Stress Management for the Intentional Soul

By Heather Bjur, MA, LMFT

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Twenty-first century living seems to be defined by stress and our wandering awareness of the need to deal with it in healthy ways.  We can practice yoga with goats, float our bodies in small pools filled with 800 pounds of Epsom salt, buy fancy detox shakes to shed toxins and balance hormones, or even spend the night at a monastery for 24 hours of silence.  I’ve tried some of these things and believe they have merit: self-care has great value. 

But if this is where our search for rest stops, I’m afraid we’re missing out on the heart of stress management. 

It strikes me that there are two types of stress.  On one hand, there is stress we don’t have much control over, and ‘stress management’ in these situations is nearly laughable.  I can speak from personal experience. In June of 2017, my husband fell off a 16-foot roof and broke both of his legs.  He spent 3 weeks in the hospital, went through 5 surgeries during those 3 weeks, and was wheel-chair-bound for 3+ months.  There were wounds to care for, two more surgeries to come, and the stress of losing his income (as a self-employed contractor) for almost an entire year.  

That kind of stress is hard to ‘manage.’  In my case, I was the only functioning adult in my household for well over 6 months.  While I did what I could – I went to bed on time, tried to eat normal meals, kept up with my friends, and saw my counselor nearly every week – I was still very stressed, and it showed in my body and my in ability to engage my normal levels of productivity.  On the mornings I didn’t have to go to work, I went back to bed after I took my kids to school; I just couldn’t stay awake.  I had also just begun a book proposal a week prior to the accident, but that proposal was never completed.  In those extraordinary circumstances, we simply do what we can.  Stress management looks more like triage – just stop the bleeding.  Anything unnecessary must go. 

But in our everyday lives, effective stress management is sometimes evasive.  We talk about finding balance as if it’s a mythical creature.  We wear our busyness as a badge but suffer from insomnia and insecurity. 

When does it end? 

It occurs to me that the unspoken rules of our society include comparison and keeping up with the Joneses, whoever they are.  Our souls scrambling for identity and meaning, we look around us for clues as to how we’re doing. 

Do I measure up? 

Do I have what it takes? 

Am I somebody important? 

Until we answer these questions for ourselves, the pursuit of stress management seems fruitless.  Certainly, we should exercise, eat well, tend to our mental and spiritual health, and take vacations, but if we don’t have a solid core identity, we’ll spend all our time scrambling around filling the holes in our soul with things outside ourselves.  If we’re going to practice effective stress management, we must get to the root of where our stress comes from.  For many of us, it comes from inner emptiness and the avoidance of those difficult feelings the emptiness brings. 

I spent the better part of my adult life achieving, especially in my 20’s.  Always pushing myself, constantly busy, trying to keep up and be the best.  Those were the most stressful years of my life.  I developed acid reflux and fibromyalgia.  I often suffered from headaches.   

I was trying to prove to myself that I was worth something.  I’d never developed a sense of self outside of my performance-based life.  As long as I was proving myself to the world around me, and received the appropriate praise, I was okay – I could manage the emptiness. 

Thankfully, God, in His great mercy, began to thwart my efforts.  For several years, this just pushed me to try harder and harder.  But finally, after years of major depression and more heartbreak and frustration than I knew were possible, I began to wave the white flag of surrender.  It took several more years to develop a sense of how life works when one isn’t constantly striving. 

When I was in the middle of it, stress management looked like a strict budget (poor grad school student), making sure I had time with friends, and going to bed by midnight.  But those steps towards managing my incredibly stressful life didn’t speak to the ache in my soul.  They didn’t touch the overwhelming need to figure out who I really was, and what it could mean to have my identity wrapped up in my Creator instead of my ego.  

All those years of hustle and saying yes to every opportunity that came my way fed my pride in ways I didn’t understand until much later.  Pride was screaming, “Look at me!  Look what I can do!  I can come through for everybody!  I can make my life work on my own without God!”  And I believed it.

I believed a lie. 

My motivation for staying busy was wrapped up in my inability to deal with pain, fear, anger, and grief that my life wasn’t panning out the way I had hoped.  Busyness gave me the illusion that I was important, that I mattered, because I didn’t understand I had inherent worth and value as a Child of God.  In fact, it allowed me to focus on doing things in the name of God, instead of resting in Him.  What it boiled down to was that I was the god of my life, not Jesus. 

What’s your motivation for staying busy?  How does stress serve you?  Does it keep you from having to deal with your dying marriage?  Or serve as a distraction from your mother’s death last year?  Could it be that stress is a better alternative than facing the financial crisis your small business is in, and maintaining crazy hours to try to make up for lost income feels like the “right” thing to do?  Maybe, like me, it gives you an identity, and without it you don’t know who you are. 

I invite you to explore these questions.  Ask Jesus to shed His truth on the matter.   And be reminded of the Lord’s words to Israel in Isaiah 30:15:

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation,

in quietness and trust is your strength […]”

He gives us the answer: repentance and rest, quietness and trust. 

Could we quiet our weary souls long enough to trust Him?

Could we turn from our busyness to rest in His embrace?

I believe He is calling us to that, as the ultimate answer for stress management.  How will you answer His call?

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About the Author: Heather Bjur is a lover of Jesus, books, & soul-touching conversation. Wife. Boy-mom. Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. Enneagram 4w3. I/ENFP. Soul nourisher.  Heather is currently writing an online course for women who identify as people-pleasers or co-dependent called ILLUME: Shining the Light of the Gospel on Codependence.  You can find out more at www.heatherbjur.com.