What Is Stress and How to Break Its Hold

There are various definitions of stress, but here’s mine: It’s the tense, unpleasant internal sensation that accompanies any negative emotion you care to mention, be it hostility, anger, frustration, or worry, and it lingers for as long as the situation provoking that unpleasant emotion remains unresolved in our minds.

In his book Mental Hygiene (first published in 1843), the American physician William Sweetser (1797-1875) introduced the term mental hygiene, and he proposed that stress and mental ill health can be the cause of much physical illness.

His claim anticipated the modern approach to mental ill health. We now know that, for many millions of people across the world, the physical pains and other symptoms they experience could be prevented or alleviated if they were given help to better cope with stress, meaning, life.

Signs of Stress

Stress manifests itself in a huge range of physical symptoms. These include:

• Insomnia
• Irritable bowels
• Tension headaches
• Back pain
• Muscle tension, especially in the neck and jaw (clenching)
• Night sweats
• Chest pain and/or difficulty breathing, especially in the midst of a stress-inducing situation
• Fatigue
• A compromised immune system, plus the conditions arising from this (e.g., ear and skin infections, colds)
• Coldness in our hands and feet.

Many of these symptoms arise because, when we suffer from chronic stress, our body is in effect malfunctioning as a result of the sustained presence within it of the “fight or flight” hormones.

These are released when our brain determines that we’re in a dangerous situation. They are designed to help us escape from life-threatening physical danger, and they’re only supposed to be released for short periods. Unfortunately, our modern lifestyles and ways of thinking regularly trigger the release of them in many people. Our body is not designed to cope with this.

Major Stressors

The Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale, also known as the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, is a list of stressful life events. First developed in 1967, this list attributes points to different life stressors. The more points you accumulate over a year, the more likely you are to experience health issues. It’s a useful reference to consult if you’re looking to understand what aspects of your life may be your most significant sources of stress.

The most serious stressors it lists are the death of a spouse or a close family member, divorce, and marriage. These are followed by dismissal from a job, marital separation, and marital reconciliation. Next come pregnancy, a jail term, and moving house. Personal injury or illness and your partner or a family member having major health issues are all also highly stressful, and so are an unhappy marriage, an unhappy romantic relationship, or an unhappy job environment. Retirement is quite high on the list as well.

Once we’ve identified the causes of stress in our life using resources such as the Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale, the time comes to ask: How do I start reducing my stress levels? I would say what’s required is a two-pronged strategy: there are ways we can reframe our life circumstances, and then there are specific actions we can take.

A Stress-Busting Outlook

According to Dr Georgia Witkin of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, one of the top stress-busters is anticipating stress and planning for it. I think this is great advice. I suggest combining it with the following:

• Accept what has happened and close the door after any loss.
• Learn to go with the flow rather than having to control everything and everyone.
• Accept that any life change, whether good or bad, brings a certain amount of tension.
• Realize that you can’t totally prevent change.
• Focus on the present and realize that the past is done.
• Examine your life and reaffirm your life values.

Things We Can Do to Relieve Stress

Each person’s situation is unique, but I think there’s something for everyone in the following list:

• Get out of any significant life situation that is bringing you down – for instance, if you hate your job, quit it.
• Either work to restore an unhappy relationship or leave it.
• Save some money to take care of any crisis, because even though money cannot buy happiness, it is comforting to know it’s there.
• Maintain your relationships with others and have a few confidants.
• Take a holiday that isn’t constantly fast paced.
• Escape into a book, paint, write, sew, or work at a hobby or something creative.
• Listen to dance music, and perhaps dance. Sing! Laugh!
• Follow an exercise programme to make yourself less susceptible, on a chemical level, to stress.
• Clean your living space, reducing clutter.
• Try new activities or follow up on previous interests from the past.
• Do things you know you enjoy, and do them with people you like.

A Good Book

Kimberley L. Brownridge’s 50 Things to Know about Coping with Stress: By a Mental Health Specialist (2020) is a useful book should you want to go more deeply into the subject of stress and how to cope with it.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What manner of stress are you experiencing in your life? What have you tried to do to relieve it? Is there anything you’ve said you would do but haven’t yet done?