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By Norman Araiza (Mar, 3 2006) As a follow-up to my last article (Atención, Feb 24, 2006) regarding symptoms, stress is a much misunderstood precursor to a number of symptoms that slowly destroy lives or the quality of life. Many people think stress is something to avoid, if not eliminate altogether. The truth is that stress is impossible to avoid in one's life-and if one could remove all stress, the results could be equally disastrous. Without stress you have nothing in your life. Stress is defined as any demand made on the organism. In other words, everything we do involves stress, in one way or another. Staying healthy is not a matter of attempting to avoid stress, because that is impossible. What matters is how we deal with the stress in our lives and the types of stress to which we expose ourselves. There are two types of stress. Eustress is healthy stress, such as that felt after winning a race, receiving a promotion at work or even making love. Speaking of making love, sex is one of nature's stress relievers. Certainly, all of these situations require effort and make demands on our bodies. However, because of the inherent rewards associated with each, and depending how we relate to the demands, the stress can actually be good for us. Research indicates that the more eustress we have in our lives, the more distress we can cope with. This is the unhealthy stress that we usually think of when we think of stress in general. We can think of eustress, simply put, as having fun. The more fun we have in our lives the more negative stress we can tolerate. In addition to improving our ability to tolerate stress from activities that we deem meaningful, a powerful hormone secreted in the brain, called norepinephrine, is associated with feelings of well-being, enthusiasm, anticipation, drive and so on. Most antidepressant medications are basically synthetic norepinephrine. The idea is that the norepinephrine motivates us to begin doing things that are rewarding or meaningful, and that in time the body will once again be secreting sufficient amounts of norepinephrine on its own to sustain us. There are two important factors that contribute to our ability to deal with stress. The first has to do with the risk/reward factor. If we perceive a reward to be worthy of a risk, our ability to tolerate the stress is greatly improved. As an example, two workers could do the same job for the same pay. The one who feels he is not getting his fair share might experience stress symptoms, whereas the other, who is satisfied, probably would not. It's all a matter of attitude, but attitudes are difficult to change. Many people in positions of high responsibility are capable of coping with high levels of distress as long as they perceive their recompense is worth the effort. It's when we don't feel that the risk/reward ratio is worth it that our experience of the environment is stressful. Another factor has to do with the duration of the distress. When we can see relief down the road in the not-too-distant future, we can deal with distress more effectively. Both physical and mental problems can occur when we feel we are not being compensated for our efforts or when there is no relief in sight. "That conveyor belt is never going to stop." "The mail is never going to stop." Is that part of why so many postal workers go "postal" and shoot their supervisors? When the organism interprets a situation as a threat, real or imaginary, consciously or unconsciously, a number of bodily responses go into effect. To understand our body's reaction to stress, let's imagine a cat is lying in the sun at peace in the backyard of his master's home. Suddenly, a large dog appears and notices the cat. The cat sees the dog and experiences the first stage of stress, called alarm reaction, and the cat takes off running for its life. Is this cat under stress? You bet! One of the first things that occurs when we perceive a situation as a threat is that our adrenal glands secrete large amounts of adrenaline for the fight-or-flight response. We can think of adrenaline as jet fuel for our bodies. It gives us energy to fight the perceived threat or to run like hell to avoid the threat. At this point the alarm reaction is adaptable, meaning it is positive and healthy. But let's imagine the cat continues to run at a high speed. After a while the second stage of stress occurs, which is known as the stage of resistance, wherein the body calls forth all its available energy to deal with the prolonged stress. Let's imagine that the dog gets tired and stops chasing the cat. However, the cat keeps running and may even forget why it's running. At this point, the final stage of stress sets in, which is the stage of exhaustion. If the cat continues to run, it may run itself to death. This is rare in the animal kingdom, yet it does happen. In humans, though, it occurs far more frequently. Rarely do people keel over from a stroke or cardiac event that did not follow lesser, but ignored, symptoms. Are you aware of the stress in your life? How you create it? What active plan are you following to address and affect the stress in your life? To further drive home the seriousness of the stressful reaction we must remember that our physical reaction has not kept pace with our sociological or psychological development. Our bodies react to stress as though we are preparing for battle or preparing to fight a dangerous, wild animal that we are trying to kill to eat. Sometimes it gives us so much energy we are unable to harness it and it quickly becomes deleterious to the body, particularly if there is no outlet or expression. Even when it is expressed, it can too often be expressed inappropriately. Imagine racing your car's engine in your garage, stationary. You wouldn't do that, or if you did, it would be only for a very short duration-because otherwise the chances of blowing your engine are greatly enhanced. Another response that occurs when we perceive a threat, real or imaginary, is that our blood rushes from our extremities and our head to our midsection in preparation for a possible loss of a hand or leg in battle, so as not to bleed to death. Ad ditionally, all bodily systems go into high gear in preparation for defense against the perceived threat. Do you suppose that this is hard on the organism? Both of these adaptations were positive in earlier times. But at this point in our evolutionary development they are clearly maladaptive, in that after frequent or long periods of high alert the body begins to break down from the stress it is under if the environment is not changed. As a result of prolonged stress our immune system begins to falter, and our susceptibility to disease and infection is greatly increased. The list of common symptoms and conditions considered to be stress-related is probably too long to mention in this article. However, to name a few, they include cardiac disease, stroke, hypertension, depression, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, mood disorders, irascibility, asthma, allergies, obsessive behavior, compulsions, gastrointestinal disorders, spastic colon, irritable bowel syndrome, tics and nightmares. Everything from bedwetting to toothaches can occur as a result of the stress a person is under, and the list goes on. Suffice it to say that if one ignores the symptoms of one's stress and does not make a change in one's environment or in one's way of dealing with stress, then death may occur, or at least the quality of one's life will be impaired. The purpose of this article is not so much to educate you but to remind you about these things. Pay attention to your body and your mind. Some mental symptoms of stress include guilt, remorse, anger, fear, conflict, embarrassment, shame and almost anything else negative. When we continually put ourselves in situations that result in any of the above symptoms, we can expect more symptoms. It's as simple as that. One of the things that makes awareness of stress so difficult is our tendency to discount the symptoms. We excuse them, ignore them or push them into the unconscious so that we really do not experience them and have to deal with them. The problem with that is that when we push something down, something else has to come up, somewhere. When we repress or push a symptom into the unconscious, we will develop another symptom in its place. It may take awhile but it will happen. The body will not be quiet. It will react to the mental and the physical environment we create. Another difficulty has to do with th e conditioned response we have created within ourselves. Some of us convince ourselves that this is normal. We may try to relax and cope with our stress, but we are addicted to it. A lack of stress equals boredom to the stress addict. Part of the good news is that all those symptoms I mentioned and others that are stress-related can be responsive to treatment. By that, I mean they can be eliminated or improved. It all depends on our willingness to change something. Like the old saying, if nothing changes, nothing changes! We hate change! Many of us will continue to accept our symptoms and live with them rather than change. As we get older, we tend to like what is familiar. This is called rigidity, and it is a bad thing for the body and the mind. Another piece of good news is that treatment almost always feels better right away. We may not be able to remove ourselves from the stress, but we can alter its effect in a number of ways that are all pleasant. Awareness is the first step. Decision is the second. The treatment for stress is improving your life. Doesn't that sound wonderful? You can do it, alone or with help. However, if you could do it alone, you probably would have by now. Remember that if you have tried dealing with it alone and you are still not happy with your results, getting a fresh view never hurts, and it may make all the difference. As I said earlier, some environments are healthier than others. Try improving the environment in which you place yourself. Norman Araiza is a psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist enjoying a limited practice in San Miguel. He can be reached at 152-4018 or nearaiza@hotmail.com |