As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
[stress!] relax, take it easy
CasedOut
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Stress is common today in many people's lives. Have our lives grown more stressful or have we grown less able to deal with stress? Or is the amount of stress the same as its always been?
In my pyschology class my teacher asked us this question, "Do you believe individuals in the United States experience more stress than individuals in other countries?"
To my surprise most everyone in the classroom said that yes indeed Americans experience more stress. Perhaps, I am wrong, but I feel like stress in many other countries if not most other countries is much higher than in America. Take many of the asian countries for example, china, japan, and south korea are a few that come to mind. They live in extremely high pressure societies with tons and tons of stress and also have much higher suicide rates than America. Many of the suicides are stress related.
Many other countries come to mind, including most of Africa, much of the middle east, much of eastern europe and Russia, and much of latin America.
What do you guys think? Is America more stressed out as a whole than most other countries?
In my pyschology class my teacher asked us this question, "Do you believe individuals in the United States experience more stress than individuals in other countries?"
To my surprise most everyone in the classroom said that yes indeed Americans experience more stress. Perhaps, I am wrong, but I feel like stress in many other countries if not most other countries is much higher than in America. Take many of the asian countries for example, china, japan, and south korea are a few that come to mind. They live in extremely high pressure societies with tons and tons of stress and also have much higher suicide rates than America. Many of the suicides are stress related.
Many other countries come to mind, including most of Africa, much of the middle east, much of eastern europe and Russia, and much of latin America.
What do you guys think? Is America more stressed out as a whole than most other countries?
CasedOut on
0
Posts
Well, I think stress is really subjective. Yes, by OUR standards, life in the certain other areas may see unduly stressful, but would they really be if you had grown up in a society that enforced such laws? Or had such expectations?
I personally don't think we as American's lead lives anymore stressful than people in other countries, but I think stress is really subjective, stress is something that affects you because it's outside of your norm. Some people feel a lot of stress when they have a deadline coming up, or when they feel like said deadline is too soon, because it makes them work at a pace they aren't use to, hence stress.
Right now, I'm sure life in the middle east(in certain countries) and in Africa(in...well... a lot more countries) is more stressful, because they are dealing with things outside of their norms that are life threatening.
But really, just exercise a bit and eat well and maybe have sex and you'll feel a lot better
Now that's stress. Compared to that, Americans have it easy.
I don't know why someone would point to America as being a more stressful environment than other countries, though. Your job and school culture aren't nearly as demanding as those of certain other countries. Certainly I'd think of Japan or South Korea first.
That is true, Starcraft tournaments can get pretty stressful.
If your job is stressful you could undergo several hours of this situation a day, or as robman pointed out if you're in a warzone or ghetto the stress of waiting for a bullet to enter your house.
Uh, except adrenalin isn't just for life and death situations. Excitement/nervousness in general can stimulate the adrenal gland, and it's silly to assert that our ancestors didn't experience those feelings except when running away from sabertooth tigers.
Why do you think it is that modern society creates more stress than an older society with a worse quality of life?
edit: assuming that is in fact the case
TPS reports man, TPS reports!
I must not have got the memo.
I spent a year living in Thailand and once the initial stress of learning what was expected from my job wore off I experienced almost no stress at all for most of the year. It was extremely liberating. I would say many of the people there exhibit different stresses.
It's always stressful to have to worry about basic necessities, but its also less stressful when the society as a whole doesn't put as much emphasis on timliness and emphasizes happiness over material gain.
Edit: Especially teens in the US. We expect much more out of our teenages than it seems almost anyone else does. Less as far as studying goes, but way way more as far as personal responsibilities.
I'm not fully prepared to stand behind that claim, but the idea is that modern jobs require a much greater amount of mental busywork, as opposed to repetitive tasks or backbreaking labour, and at a less frenetic pace. The decreased quality of life wouldn't have too much of an effect on stress levels, since people tend to measure their quality of life based on those around them. Plus very little class mobility, so less to aspire to.
This does seem to somewhat fit with the "keeping up with the joneses" mentality.
Man my stress level would be through the roof if I was you. YOU JUST GOTTA CATCH EM ALL!!!!!
Funny you say that, because Pokemon may be the most I've ever thought about a game while not playing it. Planning my teams... figuring out movesets... it is kinda stressful
All arousal is the same.
The physiological response to all emotion is identical.
Extremes of emotion: Horror, fear, excitement, extreme joy, all will stimulate the adrenal gland because all trigger the same physiological arousal.
This doesn't mean it's a biological adaption for emotion. It's more likely that this is just a sideeffect of the identical arousal that wasn't weeded out via evolutionary processes because it wasn't something that can adversely affect procreation.
And it can't really affect continuing the species now. Stress isn't something that really messes with you until you get older because it's a build up of constant damage over time. By the time it really affects you, most people would have had kids.
It sure can affect an individual though! And from an individual point of view, yes it is damaging because too much adrenaline is toxic. That's why your adrenal gland can't release too much. There's an automatic stopgap to prevent more than a little bit getting out at a time, hence why you get a surge. If you had a malfunctioning adrenal gland that constantly produced it at a much higher rate, your body would very quickly deteriorate.
Normally, stresses like this weren't as big of a deal because we had fitter bodies because of our way of life, which meant better capability of flushing out the adrenaline.
Nowadays we have highly sedentary lifestyles with pretty inefficient bodies but our stress levels and hence constant adrenaline levels are unchanged/have gone up.
If anyone is worried about stress affecting them: exercise.
Also,
Gaaaar!!!!
What specifically? I seem to have avoided unnecessary communication pretty well.
But again, it's a choice, you know. If they can't reach me, they'll find someone, and I don't want that.
You're basically correct, but oversimplifying things a bit too much in my opinion. A bunch of hormones are released in response to neurological and chemical stress signals, many of which play a role outside of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal neuroendocrine axis. The adrenal glands themselves are a bit more complex than the binary "on/off" devices you seem to suggest. You can stimulate the adrenal glands and adrenal cortices in several different ways and receive different responses in terms of chatecolamine and corticosteroid release. "Stress" isn't a specific physiological state or process, but rather a category of physiological states.
The primary hormonal responses to stress are thought to be well understood, as are the long term consequences of prolonged stress, although there's some disagreement between neurologists/neuropsychologists and endocrinologists as to the significance of the nervous system versus hormones. A lot of research is still needed to figure out all the causalities between primary stress response and its downstream effects.
About evolution and adaptation: the "fight or flight" response is certainly a survival mechanism that, on the average, improved an individual's chances of survival and procreation. There are feedback loops in place that normally render this reaction temporary; people and animals get used to things. Animals that escape a predator can recover from the stress almost immediately after the predator is gone, for example. Being under constant stress (in terms of physiological response) is certainly not a normal state for any species. But there are at least two ways in which this "dampening" can fail. A constant barrage, or a wide variety, of stimuli can make it impossible to get adapted to a particular source of stress; or you can enter a vicious circle where the psychological and physiological consequences of stress trigger even worse stress. Most vertebrates grow exhausted and unhealthy under such prolonged stress, sometimes very rapidly.
I tend to keep things simple unless it's really important for people to know the details. In my experience unless it's critical to the argument, the details just make peoples eyes glaze over.
My point was just that calling upon evolution isn't a good counter point so I outlined some basic reasons why.
I'm not arguing against you or anything. You know more details than I do certainly, I don't specialise in neuroscience. I found your clarification very interesting.
Let's Play Gunman Chronicles "It's high-noon in Deep Space".