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Stress
Article Number 2, |
| GBS-GIESLER CORP ELECTROTEX HIS MARKETING HARRIS CORP PHILIPS SYSTEM ONE COMMUNICATIONS |
THE STRESS EPIDEMIC ,
Stress is epidemic in our world. Over
two-thirds of office visits to
physicians are for stress related illness. It is a major contributing factor,
either directly or indirectly, to coronary artery disease, cancer, respiratory
disorders, accidental injuries, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide -the six
leading causes of death in the United States. It aggravates other conditions
such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, genital herpes, and mental illnesses
of all types.
Uncontrolled stress can interfere with your personal, intimate,
and marital
relationships. It can diminish your personal creativity and productivity and
damage your career. And once stress gets out of control it seems to feed on
itself and only gets worse. You can't eliminate stress and probably wouldn't
want to if you could. But you can manage it so that it doesn't damage your
life,
but rather, enriches it.
THE FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE......Stress
has always been with
us but in different forms...even the cave people experienced stress but in
entirely different ways than we have today. Early humans had to deal with
life or death situations that demanded immediate physical reaction. Most of
the stress situations that we face today are of a different type.
Confronted by a snarling saber-toothed tiger our early ancestors
had two options...either to run or fight. In order to either run or fight, a complex set
of bodily reactions must be activated, involving primarily the release of
adrenaline and other hormonal substances. It speeds heart rate, increases
blood pressure , increases the availability of energy stores, increases
metabolism, increases muscle strength and makes the body resistant to
infection and inflammation. The response to threat that prepared our
ancestors for extreme physical activity is known as "fight or flight" reaction.
The fact that we are here indicates that our ancestors had very
good
"fight or flight" responses to danger. We have inherited strong
"fight or flight"
mechanisms from them.
The problem is that the reactions of fighting or fleeing is not
appropriate
today as it was in earlier times. We all have and feel "
fight or flight "
responses in threatening situations, but we seldom act them out. When
confronted with an angry boss, competitive, uncooperative coworkers,
hostile employees, etc..., you may feel like fighting or fleeing, but you
seldom do. If you are like most people, you just sit and stew. Your mind
and body pay the price when this happens too often.
Recapping from the article in last month's newsletter : Stress is
the state of
tension that is created when a person responds to the demands and
pressures that come from the outside as well as those that come from the
inside. Demands and pressures require some kind of response. A number
of studies have shown that stress is both additive and accumulative.
This means that the demands and pressure we experience from the
outside as well as inside add up and pile up over a period of time to create
a total burden of demands and pressures. The greater your total burden, the
stronger your " fight or flight " reaction to manage it.
So where do we go from here...now that we have laid a
foundation of
the meaning, effects of stress ? How do we live, cope with stress ?
Stress is only a word. A word we have given to represent,
stand for,
all kinds of problems in our lives--emotional problems, relationship conflicts,
problems at work, financial troubles, tense muscles, feeling irritable
feeling fatigued, not sleeping well, and much more.
If stress is only a word than we really can't deal with stress per se,
we can
however deal with whatever causes stress . . . the problems.