In our modern society, stress is viewed in a most unusual way. In fact, in some social circles, a life filled with stress is admired. Enduring and then talking about our own stress is socially & professionally fashionable. For some, stress means that you are a hard working individual. The perception is that you have stress because you are on the pathway to success. You work hard at the office; you work hard when you come home; you work around the house on the weekend; you work hard even in recreational activities. You feel that if you are to achieve, you must expect some stress. Sometimes we have little choice, our job demands excessive effort & there's lots of tension all day long. It's a fact of modern life. Very few people today can escape stress and still be very prosperous. A person cannot be truly productive unless they have a business & personal schedule that almost consumes every waking moment of their lives. These demands of adhering to a carefully apportioned time schedule adds to our feelings of tension. We even teach our kids now to be over scheduled, and overburdened & expect them to endure the modern stresses of "crashing" through their childhood.

Once we have consciously and foolishly overburdened ourselves with huge amounts of stress, then we see stress as a physical affliction, an incurable contemporary ailment. We complain about all the side effects of stress. We suffer the physical & emotional miseries imposed by constant tension. Then, without looking for the true causes of stress, we decide to eliminate stress & improve out lives by performing various remedial physical & mental therapies designed to "relax the mind".

To properly overcome stress you must first fully understand the process that produces your tension. Stress is not about the people, situations, or events during which we experience discomfort. Stress is the adaptive response of your subconscious mind to a novel or challenging situation. Stress is your own personal response to a challenging situation. Whenever you experience stress it is because you have chosen to respond that way subconsciously; you have allowed it to occur. Stress occurs simply because your subconscious mind has decided, or has been conditioned, to react in that manner. If you want to eliminate all the stress in your life, then you must completely change the inappropriate responses deep within your subconscious mind. Self-healing in inner awareness does that by accessing the inner mind and blocking the actual development of stress . You simply eliminate the problem of stress with self-healing by mentally preventing stress from occurring in the first place.

Some forms of stress develop primarily in our bodies. Other types of stress develop in the hidden parts of your mind. Within the subconscious, you unknowingly allow the stress to develop. Without your conscious awareness, you permit your mind to respond in an ineffective manner. This then causes your body to experience the discomfort and physical disorders of stress. Tension & stress brings about many unpleasant physical symptoms including headache, back pain, loss of appetite, racing heart, faster metabolism, muscular tension & soreness, upset stomach, intestinal disorders, mental confusion, excessive perspiration, & grinding of teeth. Once you feel all stressed out, then you look for alternatives that will help you relax. Stressed out people frequently choose yoga, meditation, exercise, music, beating on drums, self-awareness and other esoteric techniques to relieve stress. These are somewhat helpful but they are really off target; they are utilized after stress has already occurred. Rather than let this stress develop, it makes more sense to prevent stress from actually occurring in the first place. Isn't it far more reasonable to train your mind to be completely relaxed in a challenging situation rather than letting yourself experience physical & emotional stress both during & after the events? Self-healing in inner awareness helps prevent stress, and prevention is unquestionably the most effective way to eliminate stress. We must understand that our stress like most other things has separate elements or components. Let us now examine each of them & you will discover that they all contribute to our overall stress.

There are many causes of stress in our lives, and many types of stress. There is physical stress. Physical stress is caused by anything that puts excessive physical demands upon the functioning of the body. Physical stress is an intense and persistent condition that overtaxes our bodies. This includes intense physical activity, hunger, dehydration, excessive heat or cold, physical injury, loud noises, lack of oxygen, bacterial & viral diseases, and exposure to harmful chemical substances. Physical stress is easily eliminated by removing or controlling the source of the physical phenomena that are impinging upon our bodies. Physical stress, however, is a form of tension that is sometimes imposed on top of already existing emotional distress. It thus adds to, and complicates, the other types of stress we might be enduring.

Emotional stress is another form of stress & tension that we experience. There are different types or levels of emotional stress, the first of which we call daily stress or situational stress. Daily stress is the result of conflicts, annoyances & aggravations that occur all the time at home, at work, and in our social lives. It causes uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Most often it is the repetitious "grind" of our lives and frequent relationship conflicts that causes us great tension. It is the day to day chores & the frequent drudgery of many of our occupations & personal lives that create this fundamental form of tension. When most people think of stress they think of situational stress. Situational stress is also the result of conflicts with other individuals we encounter day after day. It is also the discomfort we feel from strained personal relationships. Daily stress, if it continues with sufficient intensity, can be very harmful physically & emotionally.

In addition to daily situational & relationship stress, some individuals are also enduring emotional stress that is completely hidden away deep inside the body. This is called repressed "affect stress" and it's presence is usually completely unrecognized by individuals. We are not aware that it exists nor that it is a major component of our overall tension. This form of stress keeps us feeling edgy. It causes us to over-respond or to blow up in response to difficult or challenging situations. We become more stressed out than the situation really warrants. Or we feel far more exhausted physically than we really should be. Hidden affect stress is caused by many months, or many years of denying & burying (repressing) our emotions, especially feelings of frustration, anger, rage, & sorrow. This stress is related to the issues that you thought you had dealt with, or recovered from, years ago. These emotions build up in individuals who have little opportunity or find it difficult to acknowledge & fully expressing their feelings. The unexpressed feelings are then stored as emotional energy in the body. Failure to express & relieve these feelings results in an inner stress that continues to intensify over time. The stress & tension in the body are like a pressure cooking waiting to explode or burst forth in pain & discomfort. Over time, more & more inner stress is accumulated until finally the subconscious mind causes it to erupt as a physical symptom, emotional disorder, or a serious illness.

Another type of deep stress is called "cognitive conflict" or just "cognitive" stress. It occurs when there is a disagreement or disharmony between the thoughts, perceptions & desires of the two parts of the mind- the conscious mind & the subconscious mind. For example, a person who has recently done well in college, and been very successful at her first job, will consciously feel very confident, intelligent, talented & quite pleased in response to these accomplishments. After some months, she is given a well deserved promotion which requires her to do a lot of selling & public speaking. Once she gets into her new position of greater responsibility, she starts to feel uneasy, nervous, anxious, and not very self-confident. This is completely contrary to the highly positive experiences & recent perceptions of her conscious mind.

Unfortunately, this is the same woman who was repeatedly told as a child that she spent too much time just reading books, that she was too shy and quiet, & that she lacked social skills, and would never be able to interact well with other people. So very early in life, she developed unfavorable self-perceptions, and feelings of inadequacy that were continually absorbed and ingrained in the subconscious mind. These negative feelings & perceptions have never really left. They are still deeply embedded in the subconscious which is hidden from conscious awareness. These disagreeable thoughts & perceptions, however, continue to influence her behavior. Now as an adult, these less favorable perceptions & thoughts of the subconscious mind attempt to burst into awareness whenever she finds herself in challenging or novel situations such as public speaking. But the negative thoughts & feelings are too uncomfortable for the conscious mind & so the conscious mind denies them & pushes them further out of awareness.

Here we have a classical conflict causing inner stress. There is the energy of the subconscious thoughts & feelings pushing upward & outward into awareness. At the same time, the conscious mind is exerting equal or greater energy in order to hold back the uncomfortable subconscious perceptions. This state of tension & conflict continues. And the more the person tries to do things that are in conflict with the subconscious perceptions, the more the internal conflict intensifies. This deep tension has nowhere to go; the tension remains unrelieved; the inner pressure is not released. As a consequence, the trapped energy eventually causes internal stress damage to the mind & the body.

Today we have extensive knowledge of the effects caused by tension & stress. We know that continual stress upsets our emotional equilibrium which can lead to excessive worry, anxiety, loss of self-esteem, fears, doubts & phobias. Then that hidden emotion effects our physical functions, our biochemistry, our hormonal balance, and our immune system. People develop all sorts of illness & physical disorders because the emotions & deep inner tension have so devastated the body. Inner tension also depletes the white blood cells that fight bacterial & viral infections & the cells that prevent & control allergies. Stress even damages the white blood cells that normally remove cysts & tumors from deep inside the body. This makes us far more susceptible to tumor growth and cancerous type illnesses.

For a person to be completely stress free, all of those various types of stress must be discovered & then alleviated with Self-healing. The process begins by removing daily stress. Self-healing in inner awareness successfully eliminates situational stress by actually blocking the initial reaction of the subconscious mind to a challenging situation. Stress is never allowed to occur; it's development is completely thwarted. Self-healing modifies your mind's internal responses to life's stressful situations. You actually 'reprogram' your mind so that provocative people & situations will no longer upset you. Your inner perceptions & situational responses are transformed. Instead of being nervous, aggravated & frustrated in a challenging situation, your subconscious mind automatically responds by creating perceptions & feelings that are calm & tranquil. In effect, daily stress is eliminated by preventing it from developing in the first place. Individuals are delighted when they learn how to use their inner mind to completely prevent stress in just weeks.

The next step in healing is to eliminate any "affect" stress or "cognitive conflict" stress. Most people are not even aware that these types of stress exist. They don't consciously understand why they are experiencing unrelenting tension. Yet these deeper stresses may actually be the largest component of an individual's overall stress. When these forms of stress go unrecognized & untreated, a person is never able to successfully remove the stress from their lives. This leads to frustration, disappointment- and even more stress!

"Affect" & "cognitive conflict" stress are the more deeply concealed & more enduring forms of stress. Self-healing in inner awareness is utilized to uncover the emotions, thoughts & perceptions that originally produced these types of stress. Any troublesome feelings (affect) are acknowledged, confronted and dissolved away by the process of self-healing. The emotional energy of the "affect" is fully discharged, removed from the body, and internal tension is thereby completely eliminated. Self-healing is also used to positively transform any ineffective, negative, or misdirected thoughts that have been causing internal tension. Finally, self-healing is used to correct or improve any self-defeating, inaccurate or immature perceptions that might be causing "cognitive conflict" stresses.

So self-healing in inner awareness not only prevents "daily" stress, but more importantly, it also eliminates the more troublesome "affect" & "cognitive conflict" stress that are occurring without our conscious awareness. Self-healing in inner awareness is so effective because it uses the natural abilities of your own mind to prevent & dissolve away stresses. Other techniques never heal the deeper forms of stress so they can never be fully effective. So self-healing is far more effective than meditation, yoga, visualizations, exercise, music, self-awareness, centering, & beating drums-all of which are done after the stress has already occurred.

Self-healing therapists now realize that many illnesses are caused, facilitated, or worsened by stress. In fact they believe today that more than 80% of all illnesses have a strong stress component to their onset & duration. Common stress disorders that can be healed include tension headache, migraine, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Epstein-Barr virus, damaged immune system, auto immune disease (multiple sclerosis etc.), irritable bowel, chronic gynecological disorders, severe PMS, glaucoma; chronic pain in the neck & jaw, back pain, joint pain & other skeletal aches; muscular spasms & soreness, some irregular heart beat, nervous stomach, reflux, ulcers, TMJ & grinding teeth, sleep disorders (insomnia), allergy & asthma, chronic skin eruptions, eating disorders, frequent colds, lumps & bumps in the body, stress injuries, cold sores, shingles, and genital herpes. Self-healing in inner awareness relieves stress far better than any other procedure available. Any individuals experiencing stress or its related illnesses should undergo self-healing in inner awareness as soon as possible and change their lives forever.