Our Unhealthy Relationship with Stress

Growing up in the 1970’s I vividly recall Sunday evenings with my family gathered around our small TV watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins.  Marlin Perkins was the Steve Erwin of the 1970’s…but much more dapper…he looked like Walt Disney’s older brother.  Marlon had snow white hair and a distinguished Disney mustache, and he always wore an old school safari suit.  My most vivid memories were of the African episodes when we were treated to various chase scenes on the savannah: lions chasing wildebeests, cheetahs chasing gazelle, leopards chasing monkeys and other small game.  It was always interesting to watch the chase, but it was even more interesting when the prey decided to stop, stand its ground, and fight.  I would always wonder about what was going through a creature’s mind at that moment….why would they decide to stop running and fight?  Did they really think they had a chance?  Occasionally the prey animals would win these standoffs…they would often fight with such fury and viciousness that it would scare off a pride of lions or a pack of wild dogs. It was from these early nature shows that  I  first heard the term “fight or flight” response.  It  wasn’t until many years later that I really came to understand that the "fight or flight" response is also a part of being human.

In humans we refer to the fight or flight response as the "stress response", but the underlying physiology and biological mechanisms of the stress response are exactly the same as what an animal experiences during the fight or flight response. Although the fight or flight response is an extremely helpful survival mechanism for animals, it has become a serious liability in humans. Chronic stress and stress-related disease is one of the most pervasive public health problems in America today.  Stress has become a hallmark of modern society and it pervades every aspect of our lives. Every year the American Psychological Association conducts an annual survey of "Stress in America"  which demonstrates that, since 2007, stress levels in the U.S. have consistently been on the rise.  We have come accept that unhealthy levels of stress are a normal part of our every day life.  We find a perverse joy in telling friends and family that we're "stressed out", and we wear our busy-ness and stress as a badge of honor and importance.  We overbook ourselves and rush from one appointment to the next (and some research shows that we do the same to our kids), we overpromise and underdeliver, we strive for impossible levels of productivity and we find a twisted satisfaction in our stress-induced exhaustion every evening.