Related Articles:
The 10-Part Stress Series
Stress may seem to be a critical part of life in the 21st century, but it has been with us since time immemorial:
The air was still that warm afternoon in Africa two million years ago. He moved quietly as he crossed the grassy landscape. He knew there were predators there. If he wanted to avoid being lunch, he needed to be careful.
Then he heard it. Just the soft sound of a stick breaking under pressure. He looked back and saw the leopard, who was staring directly at him. He didn’t know how long she had been stalking him but her intentions were clear. He was in trouble.
Long before he understood what he was seeing, his body sprang into action. In less than a second:
- His brain received the signal from his eyes and analyzed the threat.
- Deciding that the threat was real, it ordered his body to prepare for action.
- His heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and perspiration all increased.
- More blood was sent to his muscles and brain because they would need oxygen.
- Blood was diverted from his stomach, liver and kidneys. They were not essential for survival.
- Natural painkillers and clotting chemicals were released into his blood.
- Fats and sugars stored in his body were made available because he would need extra energy.
- His eyes dilated to let in more light and improve his vision.
By the time he consciously understood the threat posed by the leopard, he was ready for fight or flight.
It was now up to him. He had to consciously decide his next course of action. He could stand his ground and fight off the leopard or try to scare her away. Or he could flee and try to reach a safe location before she could reach him.
If he survived the threat and avoided becoming the leopard’s lunch, his brain would soon reverse its orders and bring his body back to a normal state of being.
What is stress?
The set of rapid, automatic changes that occurred in our ancestor’s body when he saw a leopard stalking him is called the stress response.
This term was coined by Dr. Hans Selye in the 1940s. A Canadian-Hungarian endocrinologist, he was working in a Montreal hospital when he first observed that many of his hospitalized patients seemed to be under physical stress.
The term came from physics. If you pick up a pencil in both hands and try to bend the pencil, you are putting the wooden pencil under stress. If you stress it enough, it will break in half.
It’s important to understand that stress is always a reaction to a change. When you picked up the pencil and tried bend it, you changed the pencil by putting physical pressure on each end. When our ancestor saw a leopard, the physical sight of the leopard was the change that kicked his brain into action.
Things that cause a stress response are called stressors.
Many stressors are physical:
- You’re walking down the street and see an angry dog coming toward you.
- You wake up in the middle of the night and smell smoke.
- You’re in a crowd when you hear someone yell “Run!”
- You fall on some icy steps and break your leg.
All of those stressors are physical. Our senses perceive the stressor and send that information to our brains, where the stressor is evaluated. But stressors can also be psychological:
- Your boss walks into your office and tells you that you are fired.
- You learn that a good friend has died.
- You want to go on vacation but you can’t find a place to stay.
- You’re trying to finish a report but your Wi-Fi is down and you can’t get online.
Understanding stress
Stress is an automatic reaction to a change that is perceived by our brain to be a threat.
Once we understand this, a few things begin to become clear:
- The stress reaction is neither good nor bad.
- It’s a normal, automatic, neutral reaction to a change. It simply prepares us for action.
- Once we are primed for action, it’s up to us to decide what to do next.
- Our reactions to stress are under our control. We get to decide how to react to stress.
This is very different from the way most of us think about stress today. When we think of stress, most of us will probably imagine a stressed-out person who is moody, irritable, unhappy, unpleasant and under pressure. But those symptoms are not stress. Instead, they are the person’s reaction to stress.
Something else may become clear: when our cell phones keep ringing when we’re trying to finish an important report, our body may perceive this as a threat and activate a stress response. This response will be very similar to what our ancestor experienced when he saw a leopard stalking him. But the nature of the threat is very different. Instead of a real chance of becoming a leopard’s lunch, we experience stress because the cell phone is preventing us from completing an important report.
This distinction is important. The stress response that saved our ancestors from becoming lunch is still ingrained in all of us.
Our brains still activate a stress response when they perceive a threat but instead of fleeing from a leopard, we’re simply trying to finish a report.
The demands of life in the 21st century are very different from the demands faced by our ancestors two million years ago but our physical reaction to stress is still the same. Our bodies were designed for those older kinds of stress where life was on the line rather than the kinds of stress we routinely face today. This mismatch between the automatic systems in our body and modern stressors can be a source of trouble and can help explain why we may find ourselves reacting strongly to stressors that in reality pose no real threat to us at all.
Stress is About Change
Stress is really about our reaction to and our ability to handle change.
When we understand that and when we understand that our reactions are under our control, we begin to see how we can handle stress and even use it to our advantage. It doesn’t matter if the stressor is major or minor or good or bad. It’s still all about our ability to respond to the change and react wisely.
As you’ll see later in this series, there are many kinds of stress. There are many kinds of stressor and many, very different symptoms of stress. There are different coping techniques and different ways to manage or prevent stress but every single one of these things comes down to one thing: our ability to react wisely to some kind of change.
The Impact of Stress
If you’re walking down the street when an angry dog charges at you from behind a bush, your body will almost certainly mount a stress response. When you see the chain that is preventing him from reaching you, you’ll continue on your way and maybe smile at your reaction. In a few minutes, your body will be back to normal and you probably won’t think much more about the dog at all. A simple, quick stressful situation that ended without a problem.
But if your stress is coming from unpaid bills and an irate boss and screaming toddlers and unfriendly neighbors, it may seem never-ending. The mismatch between our biological stress response and the constant stream of modern stressors that come all day long can ruin our lives.
Stress stimulates inflammatory mechanisms in our bodies.
That’s good if you’re facing a stalking leopard but not good at all if the mild inflammation goes on and on because stress is also ongoing. Long-term, mild inflammation can have severe health consequences.
Chronic inflammation is implicated in many leading causes of death and disability, from cardiovascular disease and cancer to diabetes and depression, autoimmune disorders and various neurological problems. In fact, it is the only common thread linking many of these diseases.
When seen through this lens, the importance of reducing stress by controlling how we react to change becomes very clear.
You’ve Got This
You may be thinking that reducing chronic stress sounds great in theory but is it really possible to do in today’s fast-paced, stressful world? The answer is yes.
Our ability to recognize, prevent, manage and cope with stress comes down to knowledge and understanding.
When we first learn to ride a bicycle, every little turn of the wheel is stressful and we are afraid of crashing. After we gain experience, those little movements of the wheel don’t even register because experience has taught us that they are not a threat.
When a teacher walks into their first class, the experience is likely very stressful. Why? Because of the unknown. The teacher doesn’t understand how well it will go. But when the same teacher walks into the same classroom two years later, the experience is likely pleasant and not stressful in the least. Knowledge, experience and understanding conquer stress.
If you understand how to react to stress in a positive way, if you understand how to prevent and manage stress, and if you understand how to cope with stress, you will have the tools you need to reduce the stress in your own life and the lives of your family.
If you know when to seek help, you will not only be able to reach out for a helping hand when one is needed but you will also understand the wisdom of doing so.
Suggested Reading:
The 10-Part Stress Series
Next in this Series: What Causes Stress?