Much of the literature available on stress symptoms today seems to be concerned with managing the anxiety from a too-busy lifestyle, and often contains advice about relaxation techniques, physical exercise and biofeedback techniques to deal with muscle tension.While I am in full agreement with people who point out how generally unfit and unhealthy we sedentary, city dwellers are, and how in need we are of more physical exercise, I do not agree with the notion that physical exercise, relaxation or biofeedback are of use in themselves as an answer to stage one stress breakdown.Take biofeedback, for example. It has been shown that human beings, given appropriate feedback or information on the state of a body function normally controlled automatically, can work out ways of voluntarily controlling that function. Patients, for example, are wired up to an instrument which will make a sound or switch on a light if muscle tension is high. The patient works out some way of visualizing some peaceful scene, or emotionally letting go, and learns the subjective feel of how to voluntarily lower the muscle tension.I believe that this technique is useful for those people who have become so used to feelings of muscle tension that they cannot operate at any lower level of activity. Such people, in my opinion, have basic problems with nervous system function and sometimes have what might be called minimal brain dysfunction.In these biofeedback experiments, the subject is learning how to control certain body reactions by using the reticular activating system’s capacity for inhibiting the activity of cortical brain cells. The imagery required in biofeedback, therefore, requires a normally functioning reticular activating system and a normal capacity for the cortical cells to respond. Therefore, in order for biofeedback to be of use, the person cannot be suffering from third stage stress symptoms.Thus biofeedback and relaxation techniques (particularly those using techniques of self-hypnosis) can only be of use for stage one symptoms. However, I feel that it is not of much use overloading the nervous system, and then working out methods of reducing the discomfort from the alarm system activated by that overload.I recognize that relaxation techniques are useful in treating the anxiety of stage one stress breakdown. But the relaxation techniques which to me appear to be useful for stage one stress symptoms seem to work because they force people under stress to take time out to stop doing what they were doing and concentrate on something totally different. The something totally different might be to spend time concentrating not on the report you are trying to write, but on certain aspects of your own body function.I really think that almost any relaxation technique will work so long as it imposes a forced rest. Likewise, the physical exercise that takes the executive away from the desk or the telephone will be effective because it does that, not necessarily because of the exercise aspect.
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Thursday, April 21st, 2011 | Author: admin
Category: Anti Depressants-Sleeping Aid
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