Stress is Just a Word
M.C. Orman, MD, FLP.
Pick up any book on the subject of stress and you will usually find a brief, authoritative-sounding definition within the first several pages. Each author begins as if:
stress is something that actually exists;
some degree of stress is "good" or "healthy" for you;
the best way to deal with stress is to manage or avoid it.
These assumptions are part of the "stress management mentality" of our times.
While they are generally accepted by most educated people, they are not really true.
You must know that:
a) stress is not a "thing" that exists;
b) there is no such thing as "good" or "healthy" stress; and
c) there is a much better way to deal with stress than learning how to manage or avoid it.
In order to become a winner against stress, you must start by understanding these three points.
What Is Stress--Really?
Many experts endorse the original definition proposed by Hans Selye in 1926: STRESS IS THE NON-SPECIFIC RESPONSE OF THE BODY TO ANY DEMAND PLACED UPON IT.
Selye was an Austrian-born, Canadian physician who conducted hundreds of laboratory studies on animals and humans during the 1920's and 1930's. He was the first person to document the chemical and hormonal changes that occur with stress. He was also the first to introduce the term to the scientific community.
Selye believed that stress results whenever we are faced with external changes or demands. Such demands include variations in environmental temperature, overcrowding, painful stimuli, and loud noises. In fact, Selye believed most of life was "stressful."
In the preface to his 1956 book The Stress Of Life he commented:
No one can live without experiencing some degree of stress all the time.
You may think that only serious disease or intensive physical or mental injury can cause stress.
This is false.
Crossing a busy intersection, exposure to a draft, or even sheer joy are enough to activate the body's stress-mechanism to some extent.
Stress is not even necessarily bad for you; it is also the spice of life, for any emotion, any activity causes stress.
Selye conceived of external demands as stressors and the internal body changes they produced as the stress response.
He also reasoned that the stress response occurs whether the demands we experience are positive or negative.
In other words, if you inherit a large sum of money or lose a large sum of money, your body would respond in exactly the same way.
According to Selye, what matters most is how well you adapt to each new demand.
He coined the term "eustress" (pronounced u-stress) to stand for good or healthy stress--i.e., to times when the adaptation process resolved itself quickly--and he chose the term "distress" to stand for bad or unhealthy stress--i.e., to times when the adaptation response was excessive or prolonged.
Thus, Selye not only gave us the "external demand model" of human stress, but he also gave us the idea that two types of stress occur for human beings--1) a "good" or "healthy" type, and 2) a "bad" or "unhealthy" type.
Although Selye's ideas were widely accepted, subsequent researchers proposed other definitions.
Some theorists noted similarities between the body's stress response and the "fight or flight" response, a well- known survival mechanism present in most animal species.
These researchers viewed stress as AN EXCESSIVE OR INAPPROPRIATE ACTIVATION OF THE BODY'S "FIGHT OR FLIGHT" RESPONSE, which is induced by threats of danger in our environment.
In the 1960's and 1970's, other researchers began to focus upon cognitive and behavioral causes.
Mental processes, such as our interpretations of events (e.g. good/bad; positive/ negative), our appraisals of situations (e.g. threat/no threat; danger/no danger) and our judgements about our ability to cope with our problems successfully, were believed to activate the body's stress response.
Memories of past experiences and habitual behavior patterns were also found to be important.
Thus, stress became viewed as a mind- body, "psychosomatic," or psycho-physiologic phenomenon.
This mind-body viewpoint is clearly expressed in the following definition, which is endorsed by many experts today:
STRESS IS A PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGIC AROUSAL RESPONSE OCCURRING IN THE BODY AS A RESULT OF A STIMULUS WHICH BECOMES A "STRESSOR" BY VIRTUE OF THE COGNITIVE INTERPRETATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
Meanwhile, while scientists argued about what stress really was, members of the general public began to use the term in a variety of ways.
Some people defined stress as having too many pressures, responsibilities, or demands in their lives.
Some used the term to refer to internal states, such as feeling tense, nervous, tired, or exhausted. Others considered stress to be the inability to concentrate or focus mentally.
Still others used the term to refer to any negative mood or emotion, such as anger, frustration, guilt, or anxiety, or to a host of stress-related physical problems, such as headaches, muscle tension, sleep disturbances, and high blood pressure.
(There are actually no "negative emotions," only emotions people consider to be negative. All emotions can have both positive and negative consequences. Fear, for example, can be devastating, while at other times it can save your life. Anger can be destructive, both individually and socially, while at other times it can be constructive for ourselves and for others.)
Humorous definitions also emerged.
One of these--STRESS IS CREATED WHEN ONE'S MIND OVERRIDES THE BODY'S BASIC DESIRE TO CHOKE THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS OUT OF SOME JERK WHO DESPERATELY DESERVES IT!--frequently appears on posters, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other novelty items.
Thus, as we enter the 1990's, we are faced with a multitude of definitions of stress, both popular and scientific. Unfortunately, all of these definitions ignore one major fact. This fact is emphasized in the definition I use and also encourage my patients to adopt:
Dr. Orman's Definition
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STRESS IS JUST A WORD!
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