Stress According to Dr. Orman, MD

Hello Reader,

I have been listening to the Battling the Big Three: Overcoming Stress, Anxiety, and Low Self-Esteem audiobook and have heard some interesting things when it comes to how Dr. Orman views stress. One of his statements wanted me to call out “foul” but, when I thought about it, it made sense. According to Dr, Orman, one is unable to deal with stress (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017). Yes, he said that we cannot deal with stress. So I said “then why do we have all of these insights on how to ‘deal with stress’?” The next thing Dr. Orman said made sense. He often ask his patients what are the problems that are associated with the stress because one is only able to deal with the problem and not the stress (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017).

According to Dr. Orman (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017), negatives are not a part of life per say but only in human bodies and human language and most negatives come from negative thinking. In other words, humans are the ones who label something negative and, whenever us humans view something is negative, our bodies react. Dr. Orman recommends us to disprove any negative thoughts we may have (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017). On the other side of the spectrum, positive thinking can also be a flaw. What? Yes. The reason is that positive thinking may be the result of someone’s automatic condition thinking just the same way as negative thinking may be someone’s automatic condition thinking (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017). This reminded me of Finding Nemo; how Marlin viewed an event as negative whereas Dory viewed the same even as something positive.

Events versus interpreting an event are two different things. According to Dr. Orman (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017), events cannot be viewed just as only positive or only negative. In other words, events just occur. That’s it! It’s our background (i.e. citizenship, nationality, sportsmanship, denomination, etc.) that causes one to view events as something positive or negative. One may be watching the same football game but, since their team is losing, they can see the game as something negative. And, for one that doesn’t care for football whatsoever, this individual may see the event as negative or even neutral! One of the reasons we have stress is because of our “automatic interpretation, judgment, thoughts, theories, and even our trusted feelings are frequently incomplete, distorted, or otherwise just plain wrong” (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017).

By remembering the needed distinction of event versus interpretation, you will now have the ability to critically examine and even correct some of your flaw and automatic interpretation, judgment, and assessment (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017). According to Dr. Orman (MD & CloudLibrary, 2017), when you only view an event as something negative, you lose the opportunity of viewing it in any other way. There may be some positive aspects from a negative event that, once you sit back and review, you will realize that the even really wasn’t 100% negative. Once you are able to view events by just events, opportunities will open up and it can also reduce stress and suffering in life.

Reference

MD, Doc Orman, & CloudLibrary. (2017). Battling the Big Three: Overcoming Stress, Anxiety and Low Self-Esteem. Place of publication not identified: Blackstone Audio.