Understanding 'Stress'

“I am stressed out. I need to take a break tomorrow”.

“I didn’t read that book for the last two days. Even that looks part of my routine. It stresses me out”.

“I hate that gang. I get stressed at their sight”.

“I have lots of homework today. I am tensed”.

These are statements which we frequently come across in our lives every day. ‘Stress’ was not a common terminology used in conversations few years ago. But today it has broken all age barriers ranging from a 10 year old to a CEO in the fifties. Though few might use the word without recognizing its meaning it is true that our society is suffering from a disease of ‘extended stresses’.

To avoid prolonged stress it is necessary to understand its purpose. Imagine yourself 20,000 years ago in a forest eating a hunted deer under the shade of a tree. Suddenly, when you sense a lion stalking you, you bolt from the place. When the lion gives chase, you climb faster to the top of the nearby tree. Your breathing and heart rate are elevated and sweat begins to seep out of your skin. Only when the lion drags away your kill and leaves the place, your physiology resumes its normal status.

Stress is a defence mechanism used by the body to tide over unfavourable conditions. It is the foundation of survival. But stress works well only when it acts within limits. Prolonged stress causes gastric problems, hampers immune system, and brings about sexual dysfunction.

Stress is like a demon invoked from our magic lamps to fight difficult problems. When it is outside the lamp for too long for petty reasons the demon devours us. For most humans, lives have changed completely than what was 20,000 years ago. Our social lives have changed drastically when compared to our biology. The mismatch between social and biological change is the cause of this problem.

Stress hormones which were supposed to work for life threatening circumstances are triggered for many reasons. Facing an interview, writing an examination, public speaking, proposing to your woman or man, catching a train in the last minute and meeting with an accident are situations which clearly need the blessings of our stress hormones. But we stress ourselves out for a broken coffee mug, a torn sheet of paper, the Indian cricket team losing a match, our friends trolling our favourite actor, very heavy rain to a very hot day.

The way we live our lives has made stress a habit. To quote American comedian and social critic George Carlin, “We have learned how to make a living but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” It is not an attempt to convey that all our progress from the discovery of fire hasn’t brought us happiness. Our lives are way better than when most of us lived in caves.

We have reduced the level of uncertainty in our lives. A lion does not chase us every day. Food production and consumption has increased. Most people today are settled unlike few thousand years ago when only few had the luxury of settling in one place. But we face different problems in today’s life. The new social changes have brought about variety in the problems we face.

A CEO has the pressure to ramp up the profits of his company, marketing professional needs to meet his ‘targets’, the child needs to finish his homework, the conductor needs to deal with passengers. But the marked difference between our lives then and now is in ‘living’. The caveman had a hard time ‘surviving’ in the wild, yet he found time to live. We never ‘live’ though we have created the environment for it.

Tackling stress is therefore in understanding and coming to the terms that our lives are better. Only when we fail to acknowledge this fact, ‘normal’ things cause ‘stress’. Stress is a kind demon when invoked can perform wonders. 

Stress should be used to handle crunch situations rather than we find ways of handling stress.