Trying to escape stress is not the solution to the problems caused by a hectic lifestyle. Instead, one needs to master the art of managing his/her stress levels and using day-to-day pressure constructively, writes Dr Akshay Kumar
An urban lifestyle demands that people always be on the move. And so, it is often accompanied by stress. People often look at stress as something to be avoided. It might be more helpful if instead of avoiding stress, one understood that a low level of stress is needed to excel in life. Consider the case of a professional who is required to prepare an urgent presentation for a client in a few short hours. If the professional does not feel some stress, he or she will not feel motivated to create a presentation to the best of his or her ability. So, some stress is necessary in life because without it, people won’t feel motivated to complete essential tasks.
Stress is a phenomenon of tension. It’s helpful to visualise stress using the analogy of a rubber band. Consider what a rubber band resting on the palm of a person’s hand looks like. It is limp. However, when the rubber band is stretched, it comes into a state of tension. This can explain stress in a person’s mind. Until a person’s mind is not stretched, it is in a state of comfort. When the mind is stretched, it enters a state of tension called stress. If an already stretched rubber band is stretched even further, it will eventually snap. Similarly, when an already stressed mind continues to accumulate greater and greater stress, it enters a state of distress. Distress can manifest itself as anxiety, panic, depression, uncontrollable or repressed anger, restlessness, and a number of other psychological symptoms. However, before a person enters a state of distress, he or she will first always experience stress.
Eustress Makes Us Proactive
As mentioned earlier, the right amount of stress is necessary to motivate people. If people didn’t feel stress and were apathetic, they would not feel motivated to do essential work. Hence, stress is not a modern phenomenon. Humans living as hunter-gatherers tens of thousands of years ago also felt stress. It was essential because it motivated them to hunt and survive in a perilous world.
Stress or tension is unavoidable in people’s lives. Everybody has experienced stress or tension. The right amount of stress can make people proactive. This right amount of stress that makes people proactive is termed as eustress. It is good for people to have eustress because it makes them perform the necessary actions. Let’s say a person walking along a country path encounters a snake. He/she will be compelled to run because of eustress. Similarly, a professional will feel compelled to create an attractive presentation to impress an important client.
Eustress and then More Stress Becomes Distress
When eustress crosses a certain threshold, it begins to hamper a person’s productivity and can eventually lead to distress. It helps to visualise eustress and distress as lying on opposite sides of a spectrum. Distress manifests itself not only psychologically but also physiologically.
When someone is stressed, their body secretes the hormone adrenaline. Adrenaline may be released in a person’s body when they’re walking along a path and are chased by a wild animal. In such a scenario, adrenaline is released creating a sense of urgency allowing the person being chased to run as fast as they possibly can. However, adrenaline also increases a person’s heart rate, body sugar and hence being continuously stressed leads to the accumulation of adrenaline in the body. It increases the body’s heart rate and blood sugar. Thus, the accumulation of excessive adrenaline in the body leads to physiological harm.
Hence, someone who is continuously striving to meet deadlines at work and is under pressure at home as well will accumulate adrenaline in his or her body due to continuous stress. In the body of such a person, adrenaline will always be present leading to an elevated heart rate and high blood sugar levels. The continuous presence of adrenaline in the bodies of so many young people is one reason why a larger proportion of young people suffer from diabetes today than in earlier times. It is also the culprit behind the modern phenomenon of people in their early 20s suffering from heart attacks.
How to Manage Stress and Live a Healthier Life
One of the best ways to manage stress is by indulging in activities one enjoys. This is because a person cannot be in a state of tension and pleasure at the same time. A person can either feel pleasure or tension. So, when someone participates in an activity that gives them pleasure, they find that their tension dissipates. Hence, pleasure-giving activities filter out stress.
Someone who feels pleasure while playing sports such as golf or tennis will be able to lower the tension they feel while playing such sports. Someone who has adrenaline coursing through their body will allow the adrenaline to be reabsorbed by the body when they participate in a pleasurable activity. Doing such an activity will prevent more adrenaline from being secreted. The term “flow,” which is often used in psychology, helps explain the benefits of pleasurable activities. When someone is in a flow, they lose track of time because they are so engrossed in the pleasure-filled activity. When someone is in a flow because of participating in pleasure-giving activity one-three times a week, stress is filtered out of their system. They are able to relax mentally as well as physically. The time spent pursuing a pleasurable activity also becomes the time that allows the body to be replenished. This allows the body to take on productive stress at a later stage.
Use the Law of Ironic Processing
Besides taking part in pleasurable activities, positive thinking also helps manage stress. Positive thinking can be understood more concretely when one understands what psychologists have termed the “law of ironic processing”. The law of ironic processing was by presented by social psychologist Daniel Wegner. According to this law, when people try hard to subdue an emotion, it causes the same emotion to grow stronger. Hence, when we tell a friend or colleague to not be sad, it actually causes the person to grow sadder. Similarly, when we tell someone to control stress, such a person becomes more stressed.
So, people should not try to eliminate negativity because doing so will only cause such negativity to grow. Rather, people should focus on positivity. Hence, to help a friend or colleague control their anger, one should not tell them not to be angry. Rather, an angry person should be asked to relax. “Relax” is a positive word. The language of the mind is made of feelings. For instance, when someone is told not to think of a pink elephant, the first thing that comes to their mind is a pink elephant. Similarly, when someone tells an angry person to not be angry, it causes the person to become angry because the word angry has been uttered. The mind’s language understands the world angry and grows angrier. This is why it’s best to use positive words like “relax” or “calm down” to help an angry person relax and be calm. Hence, knowing how to speak the language of the mind can help people lead peaceful lives.
Often, a qualified psychologist is best able to guide people on how to generate positivity and how to eliminate negativity. A psychologist can also help people better manage stress and help them recognise in which activities they can get into a flow. Such help is essential to manage stress today. It allows one to take advantage of eustress so that a person’s life can be productive and fulfilling yet free of distress.
The writer is the Director of Ask Insights
