Panic Attack Wiki
If we say that stress was ‘discovered,’ it sounds as though an archaeologist plunged his spade into a mound of earth somewhere in the middle of Africa, turned it over and exclaimed; “I say, Carruthers, I do believe I’ve found stress.” Let’s just say it was observed.
It was observed by a gentleman named Hans Selye in 1936. He was an endocrinologist. Endocrinology is the science of the disorder of the endocrine system and its specific secretions called hormones, just in case your thirst for knowledge could be quenched only with the proper definition of this word! So we know who first became aware of stress. Let’s find out a little more about it.
There are two types of stress. The bad kind, which is distress and the good kind, which is eustress. The latter is when we’re looking forward to something, perhaps going out for an evening on the town, or attending your best friend’s wedding. Eustress is good for us, so we won’t be concentrating on that now. It’s the distress with which we need to concern ourselves. There are many bad areas of stress, but I submit that the following four are arguably the worst.
Number One, death of a spouse. Now my first wife died of cervical cancer, and although she was in hospital for about three weeks prior to her death, and the surgeon had told me she would die in three months, (he was correct almost to the day), when the hospital telephoned me and actually told me that she’d gone, it hit me as though I’d crashed into a brick wall.
How much more terrible, then, to learn that your spouse has been killed in a car crash, or that he or she has gone down in the ocean in an aircraft. That sort of change is like a mental force of gravity so severe as to metaphorically tear your head off. You need a lot of support at such a terrible time and platitudes like ‘why don’t you take deep breaths’ and ‘go for nice long walks’ certainly aren’t going to cut it. This is sudden stress. One minute your life is on a nice, even keel. The next, you’re thrown into unspeakable turmoil.
The Second Stressor is divorce. In one sense, this is the opposite of losing a spouse in a sudden accident. Divorces tend to drag on and with it, the stress. It depends so much on the relationship between the spouses. Sometimes the divorce is quite acceptable on both sides and there’s no fighting over possessions. That makes matters relatively stress-free. On the other hand, one party may hate the thought and fights tooth and nail to prevent it. A battle royal can break out over who owns what, and the lives of both parties sink into a slough of stress and misery.
The Third high stressor is moving day! In fact, moving house is the culmination of selling your house, looking for another one, probably doing battle with one realtor after another and all this is topped off, like bitter icing on a particularly nasty cake, by having to move. Hopefully, you have some real professionals moving you. If you don’t, when you arrive at your new home, all manner of things can be broken, lost, damaged, you name it. But even if the whole enterprise goes swimmingly, it’s still very stressful.
So we come to the final one. You’re fired! Usually you have an inkling that something isn’t quite as it should be. Perhaps you’ve made one or two mistakes, or you don’t get on too well with the new head of department. You’re called to the office of he who’s known as God, and you expect to be carpeted at worst. But oh no. One week to clear your desk, wrap up any unfinished business and that’s it.
You’ll almost certainly require therapy for all these disasters. The only thing I can suggest is that you try to discipline your mind to live ‘in the moment.’ In other words, try to forget the past. It’s gone. You’ve no idea what the future’s going to bring. Just try to take life moment by moment.
There is no panacea for the grief and distress about which we’ve been talking. Time is the only healer and it heals moment by moment.
Mike Bond discussing stress again. This time, the worst possible stressors that can cast people into fits of black Depression and despair unless they seek help, and seek help they should. The sort of distress we’ve discussed in this article is such that most people would find themselves cast into a mental whirlpool where their minds are twisted this way and that and equilibrium may only be re-established with the help of at least a therapist. Professional help is very important, because the last thing you want to happen is to become smitten with the diseases you see on Bond’s Website. Visit it, please, so that you can see for yourself how awful these illnesses are
Mike would like to thank Wikipedia for the direct explanation of the Science of Endocrinology
Don’t Panic! Conficker! Is it a Chinese cyber attack?