Have you ever felt that your life was coming apart? 

That the stress of it was so much that you felt you'd just like to give up and let it all go? 

 

Do you sometimes  get the feeling that you're at the bottom of this tall building, looking up -- knowing that you have to get to the top floor, but the elevators aren't working, and you have already walked and walked just to get here; and you know that you can't climb the thousands of steps to get to your goal? Wouldn't you say that you were stressed? Life is like that at times -- it gets so discombobulated that you feel you are absolutely helpless.  You feel there's no more energy left to fight the battle that seems so sure to be lost.  This is what stress can do to you -- bad stress, that is.  You feel like there are no more sobs left -- that you have cried and cried out for relief, but none seems to come.  This, too, is what stress can do to you -- bad stress, that is.  However, did you know that there is  good stress, too.  We'll talk about both and what happens to our body when we have either bad or good reaction to stress. Did you know that the same physical reactions happen when there is good stress as when there is bad stress? Why is one so good for us, and why is the other so bad? There are many things happen when we react to stress -- which brings up another point.  Stress is probably the most overused and misapplied word in talking about how we often feel when we react badly to life's events.  Read on, there's much you might learn about yourself and your actions and reactions to the unavoidable consequences of your life.

I put this little silhouette link to one of my books that discusses our reaction to the stressors in our life.  Wait, don't go yet. Spend more time getting an overview of what we call stress.

 

 

As I said, stress is probably the most overworked and least understood word I can think of when telling of our emotional pressures.  It is a generic word, really, and describes nothing but our reaction to the events (good and bad) that happen to us all.  And besides being overworked and misunderstood, most people think of "stress" as always bad, and use it in this pejorative way.  Actually there is good stress as well as bad; but we pay so much more attention to the effect that the bad stress has on our body as compared to the good, that we continue to have a bad mind set against all stress. And, of course, we should be alert to that effect. Still the paradoxical thing about it is that the same physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual events occur in our body regardless of good or bad stress.  Our not appreciating this perhaps is why the pejorative connotation is so prevalent.  The stressors of life are legion, and have different results in as many as there are people who experience them. It is our reaction to the stressors that make the difference between whether we have to be concerned or not. We are situational reactors -- we respond to the events of our life, sometimes subtly, sometimes violently, and all points between. There are relational stressors, societal stressors, marital stressors, parental stressors, happy stressors, sadness causing stressors, divorce stressors, religion caused stressors and many more. All these stressors cause reactions in us. The reactions are very complex and are physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual in nature. Our whole body gets involved during reaction to stressors, or stress. And no one escapes stress, whether it shows or not. Our reaction to stressors triggers a legion of events, commonly grouped together and called tension. And no one escapes tension, because it is intricately tied in with stress. They go hand in hand, are part of the same physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual event. Stress, whether it is good stress or bad stress exquisitely involves what is called the autonomic nervous system.  In a condensed space below, I will describe the autonomic nervous system; but I shall not go into any detail, because it is a complex system involving a variety of areas of our body.  For now, let's just accept that we are all subject to stress or the stressors that trigger it, and have to accept this as part of our humanness. Before I tell you a little about the autonomic system, let me point out that we all have different reactions to both good and bad stress because we each have different ways we discriminate what goes on in our life.  We discriminate differently because we all perceive differently; and because we all have had different experiences in our growing up --  also a legion of different kinds -- so we can hardly expect to react the same.  A good formula for discrimination might be this:  Perception + Meanings we attach to what and how we perceive (because of our myriad of experiences) = How we discriminate.  Can you see how this makes us all different? No two perceive the same, no two have the exact same experiences, so how can we expect there to be similar discriminations? Making it more complex, we may perceive something one way at one time, but because of different or additional experiences that we continually have, we are bound to discriminate differently at another time; that is, how we react to one set of perceptions may differ because we experienced something differently, making our discrimination different -- sometimes good and sometimes bad.  We are very complicated.  As it is said in The Holy Bible, Psalm 139:14, ". . . . I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well." How true, how true!

So, knowing  that stress is a term that describes our reaction to stressors; and knowing that it intricately involves our total self, just what triggers all our reaction? Now we should know something about our autonomic nervous system; for it is the site of our reaction processes. The autonomic system is one of two main "mental functions".  The other being the Central Nervous System. The central nervous system is involved with our cognitive (thinking), our connotative function -- including emotional awareness, our performing function (motor -- muscles, skeleton, etc.) and our spiritual function -- this most important function will be properly discussed in The Shrink's Theory; but for now we are interested mainly in the autonomic system (and in part the cognitive and connotative functions.) The autonomic nervous system is located in what is called the limbic area of the brain -- not a large space, but very important to our survival. The autonomic nervous system provides us with our "fight or flight" responses.  It has two branches (or functions, if you wish) called the sympathetic system (function) and the parasympathetic system (function). The sympathetic system activates our fight or flight response; the parasympathetic isn't so much an opposite response (that is, opposes the sympathetic system), but acts more like keeping the sympathetic response quiet or absent -- in abeyance -- keeps us relaxed.  We'll talk about the important role of relaxation in another "therapy" room -- and it will do you well to pay close attention to what you learn there. The autonomic nervous system is not under our conscious control. It is an "automatic" aspect of our mental process that goes into action when there is a perceived clear and present danger we must escape, or an action we must take to prevent our being injured or incapacitated. That is, the sympathetic aspect of the autonomic system does this. The "danger" can be most anything that we perceive might put us in harm's way -- a real perception or an imagined perception (which has a lot to do with the anxieties, by the way). When the perceived danger is absent, or we have "taken care of it", or it has taken care of itself, our parasympathic response takes over, and we relax, recuperate, renew energy to get prepared for the next perceived danger.  The sympathetic nervous system is intricately tied in with a variety of functions of our body.  It triggers production of epinephrine (called adrenaline in many foreign countries) and cortisol (a product of stress.) These have a great deal to do with the physical functions of our body.  By the way, even though the limbic system is in the brain, the epinephrine that it triggers into production comes from the adrenal glands located as two bean-like structures located on the top of the kidneys -- amazing!  There are other hormones that are involved in stress responses, but it isn't necessary for us to know about them for our purposes. When the autonomic nervous system takes over -- especially the sympathetic aspect of it -- there are many physiological events that occur.  It would be nice if we were able to spend more of our time under the influence of the parasympathic aspect, our relaxed, non-stressed aspect, but, unfortunately, that isn't the way our present environment allows us to function.  Let's look at the physical events that occur when we are acutely stressed, then give some attention to those same events when we are chronically stressed.  You'll appreciate your complexity more as you inspect these reactions more closely. Indeed! we are " . . . fearfully and wonderfully made . . . . . ." To inspect our physical reactions, advance on to the "Tension Room".