Can I recognize that stress is a choice? Stress, like every aspect of my disposition comes down, ultimately, to my choices. This gets tricky because I make choices unconsciously, the same way I breath with out thinking about it. I also make choices via habitual responses that are so ingrained in me I have forgotten there are options. The absence of conscious awareness does not a choice unmake. If I try imagining complete and absolute ownership and self determination over all the choices I make. Forgetting, for a moment, about every one else and what they are doing, or not doing. I let myself go with the notion that I am choosing to stress out over (fill in the blank). Now I imagine I can choose an alternative disposition. Maybe something like acceptance, or reconciliation, or letting (fill in the blank) go for a while. If I can imagine that I have this capacity, which I actually do, then I am ready to answer some powerful questions. Why would I choose to be stressed? What does it do for me? What am I getting out of making this choice? (If I look hard enough I can usually find something I am getting out of being miserable.) How does being stressed help (fill in the blank)? The problems or circumstances that I fill in my blanks are distinct from my emotional response choices. When I see this it helps me to see how my response choice to indulge stress compounds and worsens my problems. I, of course I can’t help the fact that there will always be something to fill into the blanks. But imagine the benefit to well being if I could gain a more functional grasp how the choices I make effect my disposition.