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Clear Thinking About Stress

Bruce Taylor
Unison Coaching

Stress: Introduction

There seems to be a lot of confusion and loose thinking about stress in popular journals and books. How else can you explain terms like "good stress" and concepts like "A certain amount of stress is good for you," or advice like "Stress is unavoidable." Once you understand the meaning of stress you'll realize that stress is always harmful, that there is no "safe" level of stress, and that you can deflect stress if you know how. Let's start by straightening out the definition of stress: stress is not a mental or emotional state, and it's certainly not a moral or metaphysical issue. Stress is a physiological and medical condition, produced by prolonged feelings of insecurity and anxiety.

Physical and Mental Symptoms

The Japanese word, "karoshi" means, approximately, "death by stress," and it's a significant source of mortality among Japanese workers, especially middle-aged white collar men. Stress kills them either directly, by causing their bodies to break down, or indirectly, through depression and suicide. In either case, stress is bad news and it's no exaggeration to say that your life is at stake in a stressful situation. Chronic stress has been linked to degenerative diseases of the heart, brain, intestines, skin, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and immune system. There is virtually no system or organ of your body that isn't at risk from stress.

Our Biological Inheritance

If stress is so harmful, why in the world are we so susceptible to it? Wouldn't you think that evolution would have eliminated it? In a sense, stress was invented millions of years ago, long before we became human, as an adaptation to living in a dangerous world. To explain this paradox, let's imagine one of our long-ago ancestors on the plains of Africa who suddenly looks up and sees a leopard on the branch over his head. In much less than half a second, without any conscious thought, his brain registers the picture of the leopard and classifies it as a life-threatening danger. Then the brain starts to mobilize the body either to run away or for defense.

Fight or Flight?

When the brain perceives the leopard in the tree and decides that it is dangerous, it sends a signal to the adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys. In response, the adrenal glands produce two hormones: first adrenaline and later cortisol.

Adrenaline acts very quickly on almost every part of your body. Your heart begins to beat more quickly and strongly, the small blood vessels in your skin contract (that's why you look "white as a sheet" after you're scared), your stomach stops digesting food, and your vision narrows to a "tunnel". All of these changes make you, for a little while, stronger and quicker than you normally are - ready to run away from the leopard.

As you're running away from the leopard, the adrenal glands start to produce a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol acts to increase the amount of sugar in your blood for quick energy, and if you have to flee for days and days without food, cortisol helps your body convert muscle and bone into energy.

The combined effect of adrenaline and cortisol is to give us the energy we need to deal with dangerous situations - and that's why we evolved the fight/flight response in the first place.

Where Does the Stress Come In?

As long as your body is reacting to a leopard in a tree, everything is fine: you run away and the stress hormones start to disappear after an hour or so. But if you can neither run away from the danger nor fight it, then the levels of stress hormones never go down. The adrenaline keeps on making your heart beat hard, and the cortisol keeps breaking down muscle and bone to keep your blood sugar high. If this goes on for days at a time, you will start to feel the effects: changes in your sleep and eating patterns, tunnel vision, abnormal tiredness, and a general anxiety and uneasiness. What we commonly call stress is your perception of your body's physical reactions to elevated hormones.

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