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by WHAT is, and WHY do we suffer from Stress?
When you experience an incident that seems threatening or demanding, some 1500 chemical reactions starts to take place in your body. Stres chemicals (such as adrenaline and cortisol) are dumped into your bloodstream and trigger an urge to respond by “fight or flight”. These stress chemicals prepare us for the threatening and/or dangerous events in order for us to be able to deal with it. A good example is when your heart rate increases. It means more blood is pumped to our muscles and brain so that you can assess the threat and either fight, or run away faster. Fighting and running is not realistic options for dealing with stress factors every time! In addition, having continuous chemical stress reactions in your body to create the urge to fight or run away for situations that seems to upset or demand too much from you at any given time will not help to alleviate the situation and the emotions you have. Especially not at work – not if you want to keep your job! Even less so if you want to keep your relations healthy.
So, if fighting and running away does not work, how do we manage our stress reactions? An important and good first step is to recognize the signs of stress that most often appear in our lives. Reactions to stress are complex and manifest in different ways for different people. Characteristics of the person (e.g., their physical and mental health, level of social support, and previous history of trauma) interact with the characteristics of the event (e.g., the magnitude and type of stressful event, the presence of cumulative stressors and other life events) to influence people’s experiences and reactions.
These stress chemicals can result into reactions that can linger for days, weeks, and even sometimes for months. Moreover, in triggering physical reactions, stress chemicals and hormones affect the brain chemistry and this impact the way we think and feel. Over a period, as our bodies, emotions and minds are affected by stress, our spiritual side gets affected too. Spirituality is a core component of human nature. Spirituality shapes and informs our sense of meaning and purpose, faith and hope. Most people believe that to be fully human involves more than simply the physical dimensions of existence. In some time, the more our stress evolve, it influences our view on life, our conceptions of our religion and God, humanity and the sources that gives to us our sense of meaning, our purpose and hope. In the end, with physical, emotional, mental and spiritual symptoms all mixed up, stress starts to show in our behaviour.
