Signs Help Point the Way to Less Stress

For Daisy Dowden, a friendly English war bride with seven grown children, taking a stress class was not a casual decision.

“It was essential! I’ve been a nervous Nellie all my life,” Dowden, 62, said. “I had open-heart surgery last year, and every time I go in for a checkup, the nurse who takes my blood pressure tells me, ‘Daisy, calm down.’ ”

In January, Dowden discovered Richard (Ben) Benson’s stress class at the San Marcos clinic of the North County Health Service.

“Now I’ve got signs up all over my house,” she said of the class as her nine fellow students were assembling. (Stress classes work best if they are kept small.)

Anything Positive Works

One of her signs says, “Watch Your Thoughts.” Another says “Breathe.” A third states, “I Can Handle It.” There’s also one--Benson urges students to put up anything if it helps them to keep a positive attitude--that she saw on a neighbor’s wall in England. That one says: “Don’t Bloody Worry. There’s Another Day Tomorrow.”

“People who put up signs do much better than those who don’t,” Benson said.

Behind him, more signs, listing 21 things that help people feel tranquil, were pinned to the green wall. “For most of us, unless we have constant reminders, the mind slips easily into a negative way of thinking,” he said.

A tall, calm, peaceful man, Benson, 40, is a biofeedback consultant. Since 1983, he has been on the staff of North County Health Services, a county-run agency that has seven medical clinics around San Diego County.

Biofeedback is the use of instruments to monitor and to regulate stress levels in the mind and body.

“Most people now are aware that stress damages and ages the body,” Benson said. “But when patients are hooked up to a biofeedback machine for the first time, they’re often astonished to discover just how much influence their thoughts have on their stress level.”

Some people seem blessed with an naturally optimistic disposition, he said. You don’t see this type very often in doctor’s offices, or hanging around pharmacies waiting for prescriptions for high blood pressure, insomnia or headaches.

Attitude the Key in Controlling Stress

“Your attitude, the way you see life, is the most important factor in controlling stress,” he said.

Stress specialist Dr. Joseph Spear of the Spear Clinic at La Costa knows the importance of managing stress. “There is far more awareness now, in both the public and the medical profession, of the damage stress can do,” he said.

Because of the recognition that everything from digestive upsets and skin rashes to insomnia and fatigue may be caused by stress, Spear said, a whole new medical field called psycho-immunology is emerging.

“It emphasizes that people can do a great deal for themselves,” he said. “Their attitude about what happens to them is the important thing.”

Benson can certainly empathize with anyone feeling overwhelmed by life’s stresses. He himself developed both ulcers and migraine headaches while he was with the Marines in Vietnam. At one point he owned a rock music club and restaurant, in which he worked frenetic 16-hour days.

“I used to be a very tense person,” he said, smiling. “Now, I go home to my house on a half-acre in Leucadia and my dog and cat. A girlfriend--she’s a chiropractor--and I go for long walks on the beach. I love the life I’m leading.”

Benson’s first guest speaker for the class that evening was Hal Lingerman, who arrived carrying his portable stereo. Lingerman, coordinator of the seven counseling departments of the clinics, is also author of the book “The Healing Energies of Music.”

As the gentle flutes and strings of a Baroque piece of music flooded the room, he asked the class, “Does this make you want to hit anybody?”

There was general laughter. Reasons for taking the class varied among the 10 students. Two were coping with the stress of an illness in the family. Several had doctors who recommended the class.

Millie Virtree, who works at the Vista Post Office, said that, while most of her regular customers are “lovely people,” if anyone wants to see stressful working conditions, they should hang around the lobby of a post office.

Stressful Sounds of Rock Music

Lingerman switched the music suddenly--to the thump, thump, da-thump of loud rock music. The anapestic beat of this kind of music, with two short, unstressed counts followed by one long, stressed count, can be addicting, Lingerman contends.

The students--the youngest of whom was 29--were wincing visibly at the noise.

“Tests show,” Lingerman continued, shouting to make himself heard above the music, “that kids who listen constantly to an anapestic beat are more aggressive. Easily irritated. They don’t function well in school because it causes poor memory. It can also stimulate the genital area.”

There was an audible sigh of relief when Lingerman switched to choral music, followed by a piece as soothing as the sound of water running down a hillside--Vaughan Williams’ “Lark Ascending.”

The last tape he played for them was Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. The class sat with closed eyes. The room seemed transformed into a meadow . . . with a stream . . . and birds.

“Movements of nature compared to movements of chaos,” Lingerman said softly as the last notes died away. “Nourishing music. It embraces and enfolds you. Play it when you get home and it will restore you after the day’s tensions. We’re now in a state of technology where, for around $100 to $150, anyone can have a music system in their house that will enable them to nourish themselves day after day.”

Carefully selected music, he added, aids digestion. It can help the grieving to work through emotional pain. If played in the car, it can soothe the stress of driving.

At one of his lectures, Lingerman said, a very up-tight young man, wearing a motorcycle helmet, was sitting in the audience.

“When I played some Vivaldi and Haydn, he was so de-stressed he fell asleep. Still wearing his helmet,” Lingerman said.

Self-Hypnosis: ‘A Vacation in the Mind’

As this was the fifth, and last, class of the current session, Benson had a second guest speaker. (“A double stress whammy?” a student asked.) Clinical psychologist Thomas O’Shea had come in to talk about using self-hypnosis to relax--”to take a vacation in the mind,” as he phrased it.

O’Shea and Benson share an office in Encinitas. (Although Benson is in it only two days a week.)

“The title of our office door is Psychological Biofeedback and Hypnosis Consultants,” said Benson, who is also a certified hypnotist. “We really feel sympathy for the receptionist who has to answer the phone with those words.”

Using biofeedback with hypnosis is exciting, Benson said, “because it takes the hocus-pocus out. It takes hypnosis beyond the realm of stage entertainment.”

Clinical psychologist David Chamberlain said the combination “is still in the experimental stage but it’s a logical thing to do.” Chamberlain uses hypnosis with his patients at the Hillcrest Anxiety Treatment Center in San Diego.

“People doing biofeedback are likely to be in a state of hypnosis anyway,” he said. “Any state of absorbed tension--such as when a child is mesmerized by the words of a teacher--is a state of hypnosis.”

Benson also contends that biofeedback can measure the effects of hypnosis.

“When you hear someone say that they’ve tried hypnosis and it didn’t work for them, it’s usually because there was no way to measure how deeply their mind had gone down into the” hypnotic state, Benson said. “When they are hooked up to a biofeedback machine, you can see it; you have a scientific printout of their brain waves.”

Most people who call the office, he said, want hypnosis to help them conquer a problem, such as smoking or overeating.

“But since the recent Shirley MacLaine program on TV, we’ve been getting calls from people wanting to use biofeedback to learn deep meditation.”

Dispelling Myths About Hypnosis

O’Shea, who seriously considered the priesthood before becoming a psychologist, is very people-oriented. Speaking to Benson’s classes, he says, gives him an opportunity to dispel myths about hypnosis.

“Self-hypnosis is a very natural thing. Certainly nothing to be afraid of,” he told the class as he faced their semi-circle of chairs. “It’s an ability we all have. A tool you can use for deep relaxation.”

Because relaxation is the key to hypnosis, he first asked the class to close their eyes, to either relax in their chairs or lie on the carpet. Most of them chose the carpet.

The room was very quiet. The only sound was O’Shea’s soothing voice flowing over the prone students.

“The more deeply and vividly you can go into your imagination, there’s a part of the brain that responds and produces actual physical effects on the body,” he said. His voice continued, very softly, urging the students to let themselves sink deeper and deeper.

Ten minutes later, he brought them back to the realities of the room at the clinic.

“Mmm . . . Can I take him home with me?” Virtree asked.

“Self-hypnosis,” O’Shea explained, “is a skill. The more you practice it, the easier it becomes.”

Benson ended the class with half an hour of review. The students have, among other things, learned how to use singing and humor, color and exercises, massage and diaphragmatic breathing to bring their minds into a peaceful state.

But it is the reminder signs--the “Watch Your Thoughts” and “I Can Handle It” signs like the ones Dowden has taped up all over her house--that he feels make the biggest difference.

“I’ve had the signs up in both my house and car for years,” Benson recalled. “About eight months ago, I figured I didn’t need them any more. So I took them all down. “

To his surprise, he said, he found himself regressing. Negative thoughts began creeping in. He didn’t drive clutching the wheel in a vise-like grip, yelling “Why doncha learn to drive!” at motorists he felt were going too slowly.

“But I definitely wasn’t as positive. Now my signs are back up. Remember,” Benson told the class as they began gathering up their jackets and notebooks, “Ninety percent of the stress in the world is from thoughts and attitudes.”

Or, as Dr. Spear puts it: “Stress is in the mind of the beholder!”