Stress: Tolerable Today, It Could Kill You Tomorrow
The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.
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http://billallin.com
"I work better under pressure." "I need a deadline to crank me up to do my best work." These excuses for adopting stress instead of independent work skills and developing an ability to focus on work at hand may be too much cost for too little benefit.
It's like saying that you can type better with one hand tied behind your back. Or that you perform better at sex when you are impaired with alcohol or drugs. Believe it if you will, but it's still not true. In the final analysis, stress always does more damage than good.
Long term, stress can shorten a "normal" lifetime (dying of natural causes) by three to seven years. It compromises the immune system, meaning that a reduced immune reaction to an attack by viruses or bacteria means a person will get sick. The hormone cortisol is emitted by the adrenal gland to reduce the damaging effects of stress. It's part of our natural "fight or flight" response to danger. But if the stress continues, this strong hormone continues to be pumped into the body. That can result in impaired cognitive performance, thyroid problems (the thyroid prompts the brain to act in many ways, so the brain is affected as well), blood sugar imbalances, higher blood pressure. It can even cause an accumulation of abdominal fat. No one is certain today what effects cortisol exposure can have on the brain, including mood, temper, sleep pattern and personality as each person may react differently to its long term effects.
It is known, through studies, that long term exposure to cortisol causes damage to the human hippocampus, which is very important to learning new things and to memory of what a person has learned.
In a 2010 study by the American Psychological Association, money, work, financial future, family and relationships caused the greatest amount of stress for Americans. Stress itself may be tied to cancer, though the exact linkage is unclear.
Can it cause a broken heart? Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or "broken heart syndrome," occurs when the bottom part of the heart balloons out, caused when grief or another major stressor floods stress hormones into the heart. Yes, a person can die of a broken heart and the causes are both physical and emotional.
High levels of cortisol in pregnant mothers has been associated with lower IQs in their children, tested at age seven. It has also been associated with autism, though whether stress in mother or baby actually causes autism has not been proven.
One way of avoiding job stress is to have a career in a job expected to be obsolete within a few years. CareerCast.com, in a survey of 200 professions, found bookbinders have the least stress of any in 2011. Firefighters and airline pilots have the most. Another way is to move to a less stressful location. Portfolio.com found Salt Lake City, Utah, the least stressful city among 50 studied in the United States. Detroit took top spot as the most stressful.
This may come as a surprise to some, but not at all to others. Texas A&M International University gave 103 test subjects several stressful tasks, then had them play violent video games. Their stress eased considerably. Best results: Hitman: Blood Money and Call of Duty 2. For those under great stress, virtual violence decreased their bodily reactions to stress.
Militaries handle stress differently. They have their soldiers eat veggies. Military Medicine magazine reported that Yale researchers found eating carrots and potatoes boosted a soldier's cognitive functioning after intensive sessions of survival training. The militaries call it "carbohydrate administration," but it's simply eating complex carbs of any kind. Eating simple carbohydrates like cookies and cake didn't do the trick.
A sudden change of diet can cause stress as well. Going on a restrictive diet quickly (without easing into it) can cause depression or anxiety, according to a study by neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania who studied sudden changes of diet with mice that had been fattened up then had their calories severely limited. What is a stressor to a mouse? One method used by the researchers was hanging the mice by their tails for six minutes.
Louisiana State University researchers tried it differently. They caused their test rats to be subjected to random electric shocks to their feet. Then the rats were allowed to self administer intravenous doses of cocaine. As the stress was increased, the rats gave themselves more cocaine. [Anyone who doesn't generalize on that finding is simply not thinking enough. Why do we take so many drugs these days? A more pertinent question might be why do we not teach kids in high school how to cope with stressors in their lives before they resort to possibly harmful alternatives?]
Eating excessively and obsessively is a reaction to constant stress. Researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Portugal's University of Minho stressed lab rats then allowed them to self access treats. Trained to press a level to receive treats, stressed rats continued to press the level after the stress had stopped and even after they had been fed a meal. The brains of the rats showed shrunken neurons in the dorsomedial striatum, an area of the brain associated with goal directed behaviour, and growth in the dorsolateral striatum, which is related to habitual behaviour. In other words, constant stress caused the rats to habitually overeat.
Do you wonder if overly stressed researchers reduce their stress by conducting experiments on lab rats and mice?
We will conclude this article with an anecdote that has been circulating the internet in recent months.
A young lady confidently walked around the room while explaining stress management to an audience.
With a raised glass of water (everyone knew that she was going to ask the ultimate question, "half empty or half full?"), she fooled them all.
"How heavy is this glass of water?" she inquires with a smile.
Answers called out ranged from 8oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In every case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
She continued, "And that's the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time,sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on.
"As with a glass of water, you have to put it down for awhile and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed. we can carry on with the burden. So, as early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night.
Pick them up tomorrow. "Whatever burdens you are carrying now, let them down for a moment. Relax, pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short." There may not be so many then and they won't be so heavy.
That's one way we can all learn to cope with stress in our lives.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers who want to teach their children how to cope with an increasingly stressful world. Better they learn young than depend on medical professionals to try to put them back together when they break as adults.
Learn more about this book and read part of it at
Jane Wagner, American writer, director and producer (b.1935)
Showing posts with label stress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stress. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Robert Heinlein: un-American Rebel With A Cause
Robert Heinlein: un-American Rebel With A Cause
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert A. Heinlein, American science-fiction author (1907-1988)
That's outrageous! Why, look at what our experts have done for us.
Our expert chemists have created chemical fertilizers and pesticides to put on our agricultural crops so megafarming agribusinesses can produce lots more food than our ancestors ever dreamed of. And diseases and weaknesses such as diabetes, allergies and heart disease at rates never previously imagined because our bodies can't cope with the chemical attacks over long periods of time. (Tests are usually over three years, seldom longer, as if nothing could affect our health over a long period of time.)
Other expert chemists, medical specialists, have developed drugs to rescue us from the ravages of those chemicals, which have also made their way into our air (over half a million kinds) and our drinking water (over 300,000 kinds).
Our expert medical doctors happily prescribe those drugs for the rest of our lives so we can stay on our feet and work harder than our ancestors ever dreamed. And, so they won't forget what to prescribe, many of them accept reminder gifts from the pharmaceutical companies. A comfortable arrangement for the experts.
Our business specialists, MBAs tucked neatly in safe locations, figure out how to manufacture things to make our lives easier. Our communications specialists devise ways to sell those products to us through advertising, making us believe we need stuff we seldom use. The facts that our lives are not easier, that we have more stress than any previous generation, take more drugs than any previous generation and buy so much we don't need that we have to have yard sales and to give other stuff to "needy" people in neighbouring countries is never mentioned, so we forget. (Donations by Americans are often sold in Canada, and vice versa, a fact seldom noted publicly.)
Our expert architects design skyscrapers so well that most people who have to work in them have their health compromised. Sick building syndrome--no one knows how it will affect our length of life--stands as a hallmark of modern architectural progress.
Our legal specialists are so good at defending bad guys with cash to spread around that few go to prison and the ones who do have short stays. Our lawyers have reputations worse than used car salesmen of the old days. Their accounting specialists advise them how to Hoover every available dollar from ordinary folks who know so little of the skills of relationships they don't know how to stay married, so little about money management that more cash goes out than comes in for too many people and so little about getting along with neighbours that whole television courtroom series have cropped up to document the conflicts and allow the rest of us to be voyeurs.
Our specialists have made us the great Western World are persuaded those who are not part of it envy to such extremes that some of them want to murder us because of it.
We are, in short, the epitome of progress. We have our specialists to thank.
Let's take a moment to consider the parts of their lives that our experts and specialists don't want us to think about. Would you expect to see one of them changing a flat tire? No, because they have roadside assistance insurance. Or is it because they have no idea how to change a tire? Or because they fear getting their hands dirty. Ask one.
Most pay little attention to their diet until they are diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, have a stroke or are told point blank by their doctors that they are obese or dangerously overweight such that their lives are at risk. They know little about nutrition, what their bodies need to stay healthy.
Most have no idea how to fix their own computers, even how to keep dust out of them, and many don't even keep their security programs up to date. They don't change the oil in their own cars because they don't know how. They can't change a washer in a leaky tap/faucet. They have to call a plumber when their toilet plugs up because they have no idea how to use a plunger (or how to avoid plugging the toilet in the first place).
They don't plant their own gardens where they can grow pesticide-free and chemical-free veggies and fruit because they "don't have time." In fact, most don't have any idea how to tend a garden.
On the other hand, a high school dropout may know how to do all of these things and hundreds more. Does this make the dropout more fit for life in the 21st century than the highly educated person? Not necessarily. But maybe.
Consider this possibility. Something happens that causes the power to go out in your part of the world and you learn that it will be out for a whole year or more. Would you rather have the high school dropout who has had to survive by the seat of his pants for many years as an ally or one of the experts or specialists mentioned earlier in this article?
Of course you assume that such a thing will never happen, even though a terrorist bomb could accomplish it. The 30 million people of the US state of California believe their state will never sink into the Pacific either, even though scientists have been warning it would happen for years from a split of earth's tectonic plates along the San Andreas fault. Many Americans are unaware that what is known as a super volcano is brewing under Yellowstone Park, even though a blow that would darken the skies of the world possibly for years is overdue. These things can happen. Eventually one will. Some call it Armageddon, but it's really just nature in action.
Am I suggesting that high school and post secondary education is worthless or counter productive? Not at all. What is needed is a change of focus in our elementary and high schools. We need to teach children life skills, not stuff they know they will never need or use. How much do you remember or use of what you learned in high school? Would you have willing traded much of it for some of the life skills you have learned by experience since then?
Adolescents and young adults have trouble in high school often because they see how useless what they are forced to learn is and will be to them in the future. They know they need to learn life lessons--that desire to learn is instinctive--but they don't know what those lessons are or how to get them. They rebel. They drop out. They take drugs or alcohol, get tattoos, listen to music that could destroy their hearing, and so on. Eventually, most of them learn the lessons they need, get back on track and become upstanding citizens. But not quickly enough. Those lessons often come the hard way, by making mistake after mistake and learning from them. A few don't make it.
As radical as Robert Heinlein's suggestion in our opening quote seemed when you first read it, it makes more sense now. We have time to teach these life lessons and more. We simply need to eliminate what was better suited for 18th century schools than it is for today's world. In the 18th century kids learned life lessons at home. Today's kids can't learn them at home because many of their parents don't know the life lessons themselves to teach. With both parents working to earn enough to buy the fun things of life as well as what we believe are necessities, we need someone to teach the life lessons that used to be taught at home.
They aren't being taught at school today because the curriculum is too crowded with other (often unnecessary) stuff. They aren't being taught at home. And our young people experience more problems at school and outside of it than any previous generation.
This is a simple connect-the-dots problem and solution. By the way, I still don't know how to set a bone, but I can do most of the rest of what Heinlein suggested. It took me six decades of life to learn these lessons. I should have been able to learn them in school, before I needed them. You too.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, an easy to understand guidebook (with a threatening sounding title) for parents and teachers who want to grow children who know how to manage their lives. It includes specific lessons.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert A. Heinlein, American science-fiction author (1907-1988)
That's outrageous! Why, look at what our experts have done for us.
Our expert chemists have created chemical fertilizers and pesticides to put on our agricultural crops so megafarming agribusinesses can produce lots more food than our ancestors ever dreamed of. And diseases and weaknesses such as diabetes, allergies and heart disease at rates never previously imagined because our bodies can't cope with the chemical attacks over long periods of time. (Tests are usually over three years, seldom longer, as if nothing could affect our health over a long period of time.)
Other expert chemists, medical specialists, have developed drugs to rescue us from the ravages of those chemicals, which have also made their way into our air (over half a million kinds) and our drinking water (over 300,000 kinds).
Our expert medical doctors happily prescribe those drugs for the rest of our lives so we can stay on our feet and work harder than our ancestors ever dreamed. And, so they won't forget what to prescribe, many of them accept reminder gifts from the pharmaceutical companies. A comfortable arrangement for the experts.
Our business specialists, MBAs tucked neatly in safe locations, figure out how to manufacture things to make our lives easier. Our communications specialists devise ways to sell those products to us through advertising, making us believe we need stuff we seldom use. The facts that our lives are not easier, that we have more stress than any previous generation, take more drugs than any previous generation and buy so much we don't need that we have to have yard sales and to give other stuff to "needy" people in neighbouring countries is never mentioned, so we forget. (Donations by Americans are often sold in Canada, and vice versa, a fact seldom noted publicly.)
Our expert architects design skyscrapers so well that most people who have to work in them have their health compromised. Sick building syndrome--no one knows how it will affect our length of life--stands as a hallmark of modern architectural progress.
Our legal specialists are so good at defending bad guys with cash to spread around that few go to prison and the ones who do have short stays. Our lawyers have reputations worse than used car salesmen of the old days. Their accounting specialists advise them how to Hoover every available dollar from ordinary folks who know so little of the skills of relationships they don't know how to stay married, so little about money management that more cash goes out than comes in for too many people and so little about getting along with neighbours that whole television courtroom series have cropped up to document the conflicts and allow the rest of us to be voyeurs.
Our specialists have made us the great Western World are persuaded those who are not part of it envy to such extremes that some of them want to murder us because of it.
We are, in short, the epitome of progress. We have our specialists to thank.
Let's take a moment to consider the parts of their lives that our experts and specialists don't want us to think about. Would you expect to see one of them changing a flat tire? No, because they have roadside assistance insurance. Or is it because they have no idea how to change a tire? Or because they fear getting their hands dirty. Ask one.
Most pay little attention to their diet until they are diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, have a stroke or are told point blank by their doctors that they are obese or dangerously overweight such that their lives are at risk. They know little about nutrition, what their bodies need to stay healthy.
Most have no idea how to fix their own computers, even how to keep dust out of them, and many don't even keep their security programs up to date. They don't change the oil in their own cars because they don't know how. They can't change a washer in a leaky tap/faucet. They have to call a plumber when their toilet plugs up because they have no idea how to use a plunger (or how to avoid plugging the toilet in the first place).
They don't plant their own gardens where they can grow pesticide-free and chemical-free veggies and fruit because they "don't have time." In fact, most don't have any idea how to tend a garden.
On the other hand, a high school dropout may know how to do all of these things and hundreds more. Does this make the dropout more fit for life in the 21st century than the highly educated person? Not necessarily. But maybe.
Consider this possibility. Something happens that causes the power to go out in your part of the world and you learn that it will be out for a whole year or more. Would you rather have the high school dropout who has had to survive by the seat of his pants for many years as an ally or one of the experts or specialists mentioned earlier in this article?
Of course you assume that such a thing will never happen, even though a terrorist bomb could accomplish it. The 30 million people of the US state of California believe their state will never sink into the Pacific either, even though scientists have been warning it would happen for years from a split of earth's tectonic plates along the San Andreas fault. Many Americans are unaware that what is known as a super volcano is brewing under Yellowstone Park, even though a blow that would darken the skies of the world possibly for years is overdue. These things can happen. Eventually one will. Some call it Armageddon, but it's really just nature in action.
Am I suggesting that high school and post secondary education is worthless or counter productive? Not at all. What is needed is a change of focus in our elementary and high schools. We need to teach children life skills, not stuff they know they will never need or use. How much do you remember or use of what you learned in high school? Would you have willing traded much of it for some of the life skills you have learned by experience since then?
Adolescents and young adults have trouble in high school often because they see how useless what they are forced to learn is and will be to them in the future. They know they need to learn life lessons--that desire to learn is instinctive--but they don't know what those lessons are or how to get them. They rebel. They drop out. They take drugs or alcohol, get tattoos, listen to music that could destroy their hearing, and so on. Eventually, most of them learn the lessons they need, get back on track and become upstanding citizens. But not quickly enough. Those lessons often come the hard way, by making mistake after mistake and learning from them. A few don't make it.
As radical as Robert Heinlein's suggestion in our opening quote seemed when you first read it, it makes more sense now. We have time to teach these life lessons and more. We simply need to eliminate what was better suited for 18th century schools than it is for today's world. In the 18th century kids learned life lessons at home. Today's kids can't learn them at home because many of their parents don't know the life lessons themselves to teach. With both parents working to earn enough to buy the fun things of life as well as what we believe are necessities, we need someone to teach the life lessons that used to be taught at home.
They aren't being taught at school today because the curriculum is too crowded with other (often unnecessary) stuff. They aren't being taught at home. And our young people experience more problems at school and outside of it than any previous generation.
This is a simple connect-the-dots problem and solution. By the way, I still don't know how to set a bone, but I can do most of the rest of what Heinlein suggested. It took me six decades of life to learn these lessons. I should have been able to learn them in school, before I needed them. You too.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, an easy to understand guidebook (with a threatening sounding title) for parents and teachers who want to grow children who know how to manage their lives. It includes specific lessons.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
How Stress Wrecks Your Health
"Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies."
- Nelson Mandela, civil rights icon, former president of South Africa (b.1918)
Resentment, bitterness, holding a grudge, being angry at anything for longer than 10 minutes, they're all the same thing. And just as self destructive as each other. Maybe we should add shooting yourself in the foot as well.
The "enemy" never suffers the same way we do; the enemy has no idea that we are causing ourselves to suffer. Usually the "enemy" has forgotten about the disagreement a few minutes or hours after it happened.
Feuds have carried on for decades between two former friends, not because they had a disagreement but because one of them persists in holding a grudge. Sometimes the grudge and conflict continues even if both parties have forgotten what the issue was in the first place.
Conflict requires emotional energy. So does laughter. But laughter doesn't continue indefinitely the way conflict does sometimes.
Conflict triggers the body's fight or flight response, which pumps epinephrin (better known by the trade name Adrenalin) through the bloodstream. This is no big deal if the body returns to normal within a short period of time.
Trouble begins when the conflict and its emotional component continue, with epinephrin leaking into the bloodstream over a long period of time--weeks, months, years. The body interprets this as stress, more likely even as trauma. This kicks the immune system into high gear because that's what the immune system was designed to do.
As conflict continues and the immune system remains steadily pumping its stuff around the body, it loses its ability to spot and eliminate other invaders or minor skirmishes such as cancer sites that come to life when the immune system isn't around to keep the cancer cells in check.
The advancement of cancer due to stress is but one example. Many diseases and syndromes that cause people continual grief or even death can be precipitated by viruses. If viruses are allowed to flourish because the immune system has been too busy looking after stress (conflict) to do its job properly, illness will result.
Some of these illnesses happen because the immune system is so confused by being continually in action that it turns against itself. It treats its own issue as another enemy. Autoimmune responses that cause the immune system to self destruct are not a good thing.
Whether it be resentment, carrying a grudge or emotional stress of any kind (including the body's response to continual lack of sufficient sleep), the body will eventually cause its own death if the emotional drain continues to run.
It's all within our power to stop and to prevent such events from happening in our lives. Stress doesn't just result from anger. Anger is often the consequence of constant stress from another source. Anger with a loved one, for example, usually has as its real source something that has nothing to do with the loved one.
It's destructive, it's dangerous and it usually ends up hurting more than just the life of the one person who allows the stress to continue.
Now you know. Tell someone.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' a book for adults who want to have children avoid the problems the older generation had growing up. That includes teaching kids how to avoid having stress ruin their lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Nelson Mandela, civil rights icon, former president of South Africa (b.1918)
Resentment, bitterness, holding a grudge, being angry at anything for longer than 10 minutes, they're all the same thing. And just as self destructive as each other. Maybe we should add shooting yourself in the foot as well.
The "enemy" never suffers the same way we do; the enemy has no idea that we are causing ourselves to suffer. Usually the "enemy" has forgotten about the disagreement a few minutes or hours after it happened.
Feuds have carried on for decades between two former friends, not because they had a disagreement but because one of them persists in holding a grudge. Sometimes the grudge and conflict continues even if both parties have forgotten what the issue was in the first place.
Conflict requires emotional energy. So does laughter. But laughter doesn't continue indefinitely the way conflict does sometimes.
Conflict triggers the body's fight or flight response, which pumps epinephrin (better known by the trade name Adrenalin) through the bloodstream. This is no big deal if the body returns to normal within a short period of time.
Trouble begins when the conflict and its emotional component continue, with epinephrin leaking into the bloodstream over a long period of time--weeks, months, years. The body interprets this as stress, more likely even as trauma. This kicks the immune system into high gear because that's what the immune system was designed to do.
As conflict continues and the immune system remains steadily pumping its stuff around the body, it loses its ability to spot and eliminate other invaders or minor skirmishes such as cancer sites that come to life when the immune system isn't around to keep the cancer cells in check.
The advancement of cancer due to stress is but one example. Many diseases and syndromes that cause people continual grief or even death can be precipitated by viruses. If viruses are allowed to flourish because the immune system has been too busy looking after stress (conflict) to do its job properly, illness will result.
Some of these illnesses happen because the immune system is so confused by being continually in action that it turns against itself. It treats its own issue as another enemy. Autoimmune responses that cause the immune system to self destruct are not a good thing.
Whether it be resentment, carrying a grudge or emotional stress of any kind (including the body's response to continual lack of sufficient sleep), the body will eventually cause its own death if the emotional drain continues to run.
It's all within our power to stop and to prevent such events from happening in our lives. Stress doesn't just result from anger. Anger is often the consequence of constant stress from another source. Anger with a loved one, for example, usually has as its real source something that has nothing to do with the loved one.
It's destructive, it's dangerous and it usually ends up hurting more than just the life of the one person who allows the stress to continue.
Now you know. Tell someone.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' a book for adults who want to have children avoid the problems the older generation had growing up. That includes teaching kids how to avoid having stress ruin their lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Are You Afraid To Die?
Today I am sufficiently exhausted that I can understand and empathize with people who want to die.
What I have trouble understanding is why people fear dying. I don't.
Following a traumatic event in my life in 1997, I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). For people with the most severe cases of CFS, just getting out of bed to go to the bathroom or to eat at a table can be either exhausting or painful or both. Mine was not that severe.
By the time I had finished breakfast on most days, I was so exhausted that I had to have a nap for an hour. Two or three naps followed through the day. Only when I took myself too far, beyond the point of being simply tired, would I have pain in every muscle in my body. I tried to avoid that. That's dumb. But it didn't always work.
Sometimes, going beyond the critical point becomes necessary. As a result of a series of coincidences, in the first half of 2007 I had more jobs to do than my body could manage. I got excessively tired every day. Recovery was not an option (is not even today) because the jobs that couldn't be avoided had to be done or my ability to sustain myself as a person would have collapsed.
When people get too tired, especially when excessive fatigue continues for a prolonged period of time, they begin to think strange thoughts. No matter how much sleep or rest (relaxing horizontally or sitting) a person gets, if the exhaustion continues the person can develop symptoms like that of sleep deprivation. Irritability, moodiness, impatience, intolerance of others or themselves, making mistakes that wouldn't have happened under normal circumstances, distancing themselves from loved ones and more problems ease themselves seamlessly into their life.
Sometimes, thoughts can turn to death. That could mean suicide, murder or murder-suicide. If severe enough, such as in some cases of post partum depression, it could even involve a mother killing her own baby, "to protect" the child.
Thoughts, discussion or proposals having anything to do with death are taboo in western cultures. Consequently we don't address their causes. "Go to the doctor." "Take a drug to make you happy." Pharmaceutical responses to problems or stress and other problems related to mental health of the 1960s and 1970s, primarily taking tranquilizers, evolved into taking a variety of drugs today. Some want to make smoking marijuana legal simply because so many people use it illegally, possibly as high as 25 percent of adults.
While people discuss the taking of drugs with emotional vigor, taking one side or the other, debate never turns to the subject of death and rarely to ways to avoid the effects of stress in the first place. In a materialistic society with an industrial mindset, normal conversation involves apparently healthy people talking about any subject other than death or social change to avoid the causes of stress that destroy so many lives.
The most important fact that we avoid talking about with those who may be suffering the effects of stress or some cause that makes another person consider suicide or murder is that the critical time in their life will pass, that they will feel better about life later. Discussion of how to reduce stress is not a popular topic among those with the industrial mindset. People who talk about stuff like that tend to be "out there somewhere," extreme liberals, aged hippies, not those in the mainstream of business culture.
One topic that everyone agrees on is that death is bad. Death must be avoided at all costs, even if it requires a person to remain in pain for years or to suffer in an institutional environment with most elements we consider as freedom removed. We don't know why. We don't discuss it so we never find out.
We have been told that death is painful, for one thing. In fact, it seldom is. For most people, even those who die unexpectedly or as a result of violence, death comes peacefully and as a release from the burden of life. Compared to many of the painful experiences of life, death is blissful. What comes before death, including treatment in a hospital, may be painful, but death is not.
You have likely heard of those who have returned from the brink of death, from near-death experiences or who have "come back from being clinically dead" speak of feeling at peace, of seeing a bright white light, of being welcomed to the next life. Even those who claim to have had out of body experiences, of seeing their bodies from above an operating table where their fleshly existence lay in clinical death, say that death was not to be feared, was not painful.
I don't propose that we encourage people to end their lives when they feel that life is no longer worth the pain and trouble. I do propose that we change our attitudes toward death and the stressors of life so that we can all live more peaceful, safe and loving lives.
Love is part of the equation. Those under constant stress have trouble feeling love, expressing love and accepting love.
The same may be said of people in depression. The odd thing about depression is that we know how to avoid it most of the time. Health experts know how it develops, why it develops and how to avoid it. But, except for a relatively small number of experts who put themselves out to help others through rough times, most health experts stay away from the subjects of depression, thoughts of suicide and stress.
Nothing improves when we refuse to talk about a subject that impacts the lives of everyone, either directly, indirectly through loved ones or friends, or both.
We may not be certain about what's "on the other side" of death. That doesn't mean that we should avoid talking about what's on this side. It could save many lives.
It could save your life one day.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, when and how to teach children what they need to know to live healthy adult lives, free of excess stress and fear.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
What I have trouble understanding is why people fear dying. I don't.
Following a traumatic event in my life in 1997, I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). For people with the most severe cases of CFS, just getting out of bed to go to the bathroom or to eat at a table can be either exhausting or painful or both. Mine was not that severe.
By the time I had finished breakfast on most days, I was so exhausted that I had to have a nap for an hour. Two or three naps followed through the day. Only when I took myself too far, beyond the point of being simply tired, would I have pain in every muscle in my body. I tried to avoid that. That's dumb. But it didn't always work.
Sometimes, going beyond the critical point becomes necessary. As a result of a series of coincidences, in the first half of 2007 I had more jobs to do than my body could manage. I got excessively tired every day. Recovery was not an option (is not even today) because the jobs that couldn't be avoided had to be done or my ability to sustain myself as a person would have collapsed.
When people get too tired, especially when excessive fatigue continues for a prolonged period of time, they begin to think strange thoughts. No matter how much sleep or rest (relaxing horizontally or sitting) a person gets, if the exhaustion continues the person can develop symptoms like that of sleep deprivation. Irritability, moodiness, impatience, intolerance of others or themselves, making mistakes that wouldn't have happened under normal circumstances, distancing themselves from loved ones and more problems ease themselves seamlessly into their life.
Sometimes, thoughts can turn to death. That could mean suicide, murder or murder-suicide. If severe enough, such as in some cases of post partum depression, it could even involve a mother killing her own baby, "to protect" the child.
Thoughts, discussion or proposals having anything to do with death are taboo in western cultures. Consequently we don't address their causes. "Go to the doctor." "Take a drug to make you happy." Pharmaceutical responses to problems or stress and other problems related to mental health of the 1960s and 1970s, primarily taking tranquilizers, evolved into taking a variety of drugs today. Some want to make smoking marijuana legal simply because so many people use it illegally, possibly as high as 25 percent of adults.
While people discuss the taking of drugs with emotional vigor, taking one side or the other, debate never turns to the subject of death and rarely to ways to avoid the effects of stress in the first place. In a materialistic society with an industrial mindset, normal conversation involves apparently healthy people talking about any subject other than death or social change to avoid the causes of stress that destroy so many lives.
The most important fact that we avoid talking about with those who may be suffering the effects of stress or some cause that makes another person consider suicide or murder is that the critical time in their life will pass, that they will feel better about life later. Discussion of how to reduce stress is not a popular topic among those with the industrial mindset. People who talk about stuff like that tend to be "out there somewhere," extreme liberals, aged hippies, not those in the mainstream of business culture.
One topic that everyone agrees on is that death is bad. Death must be avoided at all costs, even if it requires a person to remain in pain for years or to suffer in an institutional environment with most elements we consider as freedom removed. We don't know why. We don't discuss it so we never find out.
We have been told that death is painful, for one thing. In fact, it seldom is. For most people, even those who die unexpectedly or as a result of violence, death comes peacefully and as a release from the burden of life. Compared to many of the painful experiences of life, death is blissful. What comes before death, including treatment in a hospital, may be painful, but death is not.
You have likely heard of those who have returned from the brink of death, from near-death experiences or who have "come back from being clinically dead" speak of feeling at peace, of seeing a bright white light, of being welcomed to the next life. Even those who claim to have had out of body experiences, of seeing their bodies from above an operating table where their fleshly existence lay in clinical death, say that death was not to be feared, was not painful.
I don't propose that we encourage people to end their lives when they feel that life is no longer worth the pain and trouble. I do propose that we change our attitudes toward death and the stressors of life so that we can all live more peaceful, safe and loving lives.
Love is part of the equation. Those under constant stress have trouble feeling love, expressing love and accepting love.
The same may be said of people in depression. The odd thing about depression is that we know how to avoid it most of the time. Health experts know how it develops, why it develops and how to avoid it. But, except for a relatively small number of experts who put themselves out to help others through rough times, most health experts stay away from the subjects of depression, thoughts of suicide and stress.
Nothing improves when we refuse to talk about a subject that impacts the lives of everyone, either directly, indirectly through loved ones or friends, or both.
We may not be certain about what's "on the other side" of death. That doesn't mean that we should avoid talking about what's on this side. It could save many lives.
It could save your life one day.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about what, when and how to teach children what they need to know to live healthy adult lives, free of excess stress and fear.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Life IS Overcoming Problems
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
- Theodore Rubin
So, here's the problem (so to speak). Most of us tend to believe that having problems causes us to remain removed from a better life, one without problems. The problem is not our problems, but what we believe is a better life.
A life without problems is either death or the slippery slope on the way to it. Our bodies and our brains are both built to tackle problems, to face down challenges, to overcome difficulties on the road of life. We are built to struggle.
If we do not struggle with problems or some form of challenges, both physical and mental, on a regular basis, our abilities and our faculties atrophy and degrade until there isn't enough left of us to maintain our health.
Those who do not work all parts of their bodies regularly become achy, lame and weak in their old age or before. Those who do not exericse their brain regularly fall into senility. These are proven facts. For most of us, these failures of our physical and mental abilities in middle and old ages are preventable.
Our immune systems need a good workout, especially when we are young, to develop immunities against various diseases. Our immune systems are built t0 withstand many kinds of illness in childhood and early adulthood so that they will be strong as we get older. In other words, we are designed to get sick as children and adolescents. And to recover, building our immune system's defences as we do so.
Our emotional development is likewise designed for hurt as well as for joy. Those who do not experience much in the way of emotional hurt during their lives do not develop an equal scope for joy and happiness when it presents itself. Emotions are like a pendulum, they swing as far one way as the other. If development of emotions is hampered in one direction, it fails to develop much in the other. People who experience great tragedy and hurt also have the ability to experience joy far greater than those who have "sailed through life."
Don't curse your problems. They give you the opportunity to live life to the fullest, to experience happiness and fulfillment. Without them, your life would be relatively dull.
No one says you should enjoy your problems. That would be a psychological problem in itself. But you can face them with some degree of equanimity knowing that they will pass and happiness will be available to you in the future.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Theodore Rubin
So, here's the problem (so to speak). Most of us tend to believe that having problems causes us to remain removed from a better life, one without problems. The problem is not our problems, but what we believe is a better life.
A life without problems is either death or the slippery slope on the way to it. Our bodies and our brains are both built to tackle problems, to face down challenges, to overcome difficulties on the road of life. We are built to struggle.
If we do not struggle with problems or some form of challenges, both physical and mental, on a regular basis, our abilities and our faculties atrophy and degrade until there isn't enough left of us to maintain our health.
Those who do not work all parts of their bodies regularly become achy, lame and weak in their old age or before. Those who do not exericse their brain regularly fall into senility. These are proven facts. For most of us, these failures of our physical and mental abilities in middle and old ages are preventable.
Our immune systems need a good workout, especially when we are young, to develop immunities against various diseases. Our immune systems are built t0 withstand many kinds of illness in childhood and early adulthood so that they will be strong as we get older. In other words, we are designed to get sick as children and adolescents. And to recover, building our immune system's defences as we do so.
Our emotional development is likewise designed for hurt as well as for joy. Those who do not experience much in the way of emotional hurt during their lives do not develop an equal scope for joy and happiness when it presents itself. Emotions are like a pendulum, they swing as far one way as the other. If development of emotions is hampered in one direction, it fails to develop much in the other. People who experience great tragedy and hurt also have the ability to experience joy far greater than those who have "sailed through life."
Don't curse your problems. They give you the opportunity to live life to the fullest, to experience happiness and fulfillment. Without them, your life would be relatively dull.
No one says you should enjoy your problems. That would be a psychological problem in itself. But you can face them with some degree of equanimity knowing that they will pass and happiness will be available to you in the future.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, February 08, 2007
How To Make Big Problems Seem Small
"The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
- Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk (1915–1968)
Everyone has problems they consider to be severe. They may or may not be constant stressors, but when they come along they are as severe for one person as for another.
It doesn't really matter how important or significant a problem is. If a small problem exists in isolation of others problems, it becomes the most important problem and has the same effect on one person as a critical problem has on another person.
Everyone suffers from problems. Whether the problem would be forgotten within a month or would continue (even in memory) indefinitely, the bearer of the problem sees it as severe. Future resolutions of problems seem unimportant to a person who is suffering from and worrying about today's problems.
Those who try to hide from problems close themselves off from situations that might aggravate their emotions. Emotions are the part of us where we suffer, so shielding the emotions is thought by some to prevent suffering. But by shutting themselves off from the potential consequences of problems, people also shut themselves off from the realities around them. They lose their grasp of realities of life.
They come to believe that the tiny world they live in is the same as (or should be the same as) the one others live in. They want others ourside of their tiny protected world to live by the same set of rules and understandings as they live by.
Rather than hiding from problems, we need to face them down and feel the accomplishment of conquering them. We can keep in mind that every problem we have will be solved eventually. Every one. Persistent problems such as physical disabilities we can work around so that they no longer become disabilities but instead become opportunities to better ourselves in other ways.
How can we lessen the effects of our problems? By helping others with theirs. Most of us don't have to go far from our own homes to find others with problems far more severe than our own.
First of all, finding others with problems far worse than our own makes ours seem less severe to us. Second, helping others with their problems causes us to neglect the emotional stress that our own problems cause us.
That one-two combination may be found in most or all of the people you know who never seem to suffer from their problems the way others do. They have problems, like everyone, but all they have time for is solving them, not worrying about them. They are too busy offering help to others with more important problems to worry about themselves.
Unless a problem persists because another person with emotional instability or a legal or phsysical disability themselves, most of us forget our most severe problems a few months after they cease to be stressors for us. Can you remember the problems you worried about a year ago?
Little problems seem big if we have no big problems to worry us. Big problems seem insignificant if we busy ourselves helping those with problems more severe than our own.
That leaves helping others as the solution to finding relief to our problems. That may not be intuitive, but it's true. It's one of the mysteries of human nature. It's works.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our little problems that seem big into little problems that we don't worry about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk (1915–1968)
Everyone has problems they consider to be severe. They may or may not be constant stressors, but when they come along they are as severe for one person as for another.
It doesn't really matter how important or significant a problem is. If a small problem exists in isolation of others problems, it becomes the most important problem and has the same effect on one person as a critical problem has on another person.
Everyone suffers from problems. Whether the problem would be forgotten within a month or would continue (even in memory) indefinitely, the bearer of the problem sees it as severe. Future resolutions of problems seem unimportant to a person who is suffering from and worrying about today's problems.
Those who try to hide from problems close themselves off from situations that might aggravate their emotions. Emotions are the part of us where we suffer, so shielding the emotions is thought by some to prevent suffering. But by shutting themselves off from the potential consequences of problems, people also shut themselves off from the realities around them. They lose their grasp of realities of life.
They come to believe that the tiny world they live in is the same as (or should be the same as) the one others live in. They want others ourside of their tiny protected world to live by the same set of rules and understandings as they live by.
Rather than hiding from problems, we need to face them down and feel the accomplishment of conquering them. We can keep in mind that every problem we have will be solved eventually. Every one. Persistent problems such as physical disabilities we can work around so that they no longer become disabilities but instead become opportunities to better ourselves in other ways.
How can we lessen the effects of our problems? By helping others with theirs. Most of us don't have to go far from our own homes to find others with problems far more severe than our own.
First of all, finding others with problems far worse than our own makes ours seem less severe to us. Second, helping others with their problems causes us to neglect the emotional stress that our own problems cause us.
That one-two combination may be found in most or all of the people you know who never seem to suffer from their problems the way others do. They have problems, like everyone, but all they have time for is solving them, not worrying about them. They are too busy offering help to others with more important problems to worry about themselves.
Unless a problem persists because another person with emotional instability or a legal or phsysical disability themselves, most of us forget our most severe problems a few months after they cease to be stressors for us. Can you remember the problems you worried about a year ago?
Little problems seem big if we have no big problems to worry us. Big problems seem insignificant if we busy ourselves helping those with problems more severe than our own.
That leaves helping others as the solution to finding relief to our problems. That may not be intuitive, but it's true. It's one of the mysteries of human nature. It's works.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our little problems that seem big into little problems that we don't worry about.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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