Stress Testing Your Life
Most of us know that stress is bad for us. We have been told continuously, from childhood on, that controlling stress is an important part of maintaining physical and mental health over the course of a lifetime. This is due to allostatic load, or the cumulative impact of chronic stress on our bodies as we age, live, and just exist in the world. As chronic stress builds, in releases a flood of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, into our bodies that can produce a variety of adverse health issues through prolonged exposure. These include sleep problems, high blood pressure, weight gain, elevated cholesterol, joint inflammation, and gastrointestinal problems. No wonder chronic stress is our enemy. Stress, however, is also unavoidable, and learning to recognize the ways that we can control, reduce, and deaden its impact can have monumental benefits on our minds and bodies that pay off in better mental health and improved physical functioning.
Stress tends to fall into two general categories, acute and chronic. Acute stress is the most common and intrusive, and it is usually very easy to recognize. Some acute stress is episodic, like the traffic jam on the way to work, a power outage in the middle of summer, or the dog running out the door you left open. The rest of our acute stress often consists of the mundane, daily burdens of being human, like that test we have to take tomorrow or the tax return we still have not filed or the check engine light we still have not addressed. These stressors are often episodic and linger if we allow them to stay around.
Chronic stress is more constant and pervasive than acute stress. It lingers and has impact on multiple facets of our lives, impacting our bodies, our moods, and our relationships. It takes many forms, including an unsatisfying relationship, a dead-end job that is long devoid of meaning, a mass of credit card debt that we can’t seem to clear, or a house in a neighborhood that no longer fits our life but we can’t seem to leave. As chronic stress impacts our allostatic load, the acute stressors of life build on its impact. This is why reducing chronic stress is so important.
Ironically, the work we need to do to clear chronic stress from our lives often requires voluntarily navigating acute stress. I see this with my clients as they push towards change and growth, which is inherently hard. Sometimes, the acute stress comes from seeking help or asking for support to address a chronic stressor. Admitting that we are less than competent and confident at solving our own problems is often viewed as weakness, and asking for someone else’s skill or expertise can be humbling. Sometimes, being vulnerable enough to admit the enormity of a problem is the main source of the acute stress. Opening our lives to another person’s scrutiny can also be intimidating and terrifying, so we may avoid it at all costs.
The irony is, however, that our fear of experiencing the short discomfort of the acute stress can leave the chronic stress to linger and build and slowly become more intimidating and impactful. Sometimes, the first step in addressing debt is calling our creditors and asking for options, but that phone call is just too terrifying to make, so we keep putting it off and let the problem fester. When our home is disorganized and dirty and we are overwhelmed by the effort to put it right, the simplest option is to reach out to a friend for support to clean it up, but allowing another human being to see our literal mess is too much vulnerability. We just keep living in the chaos and tell ourselves we’ll get to it when we have the energy. When we realize that our relationship is no longer a good fit for our needs and our emotional security, breaking up is probably the best option, but many of us stay, unable to even initiate the painful and disappointing conversation that will stop the cycle and set us on a path to something that might be better.
We are great at avoiding the acute stressors that might be the way through to a life with less chronic stress and a better outcome for our lives and health. This is an interesting irony of the process of clearing chronic stress from our lives, and it is an aspect of stress management that I have rarely seen explored. It is also an aspect of stress that I have come to understand and respect more as I have aged. Sometimes, we have to make really hared choices and commit to some very difficult paths to move ourselves past our chronic stress, and we need to face that acute discomfort to reach a bigger sense of peace. Change is acutely stressful, and inviting change into your life does not make that stress any less of a burden because you are taking it on by choice. But we sometimes need to accept the short-term burden for the longer-term payoff. All of us could do with a little less allostatic load in our lives, so maybe it’s time to identify one piece of chronic stress that we can tackle, a bit at a time and through bite-size chunks of acute stress.
Written by Deanna Diamond, LPC
