Stress is an unremitting component in our lives. Generation after generation have passed and human has evolved as one of the most adaptive mammals. Ever since then to hitherto, we are living in the post-modern contemporary era in which time and space has compressed to milliseconds. The living standards of humans have evolved and they have the luxury to transform their lives in a much better way than they did centuries ago. Now the other side of this rosy picture is that everyone is anxious and stressed out regardless of how much easier life has become in terms of science advancement and technology. It is a paradox that even trying to define stress can be quite stressful. After all, even the godfather of stress himself Hans Selye pointed out that “in addition to being itself, stress is also the cause of itself and the result of itself”. In the story of his life, Selye frequently states that “everyone knows what stress is but nobody really knows.” So if we can’t define it, how will we ever measure it or manage it?
Stress is now supposedly an epidemic, but it’s always been around. So what’s changed? Is there actually more stress, or are we just more aware of stress? Stress, in layman term, is a feeling that people have when they are pressured and struggling hard to cope with demands. These can be in the form of finances, work, relationships, and other situations, but anything that poses a real or perceived threat to a person’s well-being can cause stress and distress.
Distress is a negative term and has debilitating outcomes whereas stress is healthy in many ways. Conversely, stress can be a prompt or a motivator. It can be essential to survival. The “fight-or-flight” mechanism can tell us by activating our parasympathetic nervous system to when, who and how to tackle the danger. However, if this mechanism is triggered too easily, or when there are too many stressors at one time, it may exacerbate a person’s mental, emotional and physical health by damaging the normal functioning. This is the point where stress takes a toll and turns deleterious for the one who is unable to control multiple stressors coming on its way.
Stress affect individuals in many different ways. It depends on how we react to a difficult situation will affect how stress affects us and our health. A person who feels they do not have enough resources to cope will be more likely to have a stronger reaction.
However, there are not only extraneous stressors that are impacting our lives but also the internal system of our society also got effaced due to job issues or retirement, lack of time or money, bereavement over terrorist attacks, family problems, illness, sexual assault, dysfunctional relationships, marriage, and divorce has been interwoven in the fabric of our society. These aspects are among the few that has instantly crossed my mind and there can be numerous which can be added to this list. Due to this internal chaos in our lives, we are becoming less vocal and more aware of the darkened side of distress. In my perception, the colossal issue is that we all understand the stressors inside out that are impacting our lives but are not explicit or vocal about them as we displace that cardinal lacking with superficial hues. And this is where the devoid is, we keep on suppressing those stressors by naming them differently and implicitly allowing them to haunt us is causing more stress than ever before. We are stressed because we are clueless. If we will hold our arms against internal or external stressors then we will learn to prevent pressure from becoming pain and distress.
Just because everyone is stressed out these days doesn’t define its permanency. In fact, we can be the game changer by bringing positivity and compassion to the table. Stress and feeling stressed out are highly contagious, so we need to be very careful of our outlets and should bring calmness and empathy so that its intensity would decline with the passage of time and the people from coming era would say that why the people from the prior era were less stressed out.
“Stress is like a rocking chair. It gives us something to do but gets us nowhere.” (Erma Bombeckss)
The author Zainab Shabbir is a survivor herself and a passionate mental health advocate. She wishes to start support groups in Pakistan where sufferers can open up and seek peer support.