Can you live a stress-free life in a stressed-out world?

Can you live a stress-free life in a stressed-out world?

No.

And yes.

Let’s work out the answer to that.

To answer the question proffered, the first accurate response would be “no”. Stress is a routine part of being a human being. BUT, there is both “good” and “bad” stress. Good stress, for example, is the strain we physically place on our bodies during exercise. It’s a necessary pressure for forging our bodies into greater fitness and health. It’s good for us! Mountain State Centers for Independent Living explains how short-term stress can sometimes be helpful, and long-term stress can be harmful:

Some short-term stress — for example what you feel before an important job presentation, test, interview, or sporting event — may give you the extra energy you need to perform at your best. But long-term stress — for example constant worry over your job, school, or family — may actually drain your energy and your ability to perform well.

The same organization reports these common facts about stress:

• • Millions of Americans suffer from stress each year.
  • Three out of four people say they experience stress at least twice a month.
  • Over half of those people say they suffer from “high” levels of stress at least twice a month.
  • Stress can contribute to heart disease, high blood pressure, and strokes, and make you more likely to catch less serious illnesses like colds. It can also contribute to alcoholism, obesity, drug addiction, cigarette use, depression, and other harmful behaviors.
  • In the last 20 years, the number of people reporting that stress affects their work has gone up more than four times.
  • One fourth of all the drugs prescribed in the United States go to the treatment of stress.
  • FACT: There are simple steps you can take right now to help reduce your stress!

Stress is not a disease, but can result in serious illness if left unaddressed or untreated. “Ulcers in Executive Monkeys” was a study into the effects of the stress of responsibility on executives. It was first published in 1958 in Scientific American by Joseph V. Brady:

• The study involved giving a test, “executive” monkey the responsibility of avoiding electric shock both for himself and a fellow monkey. First the test monkey was trained to pull a lever at a control panel. Then, at regular intervals, the test monkey was given an electric shock unless he first pulled the lever. Later a “yoked,” control monkey was placed in sight of the test monkey. The yoked monkey was likewise shocked at regular intervals unless the test monkey first pulled the lever.

The experiment had to be halted and reformatted because the executive monkey died from perforated stomach ulcers. In all subsequent tests, the responsible, executive monkeys developed ulcers while the yoked, control monkeys did not, leading researchers to conclude that the ulcers were a symptom of the excessive stress induced by the burden of responsibility and control.

Not only can the pressures of responsibility and leadership be physically overwhelming, just the pressures of daily life can be crushing if not attended to directly and in a healthy way, as demonstrated in this report in 1994 by U.S. News and World Report:

Kevin Carter could never escape his continent’s turmoil. For a decade, the photographer captured vivid pictures of repression and strife in his native South Africa. Last year, he went to famine-racked Sudan and came upon a starving toddler stalked by a vulture. He photographed the scene — an image that won this year’s Pulitzer Prize — then chased the vulture away. As the child resumed her walk to a feeding station, he lit a cigarette and wept. Last week, at 33, he killed himself with carbon monoxide pumped into his pickup truck. Explained his father: “Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did.”

The remarkable fact about stress is that what it is, and its impact on a life, is different according to each person. This is explained by the American Institute of Stress like this:

• As noted, stress is difficult to define because it is so different for each of us. A good example is afforded by observing passengers on a steep roller coaster ride. Some are hunched down in the back seats, eyes shut, jaws clenched and white-knuckled with an iron grip on the retaining bar. They can’t wait for the ride in the torture chamber to end so they can get back on solid ground and scamper away. But up front are the wide-eyed thrill seekers, yelling and relishing each steep plunge who race to get on the very next ride. And in between you may find a few with an air of nonchalance that borders on boredom. So, was the roller coaster ride stressful?

The roller coaster analogy is useful in explaining why the same stressor can differ so much for each of us. What distinguished the passengers in the back from those up front was the sense of control they had over the event. While neither group had any more or less control their perceptions and expectations were quite different. Many times we create our own stress because of faulty perceptions you can learn to correct. You can teach people to move from the back of the roller coaster to the front, and, as Eleanor Roosevelt noted, nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. While everyone can’t agree on a definition of stress, all of our experimental and clinical research confirms that the sense of having little or no control is always distressful – and that’s what stress is all about.

The good news about “bad stress” is that it can be overcome. A skilled and competent therapist can help you learn to overcome the negative stressors in your life before they become overwhelming to you. It is possible through Christ, and with the help of a good therapist, to learn to live a life free of the ravages of “bad stress” and experience that indescribable peace Jesus promised He could provide us.

While you can’t rid the world of all its stressors, you don’t have to live a “stressed out” life!

“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world,” John 16:33.

Scotty