What is stress?
Think about what stresses you out.
Think about all of the little and big things that you come into contact with in your day to day life that cause you unease. What do most of these have in common?
Many times you will find that each circumstance represents and absences of something we perceive as necessary for survival, or the threatened loss of this necessary thing.
Gabor Mate explains in his book “When the Body Says No” that research has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information, and the loss of control.
Uncertainty
When I think of uncertainty I immediately think of anxiety. Most of my anxious clients are so consumed with trying to plan and control the future that they create stress in their life. I will use two personal examples to illustrate this.
I am married to a wonderful man, who supports me and makes me laugh and who is a great friend. When he proposed, I immediately said yes and was excited, but the next day I found myself overwhelmed with the prospect of what marriage meant. What if I fail? What if we don’t make it? What does this mean for me, us, him? There was all of this uncertainty. Thankfully my mom, who tends to be my sounding board, told me to stop worrying about the future because it was taking away from my present moment. She was right.
I was working for a corporate company, and the decision was made that they were going to lay off employees and that the directors (which included myself) needed to make some tough decisions in the next couple of days and then lay people off at the end of the week. First, I strongly disagreed with the decision, however, it was not up to me (Loss of Control), but I was wrecked with the feelings of uncertainty of how the employees would take it. It consumed me and it was very stressful. The day of the layoffs I was pulling people out of meetings and letting them know—it was miserable. Most took it actually better than I thought, but the aftermath was difficult. The employees who did not get laid off were left with uncertainty. They would ask me if they were getting laid off, and if the company was doing okay. Needless to say, it stressed the environment and lead others to quit and seek out something that seemed more certain for them.
Lack of Information
Our brain does not like a lack of information. It wants to make sense of the world, so not having information forces the brain to automatically fill in the blanks. Here is a quick story to illustrate this.
Jill has to go to school. Her mother asks her to get out of bed. Jill replies that she will be there in a minute. After 5 minutes, her mother asks her to get out of bed again. Jill replies that she will be there any minute. When her mother angrily shouts that Jill should really get out of bed now, she replied that her mother should not treat her like a little child. Her mother replied that it is inappropriate for the head of a school to show up late for school.
What did you notice about your thoughts while the story was being told? In what ways did you notice how your mind automatically assumes things and creates its own version of what is going on? Have you ever noticed that same thing in your own life?
Our mind automatically reacts to information and creates its own stories, even when very limited information is available. Think about situations at work, when someone seems to be making your life more difficult. Perhaps we take their aloofness or snappiness to be something personal; they are doing things purposefully or that we don’t think they care about us. Most of these situations are created from a lack of information. We fail to consider the bigger picture for them as well. Perhaps they have their own stressors or personal situations that are creating issues in their lives. Perhaps what we are feeling and thinking in only a reality in which we have created.
Now this does not mean that we just grin and bear it, but when we illicit compassion for ourselves and others we create a space that allows us to lean into the discomfort and ex
plore these situations rather than to create mental barriers with stories about others, based only on the logic of our mind which has created its own story.
Loss of Control
I see this as a huge source of stress in people. We operate under an illusion of control, as we believe that we have more control over things in our life than we actually do. What types of things have you tried to control that have wound up not working out?
Trying to control other people all the time. We want to make them care more, be more responsible, more productive, more attentive. We want people to believe what we believe, and if they don’t we treat them differently (perhaps hoping that they will see the error in their ways and change…).
Planning things to work out just a certain way. We want our kids to follow a certain path; careers to follow a certain trajectory; the weather to cooperate with our vacations, weddings, days off, etc.
And, guess what happens when things do not go as planned. We become stressed, anxious, angry, irritable…you name it.
When we rely on things outside of us to feel good we are relying on things to go as planned. You can imagine how this type of orientation can lead to chronic issues of stress. Learning to orient ourselves to a more internal sense of control—our beliefs, attitudes, actions—gives us a greater life satisfaction. I can learn to choose each of these things, giving me actual control.
Why are these important to consider?
Stress is a physiological response, and it engages our fight-or-flight response. In society, our fight-or-flight reactions are triggered in situations where it is neither necessary or helpful since we don’t have to face our ancestor’s mortal threats. Now, these threat responses are being triggered inappropriately and it is becoming a chronic state. The higher levels of stress cause higher cortisol output and cortisol inhibits the activity of the inflammatory cells involved in wound healing.
By creating social stressors, like the ones above, we are creating unnecessary or unhelpful stress. Thus, thrusting our body into a cascade of chemicals preparing us to flee or fight. We need to learn how to calm our systems and evaluate actual versus perceived threats, thus helping us to conserve mental and physical energy for times when it is actually needed.
