It is a known fact that stress has a significant effect on the long term physical and mental health of many people in our society. For many people, unhealthy stress has become an accepted part of life, many employers, either deliberately or coincidentally foster high stress environments by reaching for ever greater productivity even in the face of extraordinary circumstances. If there is one thing that working in a pandemic has demonstrated, it is how important it is for people to learn to manage their stress. By manage, I mean recognise, understand, and address the signs, symptoms, and causes of unhealthy stress.
Firstly, it is important to recognise that not all stress is
bad, in fact we all need a certain level of stress in order to grow and
develop. The very nature of the cause desire, Lacan’s “object a”, is based in
the knowledge that we must all strive towards something that can never be
reached. That reaching out is the most evident source of what might be called
normal or healthy stress. It is the source of curiosity and a desire to connect
with people and the wider world. Stress is a normal reaction to a dynamic and
sometimes threatening environment, the systems involved in the stress response
are the result of eons of evolution designed for the purpose of allowing humans
to adapt and thrive in different environments and situations.
Stress becomes unhealthy when high stress levels become a
permanent feature of daily life, feelings of impending doom, trouble sleeping,
distress at the slightest problem or deviation from a plan, or digestive
problems can all indicate that a person may be experiencing chronic stress and
that they may have inadvertently reset their baseline stress levels so that
they are constantly one step from panic. In this situation, every small problem
becomes much more difficult to solve and the line between normal life and
disaster becomes steadily narrower. High levels of stress trigger the bodies
defensive systems, sometimes referred to as the fight-or-flight reaction. The
body releases large amounts of adrenaline (epinephrine) and noradrenaline
(norepinephrine) which impact heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure,
blood sugar and also affect other aspects of bodily function. These changes
have a single evolutionary purpose, surviving the immediate threat. They are
not meant to be permanent changes, and in the cases where people are constantly
exposed to high stress environments the risk of heart disease, stroke,
diabetes, and a myriad of other health problems increases.
An important part of learning to manage stress, is first
learning to recognise the signs of stress on your own body. This can represent
a challenge initially as many people experience a level of separation from the
internal processes of the body. This loss of connection to the body may be a
result of the analgesic effects of certain stress hormones or it may be what
Thomas Hanna called sensory-motor amnesia. This forgetting of the bodily
sensations not only dulls our perceptions of stress but also prevents us from
listening to our instinctual responses to different situations which can in
turn lead to additional levels of anxiety as we become more uncertain in our
reactions. Hanna also suggested that the disconnection from the body leads to
reductions in movement and premature aging. By reconnecting with our own bodies,
we regain not only the ability to detect the earliest signs of excessive stress
but also a level of organic wisdom provided by the unconscious mind through its
manifestations in the body.
