12/11/2017

Are You Stressed or Stressed Out?

When pressure becomes pain

In beautiful irony, trying to define stress can be quite stressful. After all, even the godfather of stress himself Hans Selye pointed out that “in addition to being itself, stress is also the cause of itself and the result of itself." In the story of his life, Selye frequently states that “everyone knows what stress is but nobody really knows.” So, if we can’t define it, how will we ever measure or manage it?

Here in lies the stress predicament. Most people feel stress all the time, and, unable to determine the root cause, sweep the sensation under the rug like a hot mess. Or pass it along to someone else like a hot potato. Which reminds me of a favorite stress-shift strategy I learned from my dear friend, Srini Pillay, author of the new book Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try: Harness the Power of the Unfocused Mind. His suggestion when all else fails?—?drop it like it’s hot. Just don’t allow yourself to go there. Which works - for a while. But what about when the mess gets too messy or we’re unable to pass it along or just drop it off?

While we may not yet agree on a standard definition of stress, experts do agree that stress can manifest in three basic ways?—?tame, tolerable or toxic. Tame stress is the type we don’t even notice. Like getting out of bed in the morning. Okay, some days it feels toxic, but, for most people on most days, getting up in the morning is just something we do without much thought. But to the brain and body, it’s an effort that requires a series of adjustments and adaptations. Bruce McEwen calls this allostasis?—?the active process of putting out hormones and mediators that help us adapt to maintain homeostasis, or balance.

Please click here to read the complete article from Thrive Global.