What is Stress

“How you see things and how you handle them makes all the difference in terms of how much stress you will experience” - Jon Kabat-Zinn

Stress has become an umbrella term for the numerous pressures we experience in life.

We all know that there is good and bad stress. Our stress reaction is a survival mechanism which helps us to respond effectively to a ‘perceived sense of threat’. As man has evolved, the perception of a threat has evolved from that of being eaten by a predator to a threat to our social status and our sense of self.

When viewed in a positive light, our stress reaction, known as the ‘fight-flight response’ still helps us to effectively deal with a real threat to our survival and offers us the boost of energy and mental acuity to perform at our optimum.

The downside, however, is that prolonged stress, which can lead to a permanent state of hyper arousal has a detrimental impact on our mental and physical wellbeing.

Mental Impact of Prolonged Stress

• Disruption to memory and lack of clarity
• Inability to operate effectively, impaired decision making and objectivity
• Endless rumination and destructive thought processes
• Fixed patterns of reactivity, including self limiting beliefs and judgemental thinking
• Mental and physical exhaustion
• Depression
• Possible breakdown

Our maladaptive coping mechanisms are a desperate means of avoiding our feelings and fears when we are stressed.  As a consequence, we never really understand our situation fully in order to be able to bring ourselves back to optimum health and well being.

Physical Impact of Prolonged Stress

• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Immune deficiencies leading to illness and disease
• Impaired insulin activity and an increased risk of diabetes

“Ultimately our automatic reactions to the stressors we encounter determine in large measure how much stress we experience. Automatic reactions, triggered out of unawareness, usually compound and exacerbate stress, making what might have remained basically simple problems into worse ones. They prevent us from seeing clearly, from solving problems creatively, from expressing our emotions effectively when we need to communicate with other people, and ultimately they prevent us from attaining peace of mind. Instead, each time we react, we stress our intrinsic balance even more. A lifetime of unconscious reactivity is likely to increase our risk of eventual breakdown and illness significantly”  - Jon Kabat-Zinn

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