For as long as I can recall, I’ve heard the term “the good old days”. Most of the time, what do people refer to when saying that? More likely than not, it’s to a time when there was less to worry about, less to stress about. When life was slower, people interacted more, and overall nobody had to worry so much about life and living from one day to the next.
This is all too often an irrational thought; let’s look at it from the perspective of life of people of different positions in a Balkan village, looking at what stress they had that could reach the same levels as what people in today’s society endure:
Village elders, as the people with the most experience and knowledge, had a position of authority, with all of the invisible responsibility that came with that. They had to ensure everyone was healthy, had a place to live and that the security of the village was upheld. They were also responsible to be the leader, diplomat, mediator and living library of knowledge. Take their position, being in a year of extreme heat and drought, with no source of water available within a day’s travel by foot and hostile neighboring villages that would be willing to do whatever they can to get additional resources to get through the drought.
Women were primarily responsible for maintaining everything within the household, as well as work that only women were able to handle at that time, such as child raising in the days before baby formula was invented. It was more often that women handled household chores as it was more difficult for them to do physical work away from the home while at the same time having to care for a child or baby. Should a child become sick, their whole life and future would be at risk if they weren’t able to help their child get over the sickness. There was no hospital or doctor or medicine available to provide assurance that most sicknesses could be resolved. It definitely would be stressful not having that certainty or security blanket that we have taken for granted, right?
Being physically stronger, men took care of any more labor intensive work and anything more dangerous. Hunting, farming, construction were primarily handled by men. As everything needed to be done by someone within the village, there was never a shortage of tasks that had to be taken care of. No factories to mass produce items or businesses available to provide whatever service was needed.
Should there come a moment when all the animals in the village were under threat from predatory wildlife, of course there were be many a sleepless night, the men in the village worrying what would be done without livestock, a necessary source of food, all year-round.
They may have had no electronic devices, no news coming from every angle, no worries about money, although they most certainly had matters to worry about that were all a risk to their life, just like what many sources of stress are for people today.
Stress is everywhere and has primarily negative effects on everybody’s health.
Everyone can relate to having problems from or dealing with stress.
Stress comes from unexpected places and has unexpected effects.
Writing from personal experience, this is some of what I have lived through and learned about stress. In no way is this professional advice, although it all has been real life tested and proven.
I’d like to say that stress can be avoided, although in reality it’s become a matter of keeping it minimized and creating a barrier between certain types of stress, to allow yourself time to recover.
Main types of stress:
– Physical
– Psychological
– Emotional
What effects does extreme or long-term stress generally have?
Just like every person is different physically and psychologically, the side effects of prolonged stress exposure are limitless in their variation of severity and manner of appearance.
For some people, stress doesn’t show externally, and they may not realize it has a negative effect on their life, although in cases like this it has a negative effect in unexpected, subtle ways.
The origins of stress are important to discuss and recognize, although in the bigger picture of this topic, they aren’t overly important.
For the management of stress, I’ve had the experience of 10+ years of business and fast-paced life to learn processes that work and that don’t work, as well as the results of too much stress.
To discuss methods of management, it’s important to break the discussion down into the different kinds of stress:
– Physical Stress
Physical stress is an important part of life and is useful for longevity, and has been a part of life for people since the beginning of time. Fitness and physical work creates stress for your muscles, heart and nervous system. This isn’t a bad thing at all. Cutting out this stress entirely, from the proper sources, has a negative effect on your body. For physical stress, the problem comes from the secondary stress caused by psychological or emotional stress, or from over-exposure to physical stress.
Muscles that are over-stressed end up being constantly tense and inflexible, leading to muscle and nerve discomfort or pain.
This type of stress can be managed by meditation, sleep, diet, regular exercise, stretching and attention to proper body posture.
– Psychological Stress
Where does stress come from that can affect you psychologically? Thinking in more detail, it becomes obvious there are several areas where psychological stress come from; Present, past, future, subconscious, environment. Psychological stress can arise from areas that you wouldn’t realize it can come from. It isn’t like all other forms of stress where the stress can be easily recognizable; It takes effect slowly although it is also possible for it to overload you only by having a single event combine with preexisting stress to overload your mind. Like physical stress, there is a high chance for psychological stress to be hidden, caused by traumatic events in life or unresolved situations that caused stress at a specific moment in time and still cause stress as they surface on a regular basis. Psychological stress is not as easily manageable; it takes a long time and is not so straightforward to resolve due to it often being intertwined with deep-seated psychological issues
– Emotional Stress
Often connected with or caused by psychological stress, emotional stress can cause extreme symptoms both physically and psychologically. As stated in the name, emotional stress is caused by extreme or extended exposure to emotions. Any number of emotions can cause stress; a few that come to mind are fear, anger, sadness. With so much uncertainty in today’s world, fear is one emotion that is far too common for many people. Thankfully, this type of stress is the easiest to manage and limit your exposure to. Emotions can be controlled, either by self-control or by avoiding or removing yourself from whatever is causing the strong emotional response. On this same line of thought, emotions are often a reaction based on how you perceive something; if you change how you perceive something, the emotion you feel as a result can be controlled also.
Management of stress can be done in a number of ways, depending on the type of stress you are exposed to. Since stress is often connected between the different forms it takes, reducing stress in one form would logically reduce other forms of stress.
A few methods I use for reducing stress that have made a change:
– Filtering out unnecessary sources of stress or being selective about what I allow to cause me stress, whether that be physical or psychological or emotional.
– Controlling my reaction to rushed events, to prevent unneeded stress from easy and rapid loss of control over emotion and rational thinking. It’s all too easy to assume something and find ways to convince yourself that you need to react against it immediately.
– Preparing for possible stressors that could appear, to be able to handle the situation better and with less stress; recognizing and deflecting or distracting a stressful event before it has a chance to take hold has proven useful for me many times. An example would be distracting another person by creating a situation or reaction that they don’t expect and are unaware of how to react to.
What side effects does stress have?
Side effects from stress are nearly limitless in their form and function. Most commonly you hear stress causing cancer, skin rashes, hair loss, hair turning white, ulcers; Mainly physical issues. There are many that are only now being openly discussed. Depression, for example.
I’ve personally had a whole range of side effects appear from different types of stress:
– Muscle tension at random areas of the body for an unpredictable period of time.
– Misrepresentation in object size between what is felt by nerves and what is registered in my mind. The easiest way to explain it would be holding a credit card between your index finger and thumb and having a strong sense that the object is actually 100 times smaller or larger. Something like what a giant holding a sewing needle would feel.
– Inability to sleep, as well as sessions of waking with a sense of experiencing the greatest fear, unpredictable as to what will trigger them. Although they were consistently timed within an hour of going to sleep.
– Difficulty with drinking liquids, mainly due to a nerve defect, altering how the liquids are registered subconciously.
– Reduction of memory capacity and ability to maintain short term memory.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it for me, all of the above symptoms come and go at random, although when they do appear, there is no fixed duration for how long these symptoms are present. It has ranged from a day to a year before these symptoms go away on their own. No matter what is attempted, the only way these problems have gone away is through patience.
Everybody has a different reaction to stress, although it’s important to recognize that stress can cause the most random problems, both physically and psychologically. Problems that otherwise would be assumed to be caused by unrelated health issues are often caused by stress.
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