Modern life moves at a tremendously fast pace and we are all but obliged to do our very best to keep up. From the moment your alarm clock rips you from your restful slumber to when your head finally crashes back onto your pillow, life is mostly made up of a series of stressful events. While some stress is essential (called eustress) too much stress is most definitely bad for you, your health and your relationships. This type of stress is a familiar term to most people –distress!
Fight or Flight
Not so many thousands of years ago, stress was one of our major defences against life-threatening predators. Commonly referred to as the “fight or flight” response. The stress we experienced then was primarily physical and helped give us an edge when confronted by a serious problem such as being stalked by a wild animal.
In response to this very physical threat, your body dumped huge amounts of adrenalin into your blood which caused increased muscle tension, elevated heart and breathing rate, increased blood glucose levels and the diversion of oxygenated blood away from non-essential areas of the body. In short, it primed your body for running or fighting for your life. Once the confrontation was over and you had either escaped or battled victoriously, your body would return to its pre-stress state and “calm down”.
Fast forward to the 21st century and while the types of stressor has changed, (less sabre toothed tigers, more impossible deadlines and financial worries) the stress response hasn’t changed one iota. Your body still goes through the whole “fight or flight” response despite the fact that the stresses of modern living are generally psychological or emotional and not physical.
In addition to the changing face of stress, the duration of stress has changed. Our early predecessors had a virtually instantaneous safety valve to let of stress – they fought or ran for their lives. Modern man has no such vent. Instead, we simply sit and stew in our stress-related juices and that is a BIG problem.