The ?S’ Word ? Just what is Stress?
The ‘S’ Word – Just what is Stress?
I find, when running workshops for a whole variety of people working under pressure and experiencing stress symptoms, that most find it difficult to actually define stress.
This is important because we need to first understand it before we can move onto stress management techniques in order to find stress relief.
The ‘Stress Reaction’ – Fight or Flight?
So, let’s be clear about the words we are using here. First, rather than stress, let’s talk about the ‘stress reaction.’ In short the stress reaction is our response to a real or perceived threat.
Let’s wind back the clock about 400 thousand years ago to our cave dwelling days. Imagine me, ‘caveman Dave,’ (don’t spend too long on that image though, I warn you that could create a stressful and lasting impression). I’m out, club over shoulder, hunting for a woolly mammoth for tea. Unwittingly, I stumble upon a sabre-toothed tiger, equally hungry and looking for something tasty to drag home to the cubs.
The instant my senses take in the information, my mind makes a decision. Is this a friendly or non-threatening creature or situation or is this creature a foe, enemy or threat?
Now, having wisely decided that this sabre-toothed tiger before me is not intent on expanding her circle of friends to the tune of one human, my brain kicks into emergency mode.
Commonly referred to as the ‘fight or flight’ response, my brain sends out an array of chemical messengers intent on kicking physiological ass and making things happen within my body.
The Physical Effects of Stress
Heart and breathing rates soar, blood pressure increases and much needed energy is sent, top speed, to the muscles that will no doubt be needed to respond with either the fighting or the ‘flighting,’ erm running away. As a consequence finer motor movements such as those that might be required to write become diminished. Try it. Next time your so called mate jumps out at you just as the killer in the movie you are watching is stalking around outside the isolated house, rather than following that John Prescott style instinct to knock his block off, instead try to write a finely worded letter explaining your distress and disappointment at their choice of entertainment. You won’t be surprised to find your hand trembling and you will have difficulty writing steadily. All thanks to the chemicals coursing round your body shouting ‘danger put that pen down and DO something!’).
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Given that the stress response is pretty resource intensive, activity in other systems such as our digestive and reproductive systems is suppressed.
These systems clearly take a fair bit of energy to maintain on a day to day basis. Call me old fashioned if you like, but when faced with a life threatening situation such as the sabre-toothed tiger, I would tend to be focusing on survival rather than eating or having sex.
Once the threat has been successfully dealt with my mind instructs the body to restore my previous balance, lowering the heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure and increasing activity in the digestive system (no doubt to encourage replacement of energy), and the reproductive system (because I want to celebrate my survival!).
In short, that’s the stress reaction. It can occur in an instant, often before you have consciously processed the fact that there is a threat in front of you bent on damaging you. It’s about gearing you up to deal with the threat and survive and then restoring the balance to its’ former state.
This stress reaction is common to the majority if not all of the animal kingdom. It has evolved to motivate an individual to act when faced with the immediate or current physical threat or stressor.
Back to caveman Dave and the sabre-toothed tiger. Whether I survive the encounter is based on a lot of factors (some of which we will explore later), but in essence my stress reaction is exactly what’s required for thisphysically threatening situation. As a one off, this is an acutely threatening situation. It demands a big response from my body and, hopefully, won’t need to be maintained for too long, but long enough to ensure I live to hunt again.
So it is a pretty useful function when the chips are down and I find myself staring into the gaping jaws of a predator.
Chronic Physical Stress??
But what about a threat which persists or can’t be dealt with quickly? Again, we have evolved a pretty robust stress reaction capable of dealing with longer term physical threats or chronic physical stressors. Let’s face it, periods of hunger, competition for scarce resources and living in hostile environments with numerous predators, and a host of other physical challenges are pretty much the norm in the animal kingdom. Our body is reasonably capable of managing its resources and stress response over time when faced with such chronic physicalpressures or challenges. Obviously there are limits, but the aim of the stress reaction is to secure our survival for the longest time possible. If that means getting all violent on some sabre-toothed tiger or spending weeks surviving on minimal food rations, so be it.
So, to summarise, the stress reaction is all about survival. It has evolved to motivate us to deal with an immediate and acute physical threat and manage survival through longer term, chronic physical threats.
The trouble with stress…
The trouble is, for us humans, that is not the end of the story. There are gender differences in our response, we all have our own ideas about what actually ‘stresses us out,’ (no longer restricted to sabre-toothed tigers). Watch out for future articles exploring these and providing tips on managing stress more effectively.
Oh, and watch out for those sabre toothed tigers…
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