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The following article was published in Your Health Magazine. Our mission is to empower people to live healthier.
Monica Marusceac, owner
Minimize Stress, Maximize Your Beauty
NOVA Hypnosis and Wellness
. http://novahypnosisandwellness.com

Minimize Stress, Maximize Your Beauty

Stress is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to your looks. It contributes to under-eye bags, dry and flaky skin, acne, rashes and hives, unwanted redness, lines and wrinkles, ridged and brittle nails, weight gain, and graying or thinning hair.

Research shows that high levels of chronic stress are linked with the accelerated aging which occurs when the protein caps (called telomeres) at the ends of chromosomes shorten, causing cells to age faster and die sooner.

In fact, stress hormones are so damaging that a Finnish study reported that men and women find members of the opposite sex who are stressed out to be less attractive than calmer, less stressed partners. Unfortunately, stress is everywhere in our society and for most of us, avoiding it is not an option.

We may even have been conditioned by our upbringing or our peer group to take pride in living a high stress life. So are we doomed to be stressed, unhealthy and unattractive? Absolutely not.
Learning how to manage stress effectively by changing the meaning that we give to events, situations and people in our life is the first step to living a stress-free life.

Manage Meaning, Minimize Stress

Think about the things that cause you stress. Have you ever gotten incredibly upset after being ignored by someone, only to learn that the person was overwhelmed and their behavior had nothing to do with you? Have you ever stressed yourself out thinking you didn’t do well on a test or project only to learn later that you did better than most other people?

We all make the mistake of unnecessarily attributing a negative meaning to an event or circumstance and causing ourselves unnecessary stress. When this happens, we activate the “fight, flight or freeze” response and send our cortisol levels through the roof, which in turn raises our blood pressure, suppresses our immunity, elevates our blood sugar levels, and increases our heart rate.

Sustained stress keeps us in this “high-alert” status, disrupting our sleep and over time, increasing our abdominal fat.

When faced with a stressful situation ask yourself 1) “What is the meaning I’m giving to this situation?” 2) “Could this be an illusion?” and 3) “What else could be causing this situation?”

These three questions serve as a mental pause and allow space for the mind to reorient itself away from negative mental chatter that contributes to chronic stress. During hypnotherapy sessions clients are often asked to identify an anchor (i.e. a word, phrase, image or gesture) which will remind them to ask themselves these questions at the appropriate time; the client’s chosen anchor then gets “fixed” in their subconscious during the hypnosis experience allowing it to be highly effective and accessible on demand.

The process of addressing meaning to stressful situations is important for all of us because almost every issue, problem or challenge we face is tied to stress. Smoking, overeating, drinking excessively, anxiety, fears, trouble sleeping, etc. are all the result of excess stress. And, whether we realize it or not, this excess stress is the result of the meaning we give to the events, situations, and people in our livesrecognizing this is the first step in minimizing our stress.

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