stress: Is it real?
 

I was thinking about my spanish classes in highschool today and remembered something one of my spanish teachers told us. He said stress wasn't a real condition but rather an excuse americans made up so they wouldn't have to work as hard.

This teacher loved asian culture, particularly Japanese culture. He pointed out that say a kid in school has a lot of school work to do but doesn't get it all done, Americans would probably say the kid has too much work and is stressed out where as the japanese mentality would most likely be the kid needs to work harder.

I don't remember exactly what he told us so I could be off about this stuff, but the jist of what he was saying is that stress is an American excuse to be lazier. What do you guys think/know about this?

Stress is real. It's not even debatable IMO.

Anything is debatable if you try.

I'm trying to remember things he said. An example he used was a student who always puts so much extra effort into school projects that she got stressed from it. This student could have only put in half the effort and still gotten an A+, but she brought stress upon herself to go the extra mile.

Another thing I sort of remember him saying was that it was some American doctor who first came up with the term stress, and no other language had a word for stress before this guy.

I'm not arguing this nearly as good as my teacher did, but he made a really good point I remember.

I think it depends on how you define "stress." There are physiological things that happen when your body and mind are "challenged" - you release cortisol, adrenaline, your heart rate goes up, etc. Depending on your own individual biology, you might experience the physical sensations caused by these things as "stress" (negative) or as "excitement" (positive), or you may not even notice them.

Mentally, I think it's a different story. I think mental stress is a product of disempowering conversations we have in our head about events. For example, if I have a project due and I'm behind schedule, I could be saying "you're so stupid for waiting this long, now you're going to look bad in front of your supervisors and they'll think you're a loser and you won't get the raise and then you won't be able to afford the relaxing vacation you've planned." Stress. Or I could say "This is going to be late. I should either work longer today, or I should tell someone this is going to be late." No stress. Now, mental stress and physiological stress are definitely related, so if I'm experiencing (or causing) mental stress, I'm likely to experience the physical sensations that go along with it as a negative thing.

So is stress "real?" Not exactly. It's absolutely a product of cultural and individual conversations about future consequences. Those emotional conversations produce certain physiological outcomes, which may or may not be interpreted as "stress." And different cultures definitely deal differently with stress. For some people and in some cultures, the physical sensation of stress is something to be avoided. For others, it's something to be overcome and ignored in favor of the larger goal.

Japan's got an awfull lot of burn outs for this theory to be anything but bullcrap

Stress is a real thing. The thing with asian cultures is that they teach the kids to just deal with it, or they dishonour their family. At least, that's what I've heard.

Parents are more lax in some things here in America, and yet there are a lot of things American parents are super strict on that other countries' parents aren't.

Stress is real. I felt it before.

Japan is huge on stress. Your professor is full of it.

Speaking of Japan, it's worth mentioning that the Japanese did indeed coin a term in the 1980s after the death of several high-ranking business executives who had previously showed no outward signs of illness.

<a href="http://www.apmforum.com/columns/boye51.htm"><i>Karoshi</i> (Kah-roe-she) - Death from overwork</a>

Your teacher talked about the girl who stressed herself to do the best work she could do. This does not seem like a bad thing, merely the desire to feel pride in a job VERY well done.

Contrast this with the really bad stress, the kind where you go to work for a company at the expense of EVERYTHING else, your family, your mental health, your physical health - that stress is the bona fide killer I've seen first hand.

Think of a job where the workplace politics and dynamics are so seething and cancerous that workmates are shunned for refusing to slowly kill themselves. That's stress you can't control, far beyond a simple individual desire to do good work.

Stress is a general term in psychology. That pretty much means stress is EVERYWHERE. The level of stress is the variable. Basicly, it's the environment's pressure on one's self.

Your Spanish teacher should have stuck with what he knew best - teaching Spanish.

Yup...Halx is right. Stress exists. Can't deny it. There are variable levels of it, dependent on who you are, the way you handle it, and the way the people around you handle it.

I don't think there is any doubt stress exists, I think the interesting "study" is how different cultures deal with it.

Stress does in fact exist. I have felt it myself, a time or two.

It sounds to my like you guys are debating, more, the causes of stress than whether it's real. I'd say it is real. Because I've expereinced it. It's a feeling. Maybe it could have a different name...like panic...or feeling overwhelmed...but whatever. Every culture has it. Some just deal with it in different ways than others. Your Spanish teacher could have said something more along time lines of "how serious is stress, really? Some cultures always seem to be able to deal with it without a fuss...but Americans use it as an excuse to hand work in late. Don't you think this is a problem?" That would have been more truthful imo.

I was gonna go off about this but I have so much fuckin' stuff to do I'm about to pull my hair out and slit my wrists.


What the fuck?

Stress is all about the situations and people in your life. How you deal with the situations and people and how they deal with you and your/their given set of circumstances can produce a stressful event.<p>Been there done that, stress is real, both kinds.

It almost sounds as if your teacher is talking about the use of stress as an excuse and not the technical existence of it. It may be the fact that stress is created by your own outlook or mindset in the situation, therefore it is possible to learn or be taught to not allow stress to form.

As for the excuses thing, I would agree wholeheartedly because of the amount I see people blame being stressed out over the most insignificant things.

Halx is right on about this, as well as the others who have expressed similar views.

When I traveled in Japan a few years ago, it was clear to me that it was perhaps the most stressed culture I've ever encountered. They may hide it well, as it was also definitely the most repressed contemporary culture I've ever experienced.

Japan also has an abnormally high suicide rate, I have heard. What would be the cause of that?

stress

1. Importance, significance, or emphasis placed on something. See Synonyms at emphasis.
2. Linguistics.
1. The relative force with which a sound or syllable is spoken.
2. The emphasis placed on the sound or syllable spoken most forcefully in a word or phrase.
3.
1. The relative force of sound or emphasis given a syllable or word in accordance with a metrical pattern.
2. A syllable having strong relative emphasis in a metrical pattern.
4. Accent or a mark representing such emphasis or force.
5. Physics.
1. An applied force or system of forces that tends to strain or deform a body.
2. The internal resistance of a body to such an applied force or system of forces.
6.
1. A mentally or emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influences and capable of affecting physical health, usually characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability, and depression.
2. A stimulus or circumstance causing such a condition.
7. A state of extreme difficulty, pressure, or strain: “He presided over the economy during the period of its greatest stress and danger” (Robert J. Samuelson).


tr.v. stressed, stress·ing, stress·es

1. To place emphasis on: stressed basic fire safety.
2. To give prominence to (a syllable or word) in pronouncing or in accordance with a metrical pattern.
3. To subject to physical or mental pressure, tension, or strain.
4. To subject to mechanical pressure or force.
5. To construct so as to withstand a specified stress.


Phrasal Verb:
stress out Informal

To subject to or undergo extreme stress, as from working too much.


Yeah.....I would have to say it is real.

Yeah.... Stress is pretty real.

Take it from me with Irritable Bowl Syndrome. That shits real.

:(

It's the self's pressures to conform to the environment around the self. That means, it is created by humanity to deal with its natural surroundings. Thus, stress is NOT real.

This falls under the same paradigm as Einstein's debate on the reality of time. If we, as a society, arbitrailily create something - does that mean that it is real? Time almost certainly does not exist, for it is something that our selves use to represent ourselves. Therefore, under the same logic, stress does not exist because it is something that humanity has created to express humanity's natural surroundings. The effect of stress occurs, but only because the psyche allows itself to feel that way.

Saying stress is real would be like saying that schizophrenics see real people when they hallucinate.

By that logic the dams created by beavers to deal with their environment are not real.

Heh :)

Yes TM875, stress has a chemical, i.e. objective basis in reality. If it really had none and we believed it, we wouldn't eat, sleep, or act on any of our basic needs.

It has some subjectivity in terms of the way different individuals may interpret and deal with situations, but in respect of physics and biology it is real (for instance, I work on a busy bar and can deal with it, but at first it did seem very stressful after working in a quiet shop. I got used to it, but a busy night can still make my muscles ache and make me feel a bit frazzled).

Short bursts of mental or physical stress are good exercise, as long as they don't overwhelm your capacities. Long periods are wearying and unhealthy.

Thats why I love this forum. Any other forums I posted on in the past would have maybe 5 or 6 replies to this topic.

Anyways you guys all make good arguments. I think I very poorly argued my teachers point. His point I think was not so much that stress isn't real, but rather that we bring it upon ourselves, because we can do whatever we please as long as we are willing to suffer the consequences. The consequences of the A+ student only putting half as much effort in would be maybe an A or an A-. However this wouldn't hold true to a kid who works his ass of and barely gets that A.

But this is from a teacher I had 3 years ago so its hard to remember.

Arguing that stress isn't real is like arguing that ADD isn't real. I suffer severely from both.

The dams themselves are real, but the beaver's strategic creation (their design layout, per se) of them is not.

fascinating...

...and yet, they do exactly what they are intended to do - hold back actual water and alter the flow of natural phenomena.

exactly!

Now, lets take subject A. He is mid 40s, white, has 3 kids and a wife, and is a investment banker. Works 60 hour weeks. Gives up every single free moment of his life to his job. Soon becomes stressed and suicidal.

Take subject A and place him on a very large dose of effective anti-depressant. Soon, all stressors in his life seem null and void. He still goes to work - quite effectively. Still goes home and has to deal with the wife and kids, but is no longer suicidal. No longer feels the pressures of life choking him.

The events of his life that were bombarding him are still there. However, his reaction to them is drastically different. Ergo (I love that word), the stress in his life was completely created by his psyche, and therefore not real.

The problem is that in the above argument - and in the related preceeding ones, some things are called "real" and other things are described as not real. This is the foundation of the argument. Questions of what is real and what is not real are moot because they are undemonstrable and are the result of a priori assumption and individual belief systems.

...and basicly, if you're talking in science, EVERYTHING is real.

if stress is just brought on by the psyche, and is not real... how can a very real thing like an anti-depressant remove it?

It would seem to me that the placebo effect gets tested with every drug

Like ART already said, it seems like you just attribute the term "real" on subjective criteria, like whether it consists of matter or not.

emotions and ideas may be abstract, that doesn't exclude them from being real.

Stress is identifiable, either discretely or as part of a set of symptoms, and the effects of stress, psychologocally and physiologically, are predictable and measurable. That's a measure of its reality that matters to me -- can I die from it?

It is deffinately real... although I havnt suffered from its effects in about 8 years... Life is to chaotic... Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Touche, guys. I guess I just tend to look at everything from my business and banking background - if you can't touch it, it's not real. Marketing theory teaches us that all human emotions and beliefs can be manipulated to whatever means we pefer. Therefore, to me, emotions and feelings are not real.

I never had stress from high school work, because high school is a joke, as is the homework...

but in real life stress does exist, high school is a fantasy land

time is real, we only invented a unit to measure it in

Japan isn't stressed?!?! They're such a stressed and repressed society they have vomit and scat porn....tell me they are releasing stress when they do that kind of crap.

Oh hell yeah stress is real. I have a bit of it right now *goes back to work*

That makes no sense at all - at least not to me. The chemical reactions that take place in my brain that have an effect on my body are VERY real.

Definately real but people suffer it in different ways, some cope well, some dont cope at all... some seem to cope but get destroyed on the inside...

Being part of the first two groups is much more preferable to being in that last one...

That's the point I'm trying to make, if stress doesn't have a basis in physical reality, an anti-depressant, which is a mixture of chemicals, shouldn't be able to influence it

I think that stress is something that is mainly self induced, but produces real symptoms in people. The severity of of the symtoms are totally dependent on the person. My grandmoter had a refrigerator magnet that read, "stress is what happens when the mind overrides the body's urge to slap the shit out of someone who needs it."

Environmental stress caused me to overload my mind and sink into a clinical depression where I became suicidal. How can stress not be real if chemicals have an effect in countering it?

I would like to add to this by saying that stress is not a "physical" thing. It is an intangible. A few years back, I read an article discussing the reality of stress and it made me think. Stress is not a physical thing, but rather the result of our fears, worries, excitements, etc. For example, I may have a huge mid-term coming up and I would say that I am stressed. I am not "stressed", it is that I am fearful of not passing or doing well. See, emotions are real, based physiologically and mentally and chemically. We can quantify these by how fast our heart beats, how high our blood sugar is, etc. When we feel stressed, it is actually our emotions, but because we can feel many emotions at once, it is easy for society to place a term to this and subjectify as stress. Yet stress is a collective of emotions.

Sorry, I tried to find the article, I know it was in Psychology Today but no luck...

There is nothing in Einstein’s theories that would indicate that Time/Space is not “real.” Time/Space is real and is relative to the reference frame to which you belong. Using it as an example to prove that stress isn't real is beyond a rational argument.

The term "stress" is a label we've used to articulate a real experience. Call it whatever you want, if someone on the street stopped you and put a gun to your face you would feel stress. There are physical manifestations of this stress in your autonomic nervous system. You may begin to sweat, experience “tunnel vision” (high degree of focus on the event that is causing the stress), fear or "fight or flight" response would trigger, etc., etc.

Edit: Gramar

First of all, stress is anything that effects us. There's distress (bad - which most people just call stress) and eustress (good).

Of course stress has a basis in physical reality. If it didn't, we wouldnt be able to feel it. Your entire personality and every emotion you feel is caused, at least in some part, by the chemical make-up in your brain. Stress is part of this. Certain chemicals being released give you a 'stressed' feeling and your body responds to that. Therefore, and anti-depressant (made up of chemicals which counteract the chemical imbalance in a 'depressed' brain) is actually very useful (assuming you have the right combination).

/hoping that made the kind of sense I wanted it to.....

Call it fear. Not stress. No such thing. See previous post.

Fear is just one part of the response to stress.

Damn, nazggul, I think we are flipping back and forth between Martha and stress.

But stress is not real, we define the emotions we have as stress, but it is a made up concept derived from the collection of emotions we feel to put a name to it.