Stress reduction video
In this video on Stress Reduction, Mark Tyrrell discusses what we actually mean by ‘stress’. It’s a much-used word nowadays and it’s easy to lose sight of what stress really is and what causes is. He illustrates the difference between an external stressor (something ‘real’ in the environment) and an internal stressor (something we have created in our imagination) and how this latter cause of stress causes so many problems in the modern world. Mark talks about why the stress response evolved and the effects that stress has upon the body and our psychology in the short and long term. Mark also discusses the phenomenon of modern stress where we feel that we cannot cope with the demands of our everyday life. Stress reduction can be achieved in many ways, and Mark notes some of these too.
Transcript of Stress Reduction video
‘Stress’ is an interesting word. It’s a word that we all bandy around and we can say that we’re ‘stressed’ because we were late into work. Or somebody could be off work for years, suffering from stress. So what do we actually mean when we say that somebody is suffering stress?
Now, in order to experience stress, we need to have a ‘stressor’, something that causes the stress in the first place. A stressor could be real, could be something coming towards you, like a hungry lion about to eat you - pretty stressful! Or it could be something that you imagine or you fear; something that you produce from within your imagination: “Oh my god, what’s going to happen next week, if I give this presentation and I screw up?” or “What happens if my relationship ends?” or “What happens if I can’t pay the mortgage?” and so forth. The imagination - worrying - causes the stress response.
What happens when we get stressed? Well, within the first couple of minutes of getting stressed, the adrenal glands produce adrenaline, which affects the brain and body pretty radically. So if a lion is coming towards you, for example, and you become stressed (which is what you need to do!), then:
- First off, your heart/pulse rate will go up; your blood pressure will rise, in order to pump out more blood, which is fine in the short-term. But in the long-term, if you remain stressed for hours or days or weeks or months or even years, if your stress levels are higher than they should be, then what was adaptive in the short-term (higher blood pressure, to get you exercising or running away) becomes maladaptive by perhaps causing hypertension (high blood pressure) or heart problems.
- The digestion shuts down; when you’re confronted with a lion that’s trying to eat you, you don’t need to be eating anything else, so Nature in its wisdom shuts down your digestion. Your mouth becomes dry and blood is shunted away from the stomach. In the short-term, that’s great; but in the long-term, people with long-term stress can develop digestive problems like Irritable Bowel Syndrome or Crohn’s Syndrome, things like that.
- In the short-term, you become very alert; when the lion’s coming towards you, you don’t fall asleep or start feeling soporific and relaxed and laid back. You become hyper-alert during an emergency. Short-term: Adaptive. Long-term: You could start having insomnia, not being able to sleep and switch off.
All stressful responses, in their place in the short-term, are useful. They become maladaptive if they are prolonged through time.
- In the short-term, sex drive’s switched off. You don’t need to be feeling horny when a lion is coming towards you. You know, it might put the lion off, but generally speaking, Nature doesn’t need you to be sexually excited when you’re being threatened by a lion or a predator. Short-term, that’s fantastic. But long-term, if stress remains within the body and mind for weeks or months or years, then people may lose interest in sex. Sex drive becomes lowered generally in the long-term. And that’s another symptom of stress.
So all stress symptoms can be traced back to adaptive responses during an emergency.
Now, of course, the antidote to being stressed is to begin to relax and to feel as if you can cope with the demands placed upon you in life. Another definition of stress is not being able to cope - or feeling that you can’t cope with the demands placed upon you; feeling that the demands placed upon you outweigh your capacity to cope with them.
In engineering, if a bridge is stressed, it’s because the supporting arches or the legs of the bridge can’t take the weight placed upon them. If we reinforce the arches of the bridge, now the bridge is able to cope with the stresses placed upon it. And we can reinforce people’s capacity to cope with the stresses in their lives by teaching them stress-coping strategies and techniques, regular deep relaxation being one of them; looking at diet; looking at ways to problem solve rather than just worry, to actively problem solve things that worry people, are all ways to calm down the stress response and get the person physically healthier and mentally clearer so that they can feel happier in their lives.
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