Stress and Growth

 Hello everyone! Welcome back!

Is avoiding stressful things and striving to make life the easiest as possible the best way to live? or the best way to really learn and grow? 

I don’t think so!

Think of the last time you were stressed. Was it family problems? Homework? Finances? Relationships? There are a lot of things that can contribute to our stress. It is important that we handle them in a healthy way, but stress can actually be a good thing.

Stress and anxiety on the brain can actually help things to be ingrained into our memory. It can also be a motivation for us to do well on something that we have been working towards. It is important to remember too that anxiety is a natural, normal brain response to perceived danger so don’t feel like you are the only one who experiences it. Heavenly Father designed our brains the way that they are for a reason, and I know there is purpose to us working through these types of challenges we are facing. 

One thing that can cause major stress in family life is dealing with mental illnesses like depression and anxiety. Of course, there are many ways to go about healing from those mental illnesses, but I would like to focus on something that not a lot of people do. People try medications which can be helpful, but the effects aren’t long lasting. Something that I would encourage if you are feeling down or depressed is to focus on only telling yourself true thoughts. Things like, “I am a Child of God,” or “I have two eyes,” or even something like “I have brown hair.” Brains aren’t very good at deciphering truth and wrong, that is the job of our spirit, which is why we should only feed our brains truthful thoughts. Speaking truth to yourself is much better than entertaining positive thoughts because we could potentially doubt those thoughts, which might make you feel worse in the end. When we entertain our false and negative thoughts, the spirit has to leave and can’t be there to help us to decipher wrong from right.

I want to talk about stressful events and the effects they have on family life. The thoughts we have about events, dictate our emotions, not the actual events themselves. So when your family goes through a difficult challenge together, your thoughts about that event dictate the emotions you felt at the time. When we go through these challenges with family and even friends, it can actually bring you much closer and can strengthen your relationship. It also can be the thing that drives you apart. I think the thing that decides whether or not it brings you together or drives you apart is your focus on the Savior. When we focus on the Savior and think about how our challenges are designed to strengthen us and help us to become better and more like God, it changes our mindset, and brings about growth from our trials. On the other hand, challenges can drive people apart. In fact, parents that lose a child are twice as likely to get a divorce. That just reiterates to me the importance of having a testimony of the Savior. He makes all things right if we trust in him, and I know that helps us to become closer in challenges instead of driving us apart. 

At the end of the day, what brings people joy and closeness in relationships is not no stress. It is learning to deal with that stress and really growing through those challenging experiences. Coping with stress as a couple and working through those challenges can actually bring you and your spouse closer and strengthen your other relationships as well. Follow the Savior and only speak truth to your brain, and I promise everything will work out exactly how it is supposed to. 

Thanks for being here this week!

Love, Annie