We Are Facing Two Pandemics: Covid and Stress
We are facing two pandemics: COVID and stress.
The Facts About Covid and Stress
COVID exasperated an already existing problem. Before the pandemic, in 2017, 27% of people in North America reported that they experienced high to extreme levels of stress on a daily basis. By 2021. 57% reported feeling stress on a daily basis.
Today, 1 in 5 people in the US and Canada are dealing with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Anxiety and Stress Are Not Results of the Pandemic
I’m about to say something that may at first sound strange: anxiety and stress are not the results of the pandemic. How someone deals with the pandemic (or any other stressor for that matter) is largely given by their own brain.
Here’s something to consider. Your brain is trapped inside a dark and silent room, with no real access to the outside world. Information streams in through the senses and your brain interprets that information as best it can using existing neural pathways (brain patterns). Those neural pathways are the result of past experiences that you had.
Before I understood how my brain works to create patterns, I used to have panic attacks – frequently. Every day, for over 10 years as a matter of fact. I tried everything — meditation, hypnosis, psychotherapy — all of which worked somewhat but never fully freed me of my high levels of anxiety.
Then I discovered how to work with my brain, and how it works to create patterns and learned that my panic attacks were the result of an existing pattern in my brain. I then learned how to remove the pattern that was the root cause of my anxiety and my panic attacks disappeared within six weeks, never to return. Not even once!
So Much Stress
Today stress is a massive part of most people’s lives. Work stressors, family stressors, environmental stressors. The stress I’m talking about here is beyond just that of the pandemic. Why is there so much stress in the air?
The Only Constant is Change
Before the 1900s, the world changed at a relatively stable rate. If we were to chart the rate of change on a graph the line would be mostly horizontal with a slight and steady incline. But starting around the 1960s this line would begin a rapid ascent. Today that line is going straight up — vertical.
What if you had lived in an age before today’s age of exponential change? If that were the case, the brain patterns that you created in your past would have worked throughout your lifetime. Things just didn’t change all that much. You would have lived in the same town, and done the same things day in and day out. This created a relatively stable and predictable experience – one that didn’t require your brain to make new patterns to deal with change.
Today that world is gone. You need to address change effectively and the best way to do that is to learn how to upgrade old brain patterns. This change to your brain will have you resilient and able to bounce back fast from any change in your situation.
Repattern Your Brain
Changing old patterns and replacing them with new and effective ones is a relatively simple process once you know how to do it.
- It takes four steps
- It’s a two-minute technique
- It’s done in the privacy of your own head
- It’s a technique you can apply whenever you feel stressed or anxious
Once you have upgraded the old pattern the brain takes new and effective actions naturally and easily, that drive confidence and peace of mind.
We may not be able to make the pandemic go away, but we can respond effectively inside of it. To do this we need to start with the brain patterns that are reacting to stress.