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LIFE COACHING

Stress - What is it? How is it caused?

Connecting For Results #38
August 22, 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Bill Dueease

We have all been under stress many times in our lives. Sometimes the stress did not bother us and sometimes it did. What is stress, what causes it, and how can it be ok in some situations and harmful in others?

Stress is tension or strain on the human body, the human mind and the human spirit. Stress is caused by people reacting to real or imagined situations to protect them from possible danger. Consequently, people create their own stress and impose it upon themselves.

Stress damages the people who create it. Sometimes this damage is acceptable (good) and sometimes it is not acceptable (bad). For example, people will create stress when reacting to a fire at night by fleeing to avoid serious harm and/or death. People react by focusing entirely on escaping the fire and they block out any other thoughts, priorities or actions until they reach safety. The stress of the situation will harm their health (like the lacerations and burns they might receive), their appearance (because they became dirty from soot and tattered clothing), their mental state (due to dealing with the loss of their house and belongings), their strength (due to energy expended and loss of sleep) and their income (due to time from work to clean up after the fire). Yet, the stress created by escaping from the fire can be considered acceptable (good), because the harm it causes is much less damaging than the alternative of being burned to death.

People will also suffer stressful harm when they accept the fear that their house might be on fire, even when it isn't. Likewise, they will reach the same heightened mental state, will loose sleep and energy by going outside at night, they might injure them self while franticly leaving the house to escape the imaginary fire, and they might even loose income as a result of ineffectiveness due to sleep loss. This stress can be considered unacceptable (bad), because the damages suffered are much greater than the imagined danger from a fire.

If people react every night to the (imagined) fear of their house burning down by running out in the middle of the night, they will create even more stress. The fear induced escape actions will reduce their overall performance at work, reduce or eliminate their desire to devote time and emery to their family, and will certainly degrade their health. So the reactive stresses to the imaginary fire will cause even more stress because of the strain caused by not being able to fulfill other life desires and priorities. Sounds a bit ridiculous doesn't it? But is it?

People create unacceptable and damaging stress and impose it on themselves every day when they react to imagined fears and other outside forces (mostly imagined) that override their own priorities, desires, and beliefs. When this tension filled reaction process is allowed to repeat itself over a period of time, the wounds caused by the stressful reactions will wear the person down, and will cause serious permanent damage. Few people have to worry about escaping from house fires. Yet, too many people allow other fears that are either imagined or unrealistic to take over and place them in the same tension filled damaging stress filled state. They constantly override other life, personal, work or family priorities to react to these fears. Then they suffer from the damages caused by the stresses created from the imaginary fears and the stresses created by having to react to their real life priorities, which had previously been avoided.

Lets explore some of the fears and some of the internally driven forces that people in today? society allow to govern their lives. These fears include: the fear of failure (arrogance), the fear of disappointing the expectations of others (guilt), the fear of social insecurity (envy), the fear of embarrassment (pride), the fear of not making more money (greed), and th fear of losing control (insecurity).

When people allow any of these types of negative imagined fears to take center stage in their lives, they dominate their thoughts and actions and override their inner true passions, priorities and values and produce continuous stresses. People cannot escape from these stresses because they are not based upon real threats. They are almost always based upon self-imposed or imaginary fears that exist in their own heads and they do not allow people any relief.

These types of constant stresses produce damages that are much greater than any possible benefits they can produce. No amount of additional money, reduction in guilt, increases in feeling superior, increases in false pride at the expense of others, or fulfilling the contrary expectations of others can possibly justify the harm done by the stresses produced to attain them.

Conclusion

People create and impose stress on themselves. There is acceptable (good) stress and unacceptable (bad) stress. Good stress helps protect people, and the harm caused to the person by this stress is insignificant to the benefits gained. Bad stress is a result of imagined or unrealistic fears and forces and the damage caused by this stress is much greater than the benefits gained by reacting to the imagined fears.

We welcome your opinions and comments at any time.

Bill Dueease
Editor

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