Getting to Know Stress

Very often in modern day society, we find ourselves used to living a life that is hurried and rushed, battling the hustle and bustle of daily routines to maintain “normalcy”.  We subconsciously juggle career and home responsibilities to the point that we don’t stop to think about the stress that we are creating for ourselves and/or others.  We create stress by believing that in order to be happy, we must fit into society’s cookie-cutter mold and live a life that has a predetermined value for success.  Rising at the crack of dawn and fighting traffic just to get to a job that isn’t personally fulfilling, a large percentage of the population is overworked, underpaid and still living paycheck to paycheck. 

Daily we deal with coworkers that project their personal problems onto their peers and bosses that aren’t properly prepared to lead.  Spending all day in an environment that is tense, only to sit in traffic, again, while anxiously driving to a daycare that charges astronomical late fees along with the promise of kicking your child out if you are late one too many times.  Once your work day is finally approaching the end and you’ve finally made it back home, you are still expected to prepare a home-cooked meal, and spend quality time with your family, that generally includes homework and extracurricular activities. 

Still, you must find a little quiet time for yourself or may have to share that time with your significant other; you may even have to finish a work assignment.  Just as relaxation and a sense of completion prevail, you must reprogram yourself to get everything ready to repeat the process all over again, in less than 12 hours.

This is how the average American spends their entire adult life.  It’s no wonder that chronic stress has been linked to the six leading causes of death in the United States: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, liver cirrhosis and suicide and almost 80 percent of chief complaints include stress related ailments.

Stress is an unavoidable, omnipresent factor of life with a magnitude of meanings because it is so different for every one of us.  It was defined in 1936 by Hans Selye as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”, but Selye was not aware that the term had been used for centuries in physics (see Hooke’s Law of 1658), so he spent all his life unsuccessfully searching for an adequate definition. 

Dictionaries define stress as “physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension” or “a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize” but scientists describe stress as a subjective phenomenon that cannot be measured nor defined, rendering the term useless. 

A physician in a 1951 British Medical Journal concluded that, “Stress in addition to being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of itself.”  A clear concise definition is not needed to be comfortable and confident in the ability to recognize stress patterns that aren’t always obvious but may be leading to a downward spiral of devastating health issues and chronic poor health.

Next Article....Causal Factors of Stress

Nicole N. Woods, PhD, DNM, LMT is a seasoned holistic health expert, published author, and dynamic speaker with over two decades of experience in integrative medicine, wellness education, and therapeutic bodywork. She holds a Doctorate and PhD in Natural Medicine from the International Quantum University for Integrative Medicine and has completed medical science coursework at Xavier University School of Medicine. As CEO of Healthy Lifestyle Solutions, LLC, Dr. Woods specializes in corporate wellness programming, biometric health testing, private spa events, and retreat planning.

HLS Solutions