The mind is what the brain does. The bodily organs and their functions are controlled by the brain via circulating hormones and a vast network of nerves. Because of intimate and intricate connections between the brain and the body, every thought we think and every emotion we feel could affect every single organ and every single cell in the body. Hard as it might be to believe, our emotions affect heart, lung, kidneys, liver, stomach, immune system, nervous system, skin, you name it. Negative emotions affect these organs destructively and positive emotions affect these organs constructively. That is why people with sense of humor lead long and healthy life. Bob Hope, George Burns and Milton Berle are some examples. This also explains why prolonged stress often causes disorders of various organs noted above leading to high blood pressure, arthritis, obesity, heart disease, immune deficiency disease and the like. Anyone serious about learning to cope with stress must first accept the fundamental reality of this mind-body connection.

3. What is the role of conflicts in stress?

Many years ago all stress symptoms were blamed on “mental conflicts.” The word conflict was used indiscriminately by one and all in psychiatric literature. The truth is one does not have to have a “mental conflict” at all to suffer from stress symptoms. However, all conflicts, when they occur, cause a lot of stressful emotions in our mind.

When two opposing forces collide conflict results. In our every day life, we encounter two types of conflicts:

1. External conflict: Conflict with others around us is called external conflict. This, by far, is the most common conflict that contributes to our daily stress. Conflict between parents and children; between the couple; between in-laws; between friends; between colleagues, between the boss and the employee, etc. are in this category.

   Conflicts like these result in anger, hate, fear, vengeance, and other powerful emotions. The main reason for most external conflict -whether it is between two people, two cultures, two religions or two nations- is that one side attempts to impose its will on the other. Or, one side reneges on a mutually agreed upon contract.

2. Internal conflict: Conflict inside our mind, called internal conflict, or mental conflict results from one part of the mind colliding with another part resulting in powerful emotions such as guilt, self-directed anger, sadness, self-loathing, etc. This results in severe stress. These people often make statements such as, “I feel bad that I haven’t been doing such and such thing even though I should be.” Or, “I feel bad that I did such and such a thing but I could not help it.” “A part of me wants to succeed and another part of me feels guilty if I did.” We often erroneously refer to them as “split personality.” We can easily identify people who have mental conflict: they say one thing and do another.

   Simple examples of mental conflicts are: A young woman tells her boy friend she loves him. However, when he asks her out, she gives him one excuse or another. A patient repeatedly tells her doctor that she trusts him. However, whenever he gives her any advice or medication, she does not take it.

4. What does “coping with stress” mean?

The most important this to do in coping is to get rid of painful, toxic emotions from the mind as quickly as possible before they settle down in the hidden mind and do damage to the brain. Coping with stress simply means being able to calm oneself down after one has become upset about something. It also means being able to bring peace and tranquility back into the mind. Grieving over the death of a beloved person and moving on with one’s life is a simple example. Being able move on with life after a painful divorce is another example. Resolving a serious conflict with the boss is yet another example. In coping, one has gotten rid of the painful emotions from the mind and neutralized the perceived threat to one’s well being. People use various colloquial terms to describe coping: Handling; dealing; coming to terms with; making peace with, settling the issue, getting a grip on, etc. Let us now complete the picture of the mind by adding a tube to the right side of the balloon to represent coping. This tube represents all verbal, mental and physical activity we undertake to reduce the painful emotions in the balloon. Here is how the finished model of the mind looks (see picture 6 below).

To make the most of this little guide, the reader must first thoroughly understand various parts of the mind, their interrelationships, and how the mind works. The mind (balloon) receives information from the world around it via five senses (the tube connecting the balloon to the pump). The pump represents two sources of stress viz. bad events and bad problems. As soon as the mind receives information from the pump, it checks with the hidden mind (soda bottle) whether the information is good for it or bad. If the information is bad, the mind gets upset, and painful emotions appear in the mind, the balloon inflates and stress symptoms appear. If the mind deals with these painful emotions appropriately and gets rid of them from the mind (via the side tube), the balloon shrinks and stress symptoms go away. As simple as that. More about this under the chapter titled Best Ways of Coping With Stress.

5. What does “managing stress” mean?

The most important thing to do in managing stress is to prevent painful, toxic emotions from entering the mind. Managing stress means organizing or rearranging one's life in such a way that stress-producing events and problems of life are minimized or avoided, and when they do occur, their negative impact is minimized. Therefore, the actual term should be life management. Successful life management requires us, among other things, to:

1. Adopt certain healthful lifestyles to keep our physical health in good shape.
2. Cultivate certain philosophical attitudes to deal with life’s ups and downs.
3. Follow certain personal principles in our dealings with others.
4. Inculcate certain moral, spiritual and ethical values to ensure useful and productive social life.
5. Change certain deep-rooted distorted views, beliefs, opinions, ideas and modes of perception to avoid conflicts with others or self-damaging behaviors.
6. Overcome certain stress-producing, cultivated inner weaknesses such as greed, dishonesty, insecurity, jealousy, etc.
7. Learn appropriate problem-solving skills to avoid being trapped in common life problems such as relationship and job problems.
8. Become more aware of inner thoughts and emotions, and consequent behaviors (also known as insight).
9. Accept certain realities about relationships with others and about life in general. For example, “All relationships are based on mutual give and take.”
10. Learn to prioritize time and money.
11. Learn to simplify life.
12. Make wise choices that would promote and maintain peace and tranquility in our lives.

The bottom line in life management is to become a wise person. The true goal of all great sacred spiritual texts such as The Bible, The Bhagavad-Gita and The Koran is to impart wisdom to the faithful so they could live a life of peace and tranquility. Understood properly, these texts are a great treasures of wisdom and stress management guides.