Just Kick Back and Relax : Saddleback Professor Offers Some Tips on How to Deal With Stress

“Now everybody get comfortable; you men, if you have ties, at least loosen them,” said the professor.

In the semi-darkened classroom Tuesday, there was some shifting around in seats and some embarrassed laughter. But the 70 “students” in the Saddleback College auditorium generally arranged themselves more comfortably, just as psychologist John J. Flood suggested.

“What we’re going to be doing every Tuesday, from 12 (noon) to 1, for the next few months is to practice stress reduction,” Flood said. “Stress is self-imposed. Nobody can make you stressful.”

Thus began an unusual lecture series at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. The series continues every Tuesday into December. What makes the course unusual is that it’s free, open to anybody--not just registered students and faculty--and no sign-ups are required. All that is necessary is that a person show up and be interested in reducing stress in his or her life.

A Mixed Audience

About half of those who attended the opening class Tuesday were adults from the Mission Viejo area who are not Saddleback students or faculty. The rest of the audience was a mixture of faculty, generally dressed in business attire, and students in more casual clothing.

All had one interest in common: stress in their lives.

Flood, a counselor and psychology professor at Saddleback, told the audience that he was delighted to be leading them in an attack on the problem. Stress, he said, is a normal part of life, adding: “Stress can be good for you.”

“But when you get more than a normal amount of stress, then you’re in a bad place.”

What is more than a “normal amount” of stress? Flood indicated that tolerance of stress varies from person to person. He explained that symptoms of adverse reaction to stress are easily recognizable: sweating palms, anxiety, headaches, backaches, tension--to name a few.

“I suggest that you keep a journal of your feelings of stress, and write down the time of day and situation where you felt stress,” he said.

Flood had numerous other suggestions and observation during the hourlong lecture. They included:

- “Believe in yourself. Think of yourself as a total person. If you believe you’re a total person, you will become a total person.”

- “Take stress-reduction breaks. I wish every company would do this. Instead of having coffee breaks, I wish offices would just stop for five minutes so employees could work on stress reduction.”

- “I think every worker should have a partner on the job--someone he could talk to and help reduce his stress.”

- “Don’t try to change the world. Try to change yourself.”

- “Love means caring and sharing without any expectation or condition. If there are conditions on it, it ceases to be love. Love is a passionate interest in a human being; sex is a passionate interest in a human body.”

- “Some people try to drown their problems with alcohol. The only thing you can do with alcohol is irrigate the problem . . . . Alcoholism killed 25,000 people last year in the United States.”

- “If you want to eliminate some stress in your job, get current in your profession . . . . I think people should take at least one course a year in a university just to keep current in their field . . . . This keeps a worker from becoming obsolete. Obsolete people are stressful people.”

- “Guilt of the past and fear of the future cause more stress than anything else . . . . You can plan for the future but don’t live in it. The only day you have to live is today.”

- “You know why women live 10 years, on the average, longer than men? They can get rid of their feelings. They can cry. Men are told it’s not right to cry. I had to take a course at USC to learn how to cry; now I love to cry.”

In addition to numerous suggestions about working and living and loving, Flood offered a few preliminary stress-reduction exercises. These included partner exercises, where a seatmate rubbed the neck and shoulders of the person seated next to him or her.

“For the next three meetings, we’ll work on the exercises,” Flood said. “Then in September, we’ll learn about self-hypnosis.”

At the conclusion of the lecture, a queue of smiling, relaxed-looking participants formed to thank the professor and to tell him of stress problems in their lives.

“This is my life,” said the 56-year-old professor. “I love what I do, and I enjoy doing this. Nothing gives me greater joy than helping to relieve tension in people’s lives.”