“Faced with stress, too many people feel they have nowhere to turn to, that they don’t have access to the kind of friendships or communities where they can easily and openly share their problems and worries.” – Daisaku Ikeda
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We, Filipinos, don’t have Stress Awareness Month. Unlike in the United States, there is such a thing and it takes place each April, focusing on highlighting the detrimental effects of stress and advocating for effective management strategies.
The objectives of Stress Awareness Month include informing the public about the origins and consequences of stress, fostering open dialogue to diminish stigma, and offering resources for both individuals and organizations to manage stress successfully.
“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers,” said Fred Rogers.
“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure,” Peter Marshall said.
Here’s what Joyce Meyer said: “Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.”
Gudjon Bergmann has this to say about the subject matter: “There is no such thing as a stress-free life. No evidence has ever been presented which suggests that a stress-free life can ever be achieved. Stress can be managed, relieved and lessened, but never eliminated.”
Just like everyone else, you get to spend 90,000 hours working – or a third of your life. With such a fact, there’s no one in this world who has never experienced stress.
Even during the time of Adam and Eve, stress was already there. This happened when the first two inhabitants of the world ate the forbidden fruit. Right there and then, they experienced stress as they saw themselves naked.
Today, stress has emerged as one of the most serious health issues of the 21st century. “Stress doesn’t only make us feel awful emotionally,” points out Dr. Jay Winner, author of Take the Stress Out of Your Life. “It can also exacerbate just about any health condition you can think of.”
Studies have found many health problems related to stress. Stress seems to worsen or increase the risk of conditions like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, depression, ulcers, Alzheimer’s disease, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.
Dr. Hans Seyle, the world’s premier stress researcher, said the term “stress” came from the Old French and Middle English word “distress.” He said that the first syllable eventually was lost through slurring as when modern kids turned “because” into “cause.”
“In the light of our investigations,” Dr. Seyle wrote in his book, Stress Without Distress, “the true meaning of the two words became totally different despite their common ancestry, just as in correct usage we distinguish because (since) and cause (reason). Activity associated with stress may be pleasant or unpleasant; distress is always disagreeable.”
Dr. Seyle argued that stress is the body’s non-specific response to any demand made upon it. “Sitting in a dentist’s chair is stressful. But so is exchanging a passionate kiss with a lover – after all, your pulse speeds up, your breathing quickens, your heartbeat soars,” he explained.
“Yet who in the world would forgo such a pleasurable pastime (kissing) simply because of stress? Our aim shouldn’t be to avoid stress completely, which would be impossible, but to recognize our typical response to stress and then to modulate our lives in accordance with it,” he continued.
According to Dr. Seyle, as long as human beings are capable of handling stress, it is a very good driving force. However, when stress really gets a person – which happens when he grinds his teeth and starts telling himself things that upset him – it changes into distress, which every person is trying to avoid.
Stress, when it changes to distress, can render a person vulnerable to many diseases. In most cases, distress is not the actual cause of physical illness, but rather it picks on the “little guy,” making the weakest part of a person even weaker. “We all have organs or parts of our bodies that are more vulnerable than others,” Dr. Seyle explains in his book. “And distress attacks where resistance is lowest.”
Filipinos are not spared from stress. In fact, one in four (27%) of Filipinos admitted they frequently experience stress in their daily lives, according to a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) some years back. About 37% of them said that they sometimes suffer stress, while 34% said they rarely experience it. Only two percent said that they never felt stress.
Most of those who experienced stress “more frequent” were living in the cities with 31%. In comparison, only 21% of those from rural areas experienced stress frequently. At 35%, women “more frequently” experienced it while men at only 20%.
Gallup’s annual Global Emotions report, released in 2019, ranked the Philippines as the second most stressed-out people with 58%. Only Greece outranked the country with 59% stressed-out people.
Don’t let stress control your life. Instead, as Michael Jackson puts it, beat it. Studies suggest that managing stress will not only make you feel better, but they might have concrete health benefits. For instance, one study of heart attack survivors found that taking a stress management class slashed their risks of a second cardiac event by 74%.
