Stress Academy Presents:
Web Series – The Story of Stress
Part 1 – Understanding Stress
Episode 1 – What Does Science Say About Stress?
Hello friends, do you ever get stressed? I’m sure you do because every living-being goes through stress. Have you ever wondered why this stress happens and how we can get over it? According to the American Institute of stress 77% of people regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress and 48% of people feel that their stress has increased over the past five years. In science, it is well known that stress causes acute and chronic physical diseases like high blood pressure, heart diseases, upset stomach, muscle tension and fatigue. Also, stress can cause psychological disease like depression, anxiety disorder, nervousness, irritability and anger.
In the last 100 years science has made a lot of progress however mental health issues have gotten worse over the years despite increase in the quality of life and economic development around the world. The approach of treating mental illness such as depression with antidepressant medications has been controversial and sometimes the medications don’t work. We all have heard countless ways to tackle stress from doctors, philosophers, family and friends. However, we can only resolve our stress if we understand what it is and why it happens. Modern science seems to understand physical disease very well. For example cancer is defined as an uncontrolled growth or division of cells, but there is no clear definition of stress. Does it come from external circumstances or does it come from within us?
The term stress was coined by Hans Selye in 1936 who defined it as the nonspecific response of the body to any demand for change.(1) Selye struggled his whole life to find a satisfactory definition of stress but he did not succeed despite performing experiments sometimes on animals. In his later years when asked to define stress, he told reporters everyone knows what stresses but nobody really knows. According to the American Institute of Stress, stress is not a useful term for scientists because it is such a highly subjective phenomenon that defies definition and if you can’t define stress how can you measure it?(1) According to the American Psychological Association, stress is often described as a feeling of being overwhelmed, worried or run down.(2) These definitions are quite vague and incomplete. Some other researchers point to brain scans showing activity in certain areas of the brain during particular emotional responses while some researchers attribute them to changes in the human endocrine system.
Here are some interesting questions:
(1) Are these activities in the brain and human endocrine system a manifestation of stress a cause of stress or a consequence of it?
(2) What actually experiences the stress?
(3) Is it the brain, the mind or the senses, the endocrine system or the organs?
Where exactly in the body do stress-related emotions come from? Let’s consider an example at work. I get a new project with a tight timeline, the deadline is one week but the work will take one month. In this case, multiple things start happening to me.
(1) Stress
(2) The hormone cortisol gets released (3) and
(3) My heart starts to beat faster.
Now, does the deadline the external circumstance cause the stress? If so, then why is stress so subjective and an individual phenomenon? Does that mean that one cannot remain stress-free when one is going through difficult times? One particular event that may bring stress to me may not cause stress to you. Is there some internal factor that also plays a role in causing stress or are there both internal and external factors behind stress? At present, modern science lacks a comprehensive framework to understand stress. So let’s look beyond science.
Many Eastern philosophies such as Jainism have attempted to deal with this subject. Jain philosophy is one of the most ancient philosophies of India. In the
West, very little is known about Jainism, which addresses life consciousness and one’s relationship with the rest of the universe in tremendous detail. The laws of nature governing matter and consciousness have been investigated and
documented in Jain Scriptures for thousands of years. In the next few videos we’ll explore answers to the following questions:
- What is the objective and comprehensive definition of stress?
- What part of our body the stress originates from? and
- Who is accountable for stress? Does it come from external circumstances or from within?
Please join us as we explore these questions and more.
References:
1 American Institute of Stress (AIS). Definition of Stress.
https://www.stress.org/what-is-stress
2. American Psychological Association (APA). Emotional Stress.
https://dictionary.apa.org/emotional-stress
3. American Psychological Association (APA). Stress hormone.
