Stress: A Miscellany

Updated: Nov 1

The past month has been a wild one for me, involving some major life changes coming down the pike. Through all that, it's become clear: I'm stressed. So with that, the next miscellany is all about stress!

“It’s not stress that kills us; it is our reaction to it.” – Hans Selye

Creator: Nuthawut Somsuk | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

First things first, what is stress? According to the World Health Organization, stress is defined as “a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation,” which should be treated as a normal human response to daily challenges and threats. What gets us in trouble, it seems, is how we respond to stress and letting it build up over a period of time, negatively affecting our mental and physical health if unchecked…

There’s a whole number of charts and lists out there to show you the most common signs of stress but luckily the Mayo Clinic gives a concise (and well-organized) chart that is presented here:

Taken from the Mayo Clinic webpage on stress

“Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there.’ – Eckhart Tolle

Here’s some statistics provided by Disturb Me Not about how many people are often affected by stress (their sources are provided in parentheses):

Around 75%–90% of doctor visits in the United States are in some way related to stress. (American Institute of Stress)
Individuals under constant stress have a 50% higher mortality rate. (Journal of Aging Research)
51% of adults suffering from chronic stress experience symptoms of fatigue. (American Institute of Stress)
15% of American adults claim that their love life has suffered due to stress. (American Institute of Stress)
Individuals exposed to stressful life events have an 82.2% chance of suffering from constipation or a similar digestive issue. (Oxford Academic)
Individuals who are under constant stress are 20% more likely to have heart disease. (Johns Hopkins)

😰😰😰

It’s not uncommon for acne breakouts to occur while you’re stressed, due to inflammatory responses. Also negatively affected by stress:

Bowels
Menstrual cycles
Immune systems
Ulcers
Diabetes
Blood pressure
Libidos

Long story short: try to control your stress or your body’s only going to make you more stressed.

Stress has been attributed to causing children to age faster cellularly, leading to life-long physical and mental health problems including early mortality. Prolonged stress, no matter what age, also causes you to perform tasks and actions poorly, since it’s been found to mess with our ‘working memory’ that allows us to remember how to do certain functions. It’s been attributed to wonky emotional changes in people as well: for men, it decreases empathy and increases selfishness, while doing the opposite for women.

Stress icons created by Freepik - Flaticon

Stress and anxiety are often lumped together during discussions and even confused for one another. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, here are some good ways to distinguish stress from anxiety:

Courtesy of the NIMH article linked above

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

There are, fortunately, many ways to curb stress and fight it from becoming a more chronic ailment in your life. In their guide to how to deal with stress, New York Times Magazine suggests also "practicing" stress. Why? Because putting yourself into challenging and stressful situations usually helps us to grow as people and learn how to adapt through thinking and creativity to those unexpected moments.

Not sure how to cultivate this stress practice? They’ve luckily provided a list of suggestions for that too:

Run a marathon
Play in a Scrabble competition
Read an original poem at a poetry slam
Climb a mountain
Sing karaoke
Tell a story in front of a crowd
Take on a tough project at work
Kayak the Colorado rapids
Train to scuba dive
Attend a boot camp

Mental Floss, in 2019, also collected a list of activities you can do to counter or even reduce stress. These ones, ironically, are also ones that can cause stress in the first place:

Washing dishes
Decluttering the house
Exercising with others
Sniffing your partner's laundry [1]
Writing about your failures
Singing out loud so everyone can hear you

“Stress is simply the adaptation of our bodies and minds to change.” – Peter G. Hanson, M.D.

If you look around the internet, typing in “Best ways to deal with stress” is only going to lead to a bunch of wildly different opinions. My opinion is that the American Psychological Association has the most nuanced advice:

Try to get rid of (or reduce) whatever's stressing you
Be social
Eat healthy
Relax your muscles
Meditate
Don't lose sleep
Get some kind of exercise
Enjoy nature
Keep doing things for pleasure
Change your thinking
Seek help

Some more interesting ways to reduce stress include:

“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.” – Lily Tomlin

Relax icons created by Flat Icons - Flaticon

End Notes

[1] I'd recommend erring on the side of caution with this one...

[2] On the other hand, drinking it appears to often increase stress.

[3] It could be said that having pets in general will help reduce stress levels, though.

[4] The high amounts carbohydrate and potassium are said to do the trick, provided you can get past the smell.

[5] Well, no shit…

[6] The linked article notes that it reduces coronary mortality by 37%, especially for men.

Addendum

So that concludes this miscellany but, as always, I'll give you some videos to watch until next time. Most of these are on the educational side of things but there's a clip in here that's both well-themed and probably not very useful for tips.

“How stress affects your brain” - Madhumita Murgia (TED Ed)