Category: How Stress affects us

Speeding up

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Aspects of life in modern society can become ingrained in our brains and cause people to hurry, whether or not they are pushed for time. Researchers at Toronto University found that people today move faster and hurry after a brief exposure to the logo from famous fast-food restaurants. In other words, our brains are told to speed up, even if a person does not need to do so.

Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification,” said Chen-Bo Zhong, assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Toronto University The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context.

Accepting diversions

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All the stress in your life comes
from your fixed notion of how the Universe should behave
and from your inability to accept
the merry diversions the Universe takes from your agenda.

In fact, you generally take these diversions from your script
as a personal affront.

Srikumar Rao, Are you Ready to Succeed?

The body and the mind

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Increasingly research is showing how the mind plays a significant part in how our body feels. This is of interest to us who are working with stress. It also helps us understand how mediatation, simply sitting and observing the mind, can be an effective way of working with difficult emotions and events.

For example, research has shown that the body responds to abstract thoughts as if they were real. Work done at the University of Aberdeen found that when participants were asked to recall the past or imagine the future, their bodies acted out the metaphors contained in the words. So when asked to remember, they leaned slightly backward; when imagining the future, their bodies moved forwards. Though these shifts amounted to just a few millimeters, the results were consistent enough for researchers to conclude that they could ‘take an abstract concept such as time and show that it was manifested in body movements.’

Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam observes: “How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body. We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.” This is consistent with the way stress manifests itself in the body as headaches or heart conditions. It can also be seen when we have had a difficult encounter and we go around with a knot in the stomach. It supports the approach of Mindfulness meditation in its focus on the mind as a part of a whole body response to life’s stresses.

See more at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html/

More Stress

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It would seem, despite increases in technology, that stress continues to rise in Western society. The most recent poll conducted by the American Psychological Association, found that approximately half of all Americans were more stressed than they were 5 years previously. It also reported that 33% of all people in the US are living under extreme stress, while many reported physical symptoms (77%) or psychological symptoms (73%) related to stress in the previous month.

Physical symptoms of stress included: fatigue (51%); headache (44%); upset stomach (34%); muscle tension (30%); change in appetite (23%), teeth grinding (17%); change in sex drive (15%); and feeling dizzy (13%).

Psychological symptoms of stress included: experiencing irritability or anger (50%); feeling nervous (45%); lack of energy (45%); and feeling as though you could cry (35%). In addition, almost half (48%) of Americans report lying awake at night due to stress.

Sadly, most people surveyed said that they would only make necessary lifestyle changes after the diagnosis of a chronic condition rather than taking preventative measures.

“Stress in America continues to escalate and is affecting every aspect of people’s lives — from work to personal relationships to sleep patterns and eating habits, as well as their health,” says psychologist Russ Newman, PhD, JD, APA executive director for professional practice. “We know that stress is a fact of life and some stress can have a positive impact, however, the high stress levels that many Americans report experiencing can have long-term health consequences, ranging from fatigue to obesity and heart disease.”

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2007/10/stress.aspx

Stress and worry

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Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have found that high levels of worry and anxiety in older men may increase the risk of coronary heart disease.

This problem is probably likely only to get worse, as worrying seems to be increasing due to many different factors in present day society. A study done done by Jean Twenge, Ph.D., between the 1950’s and the 1980’s seems to indicate this. In it children between 9 and 12 were asked to rate statements such as “I worry about what is going to happen”. The study found that normal samples in the 1980’s outscored psychiatric populations from the 1950’s, meaning that our everyday anxiety now matches the diagnosed fears shown by those suffering from anxiety-related conditions back then.

The School recommends a number of steps which greatly reduce risks, including regular exercise and changes in diet.

Media use and distractions

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The Kaiser Family Foundation is a non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the U.S. They conduct research on issues affecting health, including the effects of media usage on young people. This month they published a study which found a huge increase in TV, music, phone, computer, and video game usage among 8-18 year olds compared to just five years ago. The rate of increase also accelerated over those years. What was also interesting was the increase in multi-tasking in that age range, where people are using two devices at once, such as texting while watching YouTube videos or talking on the phone while watching TV.

This would seem to be the situation with adults also. It is quite easy to observe today that as soon as the television programme, meal or meeting gets less interesting, people pull out their Blackberries and iPhones and starting checking messages, mail or the net. Now that laptops are much smaller it is possible to work on them while watching TV, and working on them may entail social networking while actually writing a report.

It is clear now that the speed of technological advances is not going to slow down. If anything it will get faster, and we will increasingly live in a connected and media-saturated world. Although many of the advances are helpful it is not clear that all lead to a greater sense of calm. Indeed many studies show links between increased stress and the breakdown in work-life and home-life boundaries.

Mindfulness encourages us to pay attention to what is happening and to simplify our focus of attention. Continually practising being divided in our attention only strengthens the possibility of being scattered and having no sense of being centred. It can increase our sense of anxiety. So we can become aware of our urge to immediately check emails or send that text right now. It can be useful to interrupt the urge and see if our life will actually fall apart.