Too Much Stress?
Have you ever wondered how much stress is too much? We all know instinctively that excessive stress can wreak havoc in our lives. What you may not be aware of are the negative health outcomes that have been linked through research to excessive stress. The Mayo Clinic has a list of conditions that correlate to chronic stress: Anxiety, Depression, Digestive problems, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, memory and concentration impairment. I would add to this list that chronic stress also impacts our ability to connect to others, our sexual functioning and our performance in overall life.
It’s also equally true that stress is a normal non-negotiable part of being a human on this planet. During too-stressful times in my life I’ve fantasized about ways to achieve a stress-free existence, and it doesn’t take me long in that thought experiment to realize that a life with no stress would actually be pretty boring. Stress in the right dosages can actually be a good thing. Think of a typical workout as an example of the benefits of some physical stress: if you push yourself by running extra hard or do another repetition in the gym, or better yet, splitting those last couple rounds of firewood when you’re tired, your body will respond by building your muscles up stronger immediately after. Stress in other areas of life can be like this too: with the right dose it can further your personal growth, deepen your insight, make you more confident or strengthen your connections and commitments to those that matter to you.
So if chronic stress erodes health, and episodic acute stress has potential to increase wellbeing, how do we know when we’re on the right side of this equation? It turns out that there has been research conducted to help answer this question. Check out this resource known as the “Rahe-Holmes stress inventory:”
This is a checklist that takes maybe 5 minutes to fill out. Each stressor common to the human experiences is listed off and assigned a point value. You add together the points from each stressor you’ve encountered in the last year and your total score gives you an idea of your total stress load. While there is of course variance between individuals, the three score thresholds that you can fall into are connected by research to various health outcomes. The higher your stress load past a point (150 or more on the Rahe-Holms inventory) the greater your likelihood of developing a negative health outcome. I found this inventory a good reminder that sometimes even positive events can contribute to our stress load. Getting married or having a child, wonderful as they are, constitute major changes that we have to adjust to.
So let’s say you’ve done the inventory and your score is higher than you would like it to be. This can be an excellent juncture to look at ways to restructure your life and the stressors that you have control over. Again, the stress-free lifestyle is not possible or desirable, but if you’ve just had a hell of a year, you probably need a moment to pause and reflect on what’s been going on in your life. You may even need to review your life goals to see if there’s a way to achieve them that’s more sustainable. A speaker and author by the name of Gary Barkalow once said in a presentation that we don’t learn from experience alone, but by experiences reflected upon. That’s ultimately how we tap into the growth potential of our stress: taking some time to inventory our lives while reflecting on what our stressors have revealed to us about ourselves, our story and our desires for the future. It goes without saying that counseling can be immensely helpful at this juncture, as can journaling, reflecting with a trusted mentor or pastor or friend. Are you at a juncture where you need to renegotiate your stress-load?
