#5: Stress

It’s been a long time since I really changed my mind about something, and I’d forgotten how good it feels: like sunshine after a dark winter. (271)

If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name ~ Heather Lende

I have been mulling over the notion of stress and thinking it might be terribly maligned. Suddenly, stress is killing all of us and underlies all that ails our species. Perhaps, stress is a term that gets used far too frequently and applied far too broadly. For me, stress lies somewhere between fear and worry. Fear deals with issues of survival -- fear is fueled by a lack of safety, the deprivation of one's basic needs, and the experience of disconnection, isolation, or dehumanization. Worry, on the other hand, encompasses thoughts of the future and what might be, negative events that can't be controlled or even accurately predicated. Stress, physical and mental tension, results from being pulled out of a state of equilibrium and comfort. As a result, many experiences may cause stress in one person and not another, and people differ in the amount of stress they can handle.

I know not only that this is likely an inaccurate scientific differentiation but also that life certainly challenges us and causes stress in both foreseeable and unpredictable ways. Each individual has a unique mind-body connection in relation to stress. As a result, I think that perhaps what is most important is to reflect on one's relationship to it. I recently read a summary of psychological research on Hey Sigmund that found how we think about stress, how we perceive its impact on our health and mortality, may be more important than the stress itself:

Researchers used data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Here’s what they found:

• The risk of premature death was increased if people who were experiencing stress believed that stress would adversely impact their health.

• Those who reported experiencing high stress and who also believed that stress adversely affected health had a 43% increase in the risk of premature death.

• Those who experienced high stress but didn’t believe it to be harmful were at the lowest risk of dying – even lower than people who didn’t experience a lot of stress.

I think this explains why stress has never been something I worry about or avoid. I believe stress has a place in my life, and I believe that I have enough awareness in midlife to know when I am experiencing too much stress and need to regroup, although I am also not naive: sometimes we can't do anything about the stress in our lives and must muddle through. We certainly can't control as much as we would like to think we can. I would also throw out that perhaps the root of so much of what we call stress can more accurately be labeled unhappiness: decisions and situations may simply make us unhappy which reduce our ability to cope and increase the stress response.

In this New Year, I want to keep my focus on happiness, engaging in the world, striving to have a lasting, positive impact, and building new, invaluable relationships. I will embrace the notion that I can pursue new and challenging experiences and manage the stress which seems essential to being a growing, learning, changing person. My goal is to find a point of equilibrium, living a life full of demands and passions while requiring I make myself mindfully vulnerable. I hope I can grab hold of the opportunities that come my way, living by the mantra that stress is a challenge not a threat.