STRESS is such a trendy word used these days, isn’t it?
“I’m not able to submit my presentation on time, my boss is so angry with me…uff…so much of stress in this job!”
“These daily traffic snarls are so stressful!”
“So much homework these days. My kids are under a lot of stress…”
…and the list goes on.
But what really is Stress?
The term “stress”, as it is currently used was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who defined it as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”. In simpler terms, stress is the body’s way of responding to any kind of change (or threat).
Our body has an autonomous system which gets triggered every time it senses a threat or danger. This is called the “Fight or Flight response” or “Stress Response”. It is necessary for survival.
Thus, a little stress is always good and encouraging. This is what keeps you on your toes!
It’s the stress that encourages and pushes you to complete your projects on time when you would rather choose to spend the evening in front of the TV. Stress makes you study for your exams instead of playing the whole day, and it helps you concentrate and push your body to the maximum extent possible so that you win your game.
But beyond a certain point, stress ceases to be helpful and starts ruining your efficiency, productivity, health, relationships, and overall quality of life.
When you start feeling consistent pressure in your mind, frequent episodes of dizziness due to tension, anxiety attacks, etc., that is when this stress has started taking a toll on you and a need to manage it has arrived.
Understanding Stress
Before learning to manage stress, it is very important to understand stress well.
Knowing your Stressors
Knowing your stress triggers is the primary requirement for the reduction of stress in life. A trigger can be anything that activates higher levels of stress, tension, and anxiety in you and may or may not be directly related. It is highly subjective and varies from individual to individual. And it may not really be the actual cause of worry.
Examples of Common Triggers
The most common triggers in the present time are:
- Work: boss’s tantrums, work politics, project deadlines, presentations, etc.
- Money: It is like a “motichoor ka ladoo." You know what I mean!
- Health
- Family issues and interpersonal relationships
- Traffic snarls (yes, this is quite common these days)
- Time constraints
- Uncertainty: The human mind always loves to know what’s coming next, which is practically impossible.
- The general ups and downs of everyday life.
- Our own excuses, attitudes, and personality dispositions
- Constantly pinging smartphones (the biggest cause of keeping you in alert mode constantly)
Your stressor can be a happy event (wedding, birth, etc.) as well as an upsetting one (divorce, getting fired, etc.). It can be a particular time of the year, a particular season, or a particular weather condition. It is important to recognize your triggers and then work accordingly on their reduction.
Signs of Stress
These can be physical, emotional, psychological, or behavioral.
It is to be noted that stress can manifest itself in increased substance abuse. It can be caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or any other kind of addiction.
The Vicious Cycle of Stress
Stress causes a lack of concentration, due to which productivity decreases, leading to poor quality of work and bad performance. As a result, there is more stress. And this continues forever until it is managed well.
Our Body’s Fight or Flight Response
Our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) consists of 2 parts:
- Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS)
- Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSNS)
Whenever our brain takes in some information, it goes to the limbic system which marks it as emotionally dangerous or safe.
In a dangerous situation (e.g., in front of a lion in a jungle), the ANS takes over, which sends the information to the SNS. The SNS will trigger the response as either “fight the situation," “flight from the scene,” or "freeze." These are the three survival techniques that our primitive brain evolved with. Once the danger is over, PSNS brings everything back to normal and relaxes the brain.
PNEI (Psycho-Neuro-Endocrine Immunology)
PNEI is the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body. The main concentration of PNEI is to understand the interaction between nervous and immune systems and the relationship between mental processes and the general health of a person, i.e., how and why the various psychological issues affect the overall health of a person. So, the basic concept of PNEI describes how various hormonal problems (like thyroid and other auto-immune disorders) occur due to psychological problems.
What happens is that whenever a problem (or a threat) occurs, our SNS activates in order to fight or fight (primitive brain activity trained for survival). Thus, when SNS activates, all the hormonal glands get activated and start working.
Now, in everyday situations, our bosses, office politics, traffic jams, honking vehicles, constantly beeping mobile phones, and other triggers become that “dangerous situation," due to which we start feeling stressed and anxious, which activates the SNS, asking all the hormonal glands to warm up for survival. Since these glands are hyperactive only in “dangerous situations," if they are compelled to get activated invariably (due to everyday stress and anxiety), they are obvious to get disturbed and ultimately destroyed, which is one of the prime causes of hormonal (endocrine) diseases like thyroid.
The more our emergency system is activated, the easier it becomes to trigger and the harder it becomes to calm it down.
Other Side-Effects of Chronic Stress
Our nervous system isn’t trained to differentiate between emotional and physical threats. So, if we tend to get super stressed over little things of daily life like an argument with a friend or a work deadline, our body may be in a heightened state of stress most of the time, which can lead to serious health problems.
Chronic stress upsets almost all the systems in our body. It can crash down our immune system, upset our digestive and reproductive systems, increase the risk of heart disease, and speed up the aging process as well. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
Health Problems Aggravated by Stress
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Unexplained pains
- Sleep problems
- Autoimmune diseases
- Digestive problems
- Skin conditions, such as eczema
- Heart disease
- Weight problems
- Reproductive issues
- Thinking and memory problems
Some Additional Stressors
Stressors are the situations and conditions that cause stress. We generally think that these are everyday problems in life. Those are mostly external stressors. But there are some internal, self-generated stressors that result from our thoughts and natural tendencies.
These internal stressors include:
- Pessimism
- Negative outlook
- Inability to accept uncertainty
- Unrealistic expectations
- Rigid thinking (lack of flexibility)
- All-or-nothing attitude
- Inability to trust others
- Inability to delegate work
- Inability to accept people and situations “as it is”
Did you find the above symptoms and traits/ triggers relatable? If yes, then you’re stressed. Apart from understanding the causes behind stress, it is important to manage stress before your health takes a turn for the worse.
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