I don’t think there is any question that one of the biggest health problems faced by people in the Western World, and one that is often pushed to the side is stress. It is a killer. Why do I say this? Well, lets look at stress and the implications of being stressed. Lets start with what it actually means. It seems to be confused with being under pressure but I’m not sure that this is the case. Stress, at route refers to a force applied to something. This can be physical or psychological. You can suffer a stress fracture of a limb bone for example from excessive force applied to the bone, just as you can suffer a psychological break from excessive force applied to the psyche. The force involved in breaking a limb can be obvious, impact, torsion etc, but the force applied to the psyche can be far more subtle. It can be anything from rational to irrational, from workload to feelings of inadequacy, from trauma to ill health to neuro-chemical imbalances.
So why is stress a problem, and why do we tend to suffer from it more in the Western World. Stress becomes an issue when the levels of force being applied exceed the capacity of the affected structure to cope with those forces. We all deal with stress on a daily basis, and in the main we deal with it successfully. It is only when our capacity to deal with it diminished, when we are unwell for example, or when the stress levels rise beyond our normal experience, in the case of say a car crash, or receiving news of a bereavement that the trouble starts. Issues associated with excessive stress can include feelings of anxiety, shaking, sweating, general malaise, stomach knots and cramps, shortness of breath, excessive tiredness, often couple with difficulty sleeping and can be very sever indeed. In some case, if the stress is not dealt with either by removing some or all of the stress or learning better ways to deal with the stress it can become life limiting or even life threatening.
There are may theories as to why we seem to suffer more from excessive stress in the West. The one that fits most well with my own experiences is that we are constantly bombarded with imagery of success and power and wealth and happiness and these images are often not achievable for the majority of people. These can act as aspirational drivers and act in a positive manner, but if the viewer is in a depleted state they can seem so unattainable that they become a fixation and the drive to achieve them becomes to high a stressor leading to psychological damage. If this occurs, the very fact that one cannot even deal with the aspirational aspects can cause additional stress in that it can engender feelings of inadequacy. This can again be heightened by the sense of insecurity that has become a key feature in modern life since the collapse of the banking system in 2008. Many people feel insecure in their jobs, and see increasing unemployment figures as further cause for concern.
So, given that stress is a serious concern, and given that it can have serious implications for health and well being, and given that it seems to be on the rise in the West how are we to best approach finding a workable solution. For me, the first step is to analyse and try to understand what it is in our lives that is causing us stress. Frequently there can be multiple sources of stress from money worries to relationship concerns, to insecurity and finding which are causing problems and which are of less concern can be difficult. It can be also be difficult to conduct this analysis yourself since your perception of the stressors and their impact may well be inaccurate as a consequence of the very stress that you are analysing. There is an argument that seeking external support whether professional or not can bring additional benefits. Having established a basis on which to move forward, it is essential to understand that it is neither possible nor desirable to completely eliminate stress. Stress can have a positive effect of making you stronger by acting as a stimulus for increased activity.
The trick therefore is to understand your personal stressors, understand how much stress is enough to keep you properly motivated but not too much that it becomes debilitating, and then address any causes of stress that fall outside acceptable/desirable levels. This is of course not as easy as it sounds laid out here but should be considered a route map to successful stress management. That journey may be a long and difficult one, but knowing your start point and having a clear idea of your end point, and having a map of the journey between can be part of that stress reduction program. As with any journey there may well be detours, unexpected changes to plans, even conscious decisions to take an alternative route, but these are all perfectly fine as long as the final destination and the reason for the journey remain understood.
Just my thoughts….
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