shows the tremendous power of your heart to affect every system in your body and brain as well as the way you think and feel.
When your heart is in a state of coherent rhythm it will automatically optimize and synchronize your brainwaves and other physiological systems. You experience this state of coherence as a feeling of relaxed ease. In addition, when you consciously access your heart’s intelligence, you feel connected to your authentic self, to your intuition, and to those around you. Heart intelligence coordinates your mind and emotions and facilitates open communication with your deeper self and with others.
The HeartMath Solution backs these claims with extensive research and, more importantly, it gives specific practices to self-initiate heart coherence and activate your heart power. The centerpiece of the HeartMath Solution is the Freeze-Frame technique.
As the authors tell us, “Freeze-Frame offers you a scientifically researched, user-friendly method to add coherent heart power to whatever you do.” (p. 86, THMS)
Freeze-Frame is a way to interrupt a stressful event or negative emotion and reconnect to your heart and the positive entrainment your heart offers. You can use this technique when you are in the middle of a stressful situation, when you are caught up in fear, anger, overreaction, judgment, or blame, and when you feel out of sorts and not aligned with your highest aspirations and most authentic self.
“Freeze-Frame can be done anytime, anywhere, whenever you want to stop stress in its tracks and get quick intuitive access.” (p.86, THMS)
The term “Freeze-Frame” comes from the analogy that your experience of life is like a movie. You experience a stream of moments (like frames in a movie) that you weave together into a narrative that makes sense to you. Yet, you often don’t realize you are weaving this story. You take your experience at face value, thinking that what you are experiencing during any given moment is “the way things are.”
If you think things just are the way they are and they are beyond your control, when something happens that stresses you out, you see yourself as a victim of those circumstances. You see yourself as powerless. Thinking you don’t have the power, skills, or resources to handle the challenges you face is the heart of feeling stressed out.
However, when you realize you are telling the story of your life and are capable of “re-framing” the events that appear before you, you realize you can step into your story-telling process, affect the course of events, and change how you relate to anything that happens. You can be a proactive solution seeker instead of a passive victim of circumstances. Freeze-Frame is a tool that enables you to do this.
“The Freeze-Frame technique gives you the power to stop your reaction to the movie (of your life) at any moment. It lets you call a time-out to gain a clearer perspective on what’s happening in a single frame. By helping you align your head and your heart, it gives you quick and efficient access to heart intelligence.” (p.66, THMS)
Freeze-Frame is a “strategic move to call a time-out and regroup your internal team—your head and your heart. . .The brief mental time-out it gives you allows you to gain access—on the spot—to the balancing power of the heart and the revitalizing insights of heart intelligence.” (p.67, THMS)
O.K. sounds great, right? Are you ready to give this a try?
Here are the five steps of Freeze-Frame adapted from p. 67 of The HeartMath Solution:
1. Recognize that you're in a state of stress and insert a mental pause
2. Shift your attention to the space of your heart. Imagine and feel as if you are breathing into and out from your heart to focus your attention there.
3. Call to mind a positive moment in your life and re-experience the feeling of this moment.
4. Ask your heart, “What would be an effective response to this situation, one that would move things in a positive direction?”
5. Listen and feel for your heart's response. This could come as an image, words, or an inspiration to take a specific action.
So, in Freeze-Frame you first stop yourself in the middle of a stressful experience, stop what you’re doing, and insert a mental pause. Rather than just being swept along in the currents of stress, you call a time-out so that you can regroup. This, in itself, is a valuable step that interrupts your stress reaction.
Now, because we live in a society that demands we do so much in so little time, we may be so accustomed to stress that we don’t recognize it. It’s just the way life feels on a daily basis. So, it’s important to learn to recognize your stress cues.
Do you have tightness in your stomach, neck, or back? Do you have trouble sleeping or wake up from sleep feeling groggy? Do you feel anxious or on-edge? Do you easily get irritated, lash out, and blame others? Do you react out of proportion to what is actually happening? Do you feel overwhelmed and exhausted?
Each person’s version of stress is unique, so you’ll need to learn to recognize your own stress cues. You can widen the term stress to include anytime that you feel negative, misaligned, or out of sorts. We each have our dominant reactive patterns to challenges we face. The more you get to know yours, the easier it is to step in and short-circuit these reactions.
Once you’ve recognized and paused your stress reaction, the second step is to shift your focus to your heart and breathe there to focus your attention. Take a few moments to try that now. Shift your focus to your heart and breathe there to focus your attention. Imagine you are breathing into and out from your heart. . .
How does that feel?
Once you are focused into your heart, recall a positive Core Heart Feeling to further shift you away from your stressful feeling. Core Heart Feelings include appreciation, gratitude, love, compassion, and trust. Can you recall a time when you felt one of these feelings? Remember that moment and use it to bring that feeling into your heart now. Go ahead and give that a try. . .
Isn’t it amazing how you can shift your feeling state by what you focus on?
Finally, once you are centered in positive feeling in your heart, ask your heart what is the best response to this situation. Then, listen for your heart’s answer (which may come as a feeling, an image, words, or a nudge to do something). The answers that come from your heart have a distinct, stress-free, compassionate, win-win feel to them. They benefit everyone involved in a situation.
Let me give you an example of how I’ve used this technique in an often-challenging situation—parenting.
My wife and I have a son Will, who is now 16 years old. Will had a rough start to life. He was born four months prematurely, at 1 ½ pounds, and lived his first four months in intensive care at the hospital. His name is Will, as in “Will to live.”
When Will was born, the doctors said not to have high hopes for his healthy survival. He had a 10% chance of surviving at all—and much less chance of being healthy. The doctors said that, in these circumstances, they had no obligation to provide care. There were two options: do everything for him or do nothing. The decision was up to us.
To make this excruciating decision, my wife and I decided to talk to Will in the womb. We told him to let us know if he wanted to stay here and battle or if it was just too much. In my wife’s mind, she heard him say, “Mommy, I want to be here.”
When Will was born, he came out kicking and screaming—and everyone in the room knew the answer—we were going to do everything to help him survive. He couldn’t breathe, so within seconds he was put on a respirator. He wouldn’t yet be able to digest food, so they inserted a feeding tube into his navel and intravenous needles into his arm for fluids. In his first four months, he had eye surgery to save his vision, heart surgery, and hernia surgery. He was on continuous oxygen for the first year and a half of his life.
Because of Will’s premature start and all of his treatments, he has had some physical challenges with eyesight, speech, hand-eye skills, and with concentrated focus. However, his Will-power, vitality, and imagination made up for any lack. He is an emotional and creative powerhouse. When he goes to do something, he goes full-out! I give you this background to set the stage for what it is like to parent him—inspiring, great fun, and, sometimes stressful and emotionally challenging.
From early on, Will loved video games and action movies, neither of which I understand or am onto. Now, he’s into Xbox, which is really over the top for me. However, over the years, I’ve learned there is much more for him in this than meets the eye. It’s about excitement, challenge, empowerment, and problem-solving and engagement with the friends he plays with online.
When he was younger, about age 7, he loved playing an “Indiana Jones” video game on the computer. This game was great for his hand-eye skill and his ability to concentrate. However, he ended up getting really obsessed and frustrated with it. He would slam the computer mouse and yell in frustration.
Over the years, I’ve had a variety of responses to this, some effective and calming, some highly-reactive and escalating. I can remember yelling, “Will! Turn it off! Relax! You’re stressing me out!”
I think it’s safe to say that yelling at someone to relax and then blaming them for your stress is not a solid strategy. That just makes both of us feel bad and doesn’t teach him anything.
It’s in this context that I’ve used Freeze-Frame effectively. When he yelled, threw the mouse, and slammed his fist down on the desk, I first checked my stress response. I paused my reaction. I focused into my heart and took a couple deep breaths there.
Then I looked at the I.V. “trackmarks” on his arms and remembered my compassion for what he’s been through. I felt how precious he is to me. I centered into these Core Heart Feelings. Then I calmly spoke from my heart:
“Hey Will, you’re really frustrated with that Level Three aren’t you? That level’s a real challenge.”
“Daddy, I’ll never win!” said his 7-year-old self.
“It’s O.K., Will. Let’s take a little break and walk around the room. Take a deep breath. Remember that you’re playing for fun and it’s fun because it’s a challenge. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be as satisfying.
Remember when you mastered Level Two, how good that felt? Remember that feeling?
Now, when you sit down to play again, enjoy the challenge of it. Can you imagine having fun and mastering Level Three?”
“O.K.” he said. “Will that help me win?”
“It will help you enjoy playing and when you enjoy playing you’ll do your best. You may win or you may not. But, if you do this, you’ll master the game.”
Will walked around the room. He took a deep breath. He sat back down, stared at the screen for a moment, and began playing again. This time, he got as far as he’d ever gotten on Level Three.
“I’m going to master Level Three the way that I mastered Level Two,” he said.
I said to myself, “I think I’ll try this again next time.”
And, I have. As I practiced this approach with his stresses playing games, doing schoolwork, and dealing with friendships, we’ve both learned to let go of stress. We’ve learned to insert a mental pause, breathe into our hearts, center into Core Heart Feelings, and take a fresh approach to find creative solutions. He’s now old enough that I’ve been able to share the technique straightforwardly with him and he uses it now on his own.
My suggestion for you this week is to experiment with Freeze-Frame during moments of stress and see what happens.
I’d love to hear your comments, questions, and experiences in our Discussion below.
Next week, we’ll explore Heartmath’s “Cut-Thru” technique to help you deal with long-term, intense, emotional patterns and habits. You’ll learn how to access the “power of neutral” when you are overwhelmed by challenging feelings.
Until next time,
Enjoy your practice!
Kevin