How do people deal with stress? Sometimes we use addictions to distract us, and they can make us feel OK for a while. If we abuse them, though, they can make us feel worse. Other techniques, like psychological, religious, or spiritual practices, work better. The Everything is All Right technique is one of these.

Understanding Suffering
Most people can tell you why everything is not all right. And within the context of their stories, they are probably right. Humans suffer. Anyone with a drop of compassion would have to agree.

Suffering is the existential experience or psychological perception of a lack of well-being: Everything is not all right. As such, we experience this on the physical and psychological levels.

Physical pain is obvious: when something injures our body, nerve endings send impulses to the brain: "Warning, something is wrong!" We hurt. Pain is the body insisting that we make it right.

Psychological pain is more complex and is often based on imaginary assumptions, but it can hurt just as much. We suffer like this when we believe that something is threatening us. Usually, our animal instincts are to blame. These are the body's biological demands to survive, mate, gain or maintain a hierarchical position, and have territory. The kernel that all of them share is the fear of loss.

Instincts
Let's look at the survival instinct first. If someone were trying to kill us — a real threat to our survival — we would experience fear or terror. We could feel the same (to a lesser degree) if we believed that we'd soon lose our job, because our job relates to survival. The mating instinct creates stress when we suspect that our partner might leave us, and this spawns the dark emotion of jealousy. Not having a mate can cause suffering as well.

Hierarchical positioning is about our rank in the pecking order. If someone threatens any facet of our social status, we react either offensively or defensively. This can happen at home, at work, or in the community. Our built-in need for territory — a place to live — can make us worry too. We have to secure and protect our space.

These instincts are like buttons. When circumstances push them, our body and brain alert us that everything is not all right. This doesn't hurt physically in the sense of having damaged body parts, but these emotions are disturbing. If they are chronic, they can make us sick.

Mechanisms
Bio-chemicals are substances that our body pumps into our bloodstream whenever we perceive a threat. Their original function was (and often still is) to help us survive and prosper. A bad feeling means that we're doing something wrong. A good feeling means that we're doing something right. However, feelings don't always reflect our best interests. This is because (1) psychological factors are at play and are often out of touch with reality, (2) society and technology have advanced since our bodies developed these instincts millions of years ago, and (3) we, as a race, may be approaching a collective advance in consciousness.

Plus, there's an additional factor: artificially induced emotional responses. Politicians generate these in their followers whenever they want to drum up support for their agendas. They create or distort issues and manipulate the public's feelings.

These factors have made many historically correct responses counterproductive. To avoid having our body release these substances, we need to understand and then override the psychological mechanisms that trigger them. And we have many. For instance, our body can release them when we remember a bad experience from years ago, or when we imagine that something bad might happen in the future!