.png)
Living in a fast paced society that honours excellence and prides in productivity, we get so accustomed and hard-wired to working long hours. Our body cleverly learns and adapted with the mental rigours to meet the daily demands from work and family. Subtly, we allow stress to rob away our joy without us noticing!
Somehow, we all have an idea what stress is. The thing is that sometimes our understanding of stress is too narrowly defined. Often too quickly, we associate stress as an emotional state. Stress is more than a feeling; there is more than meet the eye. Many times, if we are so conditioned to living in a stressful environment, chances are we won't even notice when our body feels overwhelmed. We can get so 'immune' to stress, meaning our body have gotten used to the tense feeling being in stress, that it forgotten what it felt to be in the state when it was unwound, of how it felt to be relaxed and at peace. To do nothing (which also includes being entirely screen-free ~ like not scrolling through social media or playing mobile game) can be very foreign and unfamiliar feeling.
I hope this short article helps bring awareness to what this seemingly 'little' stress can do to even rob away our joy in life.
So, what exactly is stress?
Stress has been characterized as a physiological demand placed on the body when one must adapt, cope or adjust with situations (Turner, 2012). To better understand stress, we need to see this from our body's point of view. Dr. William Shiel (2018) explains this more clearly from a medical or biological context. Stress is a physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension. Stresses can be induced from external (i.e. environment, or social situation) or internal (i.e. illness, or from a medical procedure).
Stress is a physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension.
I don't think this is a new insight. Issue arises when we lack awareness of how our body is coping with this bodily or mental tension. To our body, STRESS is equivalent to CHANGE (IMH Singapore, 2019). This means technically anything that causes a change in your life causes stress. These changes can be big and dramatic events like losing a job, landing into a financial crisis, losing a loved one, falling critically ill, meeting into an accident, etc. These changes can also be the smaller events such as facing a demanding situation at work, hard-pressed to meet an impossible dateline, or having to deal with a difficult relationship issues such as break-up, unresolved conflict with boss or spouse, coping with parenting roles, etc. So logically, when our body experience these changes, it goes through stress. And our body learns to make a response to handle stress, the thing is not every response is helpful or healthy.
Unhealthy Responses to Stress
Here's a short list of Unhealthy Responses to Stress (Harvard Health Publishing).
Quick check - the last time you met with a stressful situation you cannot handle, do you observe yourself responding in any of items from the list below?
Watching endless hours of TV (or Youtube, Netflix)
Withdrawing from friends or partners or,
Conversely jumping into a frenzied social life to avoid facing problems
Overeating or weight gain
Undereating or weight loss
Sleeping too much
Drinking too much alcohol
Lashing out at others in emotionally or physically violent outbursts
Taking up smoking or smoking more than usual
Taking prescription or over-the-counter drugs that promise some form or relief, such as sleeping pills, muscle relaxants, or anti-anxiety pills
Taking illegal or unsafe drugs